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Teacher Incentive » FAQ

FAQ

As a school district, we want to reward highly effective teachers who get results. We must ensure our students learn from excellent teachers doing amazing things and experiencing better-than-average growth. Allowing highly effective teachers to earn more without leaving the classroom is important.
TIA is a performance pay teacher evaluation system that may award additional compensation to teachers based on predetermined effectiveness criteria. This means that the most effective teachers in the district have an opportunity to earn additional compensation and that the District will carve out a growth trajectory for developing teachers to aim for the same goal.
At a minimum, the teacher must be coded 087 (Teacher) per Public Education Information. RCISD’s TIA Committee will develop a plan to determine which teaching assignments will participate initially and in future years.
Based on TIA requirements, the evaluation criteria must include teacher observation and student performance components. While we will create our process for assessing observations and student performance, the state has established guidelines for measuring exceptional effectiveness that we must adhere to.
We will use multiple criteria to measure teacher effectiveness, e.g., observations and student growth. For every TIA-eligible teacher, we will track progress against these measures over the school year. Detailed TIA Texas Designation System Requirements are available on tiatexas.org.
 
  • Teachers will receive regular development, feedback, and progress updates to keep them abreast of their TIA status.
  • During the school year TIA eligible teachers will receive multiple T-TESS observations and follow standardized student assessment protocols.  
  • When a full year of data, e.g., T-TESS observations and student growth scores, have been collected, that information will be used to calculate a composite score for each eligible teacher. Based on the composite score, each teacher will be assigned a designation.  
  • Teachers may receive performance-based incentives based on their designation. The designation details and funding allocation have yet to be determined. Teachers will be engaged in exploring implementation options for both.
We are undertaking a multi-year process to secure TIA funding for the district. TIA Texas established a rolling application process whereby districts can apply in one of many cohorts. Rice CISD is initially applying in Cohort G. The high-level timeline for our application and designations is noted below and could be subject to change:
 
Cohort G:
  • System Application Posted: Nov. 1, 2023
  • System Application due to TEA (no fee required for submission): April 2024
  • System Application Result Final Notification: May or August 2023
  • Data-Capture Year for Applicable Teaching Assignments: 2024-2025
  • Data Review due to Texas Tech University (data processing fee required for each teacher put forth for designation): Fall 2025
  • Final Approval Notification: Spring 2026
  • Final Designation and Allotment Notification: May-June 2026
  • Initial Payout with Reimbursements for Approved Systems: August 2026
Regarding TIA, this school year will be focused on gathering stakeholder input and feedback to inform the design of our TIA Designation System. While TIA Texas has set several strict requirements, we can customize the TIA program to match the culture, goals, and needs of RCISD. A few of our current plans for stakeholder engagement are described in the next question. The application we submit in April 2024 will reflect the preferences and priorities of RCISD teachers and leaders.
TIA Committee/Stakeholder Representative Group:
Best practices indicate that including teachers, campus leaders, and district leaders in planning and reviewing a local teacher designation system results in a stronger system with more buy-in. In addition, school board input and approval are recommended. The committee members will be responsible for seeking input from the groups they represent and sharing communication to/from the committee.
 
Surveys and Feedback Opportunities:
Multiple formal and informal surveys and feedback opportunities will be administered to the entire District to gauge preferences on TIA scoring, funding allocation, and understanding of TIA and investment in the program overall.
 
A TIA Committee will prepare and review the stakeholder feedback. It will take a deep dive and seek feedback on the TIA classroom observation model, student growth measures, designations, and scoring to make decisions based on the feedback.
 
Website Updates and Emails:
This TIA webpage will be updated regularly to share recent information on the status of the TIA Committee work in RCISD. At key milestones, website updates will be accompanied by campus-based emails from the campus TIA representatives. Everyone is encouraged to visit the website often and watch for TIA emails.