What is TAP?
The Milken Family Foundation created the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) as a bold new strategy to attract, retain, develop and motivate talented people to the teaching profession. TAP's goal is to draw more talented people to the teaching profession—and keep them there—by making teaching more attractive and rewarding. TAP provides the opportunity for good teachers to earn higher salaries and advance professionally, just as in other careers, without leaving the classroom. At the same time, TAP provides teachers with training opportunities to learn successful teaching strategies and holds them accountable for their performance. TAP is based on four elements:
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- Multiple Career Paths: Under the current system, the most common way for good teachers to increase their salaries is to become administrators. Unfortunately, this takes them out of the classroom, where they often are needed most. TAP allows teachers to pursue a variety of positions throughout their careers—career, mentor and master teacher—depending upon their interests, abilities and accomplishments. As they move up the ranks, their qualifications, roles and responsibilities increase and thus, so does their compensation. This allows good teachers to advance without having to leave the classroom.
- Ongoing, Applied Professional Growth: Teachers seldom have time to learn new techniques and strategies that would help them become better teachers. Also, few teachers get the chance to collaborate with each other or to learn from those with more experience. TAP restructures the school schedule to provide time during the regular school day for teachers to meet, learn, plan, mentor and share with other teachers, so they can constantly improve the quality of their instruction and hence, increase their students' academic achievement. This collaborative time allows teachers to learn new instructional strategies and have greater opportunity to become more effective teachers. Ongoing Applied Professional Growth in TAP schools focuses on identified needs based on instructional issues that specific teachers face with specific students. Teachers use data to target these areas of need, instead of trying to implement the latest fad in professional development.
- Instructionally Focused Accountability: Most people agree that the best teachers should be paid more than ineffective teachers. But what makes an effective teacher? TAP has developed a comprehensive system for evaluating teachers and rewards them for how well they teach their students. Teachers are held accountable for meeting the TAP Teaching Skills, Knowledge and Responsibility Standards, as well as for the academic growth of their students.
- Performance-Based Compensation: In most professions, people are rewarded and promoted for how well they perform their jobs. Unfortunately, teaching has too often been the exception to this rule. TAP changes the current system by compensating teachers according to their roles and responsibilities, their performance in the classroom, and the performance of their students. The new system also encourages districts to offer competitive salaries to those who teach in "hard-to-staff" subjects and schools. By combining these elements in an effective strategy for reform, TAP is working to turn teaching from a revolving-door profession into a highly rewarding career choice. The real reward will be the outstanding education available to each and every student in the country.
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Overview of TXTAP
During the 2005-06 school year, the TEA funded three pilot TAP schools in the Richardson Independent School District (RISD) for a total of approximately $800,000. Two elementary schools (Audelia Creek Elementary and Thurgood Marshall Elementary) and one junior high school (Forest Meadow Junior High) began implementation of the program in August 2005. In the 2006-07 school year, TEA funded an additional 6 pilot TAP schools. Two elementary schools (Susie Fuentes Elementary and Hemphill Elementary) and one junior high (Wallace Middle School) in Hays Consolidated Independent School District, one elementary school in Manor Independent School District (Blake Manor Elementary), one elementary school in Judson Independent School District (Candlewood Elementary) and one high school in Lytle Independent School District (Lytle High School) began implementation of the program in August 2006.
Districts and campuses participating in TAP have demonstrated high need for a program focusing on improving educator quality and student achievement. The campuses share similar challenges including low student achievement, low socioeconomic status (on average, more than 68% of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch), high minority populations (on average, over 75% minority students with high concentrations of limited English proficiency students), and high teacher turnover; some as much as 40% turnover annually.
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The overall success of the Texas Teacher Advancement Program (TXTAP), in partnership with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), and the University of Texas System (UT System) is demonstrated through increases in student achievement, increases in teacher retention rates, and improvements in overall teacher effectiveness.
TAP schools in Texas had significant increases in student achievement on the 2006-2007 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test.
- Audelia Creek Elementary demonstrated significant gains in student reading proficiency after the first year of TAP implementation. The percentage of all students meeting assessment reading standards increased by 15% between the 2005 and 2006 school years and by 9% between the 2006 and 2007 school years.
- Assessment data from Forest Meadow Junior High School highlights significant gains in math proficiency from 2006-2007. The percentage of all students meeting assessment math standards increased by 18%.
- Thurgood Marshall Elementary made double digit gains in reading proficiency. The percentage of all students meeting assessment reading standards increased by 17% between the 2006 and 2007 school years.
- Lytle High School demonstrated an 8% gain in students meeting proficiency of assessment math standards between 2006 and 2007.
- Susie Fuentes Elementary had a 5% increase of all students meeting passing standards on the math assessment and a 3% increase of all students meeting assessment reading standards between 2006 and 2007 school years.
- In the 2006-2007 school year, all of TXTAP schools with available data (since Blake Manor is a new elementary school we could not compare with previous scores) increased the average percentage of students at proficiency or higher in either reading, mathematics, or in both categories on the TAKS, all of which are high poverty schools.
- 6 out of 9 TXTAP schools with available data made AYP in the 2006-07 school year.
TAP principals report that the program has a positive impact on teacher recruitment including attracting more and better qualified applicants. TAP is also credited with decreases in teacher turnover and with more effective teachers remaining or being drawn to TAP schools. In Richardson ISD pilot schools, teacher retention has improved:
- Audelia Creek Elementary went from 39% to 92% after the second year of implementation,
- Thurgood Marshall Elementary from 36% to 87%, and
- Forest Meadow JH from 56% retention before TAP to 80% after.
TAP pilot sites in Texas mirror the program results on the national scale. National surveys of teacher attitudes show that 70% of teachers in TAP report higher levels of collegiality and job satisfaction. TAP rewards and career opportunities provide the incentives needed to draw the most effective teachers from other schools to TAP schools, even those that are traditionally hard to staff. At many of the TAP sites in Texas, highly qualified and effective teachers from high SES schools have transferred to lower SES schools that are participating in the TAP program.
After the first year of implementation, Richardson ISD saw a shift in the quality of teachers applying to its hard to staff TAP schools and teachers from affluent campuses transferred to the TAP schools because they wanted to be a part of the TAP program.
The Texas results from the 2006-07 school year Value Added Calculations computed by the SAS Institute showed that 7 of the 9 campuses in Texas received the highest possible value added score of 5, meaning students performed significantly higher than their peers across the state and made more than one year’s growth in terms of individual achievement.
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Expansion of TAP in Texas
In May 2006, the 79th Legislature passed House Bill One, which included
the District Awards for Teacher Excellence, commonly referred to as D.A.T.E. The 80th Legislature appropriated $147.5 million to the
D.A.T.E. program for FY 2008-2009. D.A.T.E. will provide funding to support the establishment of district-wide goals to implement a
financial award system designed to award teachers for positively impacting student achievement and target the district's most in-need
campuses to improve teacher quality. At least 60% of the grant funds will be used to reward teachers that positively impact student academic improvement and growth. The remaining percent of funds may be used on other allowable activities including implementing elements of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP).
The expansion of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) is also expected as a result of the University of Texas System Teacher Incentive Fund (UT-TIF) grant which was awarded by the U.S. Department of Education. The University of Texas (UT) System was awarded $25 million through the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) to expand the TAP program to twenty seven additional campuses in seven partner school districts. The seven public school districts, the University of Texas (UT) System, and the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) have formed a partnership to implement the UT-TIF program. The schools serve primarily low socioeconomic areas.
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Dr. Tammy Kreuz
702 Colorado Street, CLB 5.200
Austin, TX 78701
512-322-3757
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