DALLAS – The U.S. Department of Education today (May 31) awarded the University of Texas System a $1.4 million grant for a program that aims to boost recruitment and retention of teachers and principals at some of the state’s most economically disadvantaged public schools.
The grant – to the UT System’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program – is expected to be funded for five years for a total of approximately $25.5 million and would be used to reward high performing teachers and principals in 27 schools, all of which serve large populations of high-poverty and minority students.
Specifically, the funds would be used to implement the Milken Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). TAP's goal is to attract talented people to the teaching profession—and keep them there—by making it more enticing and rewarding to be an educator. TAP provides the opportunity for good teachers to earn more competitive salaries and advance professionally without leaving the classroom. In addition to implementing TAP, the UT System TIF program will provide campuses with a financial incentive pool to recruit highly qualified teachers in hard-to-staff subject areas such as math and science and administrators in hard-to-staff campuses.
"This generous grant from the U.S. Department of Education will be a tremendous boost for our efforts to foster teaching excellence in public school classrooms across this state,” UT System Chancellor Mark G. Yudof said. “This program aims to recruit, develop and retain some of the state’s most gifted teachers in important disciplines such as math and science, and assures that their students will be better prepared with the requisite knowledge and skills for future achievement."
The grant was announced at a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Congressman Pete Sessions at the Richardson Independent School District’s Audelia Creek Elementary, one of 27 schools included in the UT System TIF program. The target schools collectively serve approximately 16,800 students in seven districts scattered across Texas. On average, more than two-thirds of students at the schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and professional turnover is as high as 40 percent annually at some of the campuses.
“If we expect results for every child, as we do with No Child Left Behind, then we must support teachers who get the job done in America’s toughest classrooms,” Secretary Spellings said. “These grants will help encourage our most effective teachers to work in challenging schools, where they can make a real difference in the lives of young people.”
The grant will be administered by the UT System’s Institute for Public School Initiatives (IPSI). Created in 2004, the Institute’s goal is to improve student performance from preschool through high school through strategic partnerships with UT institutions, community colleges, school districts and state agencies. The UT System TIF program is one of several active IPSI initiatives applying research to improve educator quality, high school graduation rates, reading proficiency and college access and participation.
The UT System TIF program award is one of 18 grants the Education Department has funded in its latest cycle. TIF is President Bush’s initiative to develop and implement performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need, disadvantaged schools, where at least 30 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
The goals of the program are to improve student achievement by rewarding effective principals and teachers, and, at the same time, to increase the number of effective teachers serving minority and disadvantaged students.
The University of Texas System is one of the nation’s largest higher education systems, with nine academic campuses and six health institutions. The UT System has an annual operating budget of $10 billion (FY 2007) including $1.7 billion in research funded by federal, state, local and private sources. Student enrollment exceeded 190,000 in the 2006 academic year. The UT System confers more than one-third of the state's undergraduate degrees and educates nearly three-fourths of the state's health care professionals annually. With more than 80,000 employees, the UT System is one of the largest employers in the state.
