Using ARRA Funds to Improve Teacher Effectiveness and Equitable Distribution: An Interactice Mapping Tool

Purpose

This new online resource, Using ARRA Funds to Improve Teacher Effectiveness: An Interactive Mapping Tool, is designed to assist regional comprehensive centers (RCCs) as they participate in strategic planning sessions with state education agencies (SEAs) to discuss a coordinated system of support focused on teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution. This interactive tool, modeled after a subway map, can help states make informed decisions about the use of funds and provides multiple entry points to begin conversations on the necessary steps along the educator's career continuum. In addition, it can be used to guide SEA conversations with local education agencies (LEAs) regarding the use of funds to support one of the four key goals in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009: to improve teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution. The infusion of these new funds behooves the states to align their own strategic plans and the status of ongoing initiatives with new funding opportunities to determine how they could best bid for and utilize these additional monies. Each state needs to maintain fidelity to its long-term comprehensive and systemic strategies for teacher quality while considering new and innovative approaches to current efforts. This mapping tool can help conceptualize short-term strategies as a part of a larger strategic vision. As such, this tool can be used as a companion piece to the March 2009 special edition of the TQ Research & Policy Update, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Opportunities and Strategies to Advance Teacher Effectiveness .

Because ARRA funding streams flow directly to LEAs, it is important that states identify and consider policy levers that could direct or guide the appropriate use of funds and hold LEAs accountable in meeting high-priority goals. One example might be a state that plans to pilot a new performance pay policy for districts. The pilot would initially use ARRA funds to be competitively awarded through the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program later this year for experimentation with an alternative compensation model. This TIF-funded, two-year pilot would be assessed during that time. If successful, the SEA could then make a case to the state legislature to sustain the program through a state allocation along the lines of Q Comp in Minnesota. Another leverage point the SEA might consider is the requirement under ESEA Title II, Section 2141, that LEAs in need of improvement use Title II professional development funds to address their improvement goals. Recommendations to supplement these plans with ARRA funds could offer guidance to LEAs to leverage their resources to achieve high-priority objectives.

Interactive Mapping Tool Features

The interactive mapping tool consists of two components. The first component is a color-coded map demonstrating multiple pathways (i.e., subway lines) along the educator career continuum that intersect in multiple places, or "nexus points." The nexus points correlate with the second component: the supporting information that guides the user along the various pathways (i.e., Recruitment, Hiring, Preparation, Induction, Performance Management, Professional Development, Leadership Development, and Compensation and Incentives) leading to the dual goals of teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution. The features of the tool (note icons in legend) include the following:

• Nexus Points: Where and how funding sources can be used along a particular pathway (Pop-ups at each nexus point provide essential facts.)
• Supporting Information for Each Nexus Point: Each nexus point links to the following additional resources that should inform decisions and planning:
  • Readiness to Pursue Steps: Suggestions about processes that should be in place before pursuing this nexus point and advancing along this pathway
  • Promising Practices: Specific policies and practices that SEAs can enact as deemed necessary
• Release of Funds: The shaded areas on the map that indicate the phases in which funds will become available

The career path an educator follows is often portrayed as a continuum, moving sequentially from preparation through hiring, professional development, and advancement. However, in developing and supporting state policy, these multiple career components could be addressed simultaneously to avoid incremental change and to work toward the establishment of a coherent system of educator talent management and support. Note that the pathways to the ultimate destination intersect at various "nexus points," marking where pathways are linked or connected. The interactive map can be used by SEAs or LEAs to explore and guide decision making in the coordinated use of funds along multiple pathways to achieve goals.

Multiple SEA Entry Points

In working with an SEA, the state may not have articulated a focused strategic plan that takes into account all phases of the teacher career continuum, multiple program efforts, and various funding streams. In this case, the mapping tool could serve to help the SEA develop one. If the SEA has a strategic plan in place, this tool could serve to strengthen coordination, make critical connections, examine interrelationships, and/or further develop a particular pathway to the destination. In considering the use of ARRA funds in its strategic plan, the SEA may want to begin by consulting the "State Action Guide for Using ARRA Funding to Improve Teacher Quality," which was included as the Appendix of the March 2009 special edition of the TQ Research & Policy Update, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Opportunities and Strategies to Advance Teacher Effectiveness .

How an RCC Might Use This Tool With a State: An Example

Background

This state is committed to developing a statewide system of differentiated compensation for teachers. A task force has been appointed by the state board of education to develop a framework and guidelines that will inform legislation and policy. The legislature has appropriated funds for a pilot of the components of the proposed framework. The SEA has requested the assistance of the RCC in the work of the task force. This assistance has included a partnership with the TQ Center to provide planning for the task force scope of work, research and resources, information about other states' models, suggested readings, and the development of an outreach plan to engage stakeholders.

The RCC's Use of the Tool With This SEA

The availability of additional funds (i.e., ARRA) presents a timely opportunity to move this effort forward. The comprehensive center working with this SEA could use the Interactive Mapping Tool to further develop the state's plan. The obvious entry point is the Compensation and Incentives pathway. The nexus point on this direct pathway informs the SEA, for example, that this effort could be supported using available funds through Title I, Part A; State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF); and TIF programs that will be available in Phases 1 and 2. In addition, SFSF funds under Title I and IDEA, Part B, also can be used for this purpose. In addition, it provides information and/or links regarding these funding requirements. Under "Readiness to Pursue," steps are proposed that the SEA needs to consider if it is going to pursue these funding sources. "Promising Practices" provides strategies for implementation of a pay-for-performance program and a link to the Center for Educator Compensation Reform (CECR) that highlights compensation reforms across the country as well as a vast array of performance-based compensation programs that are currently under way. This pathway, and its supporting information and resources, would provide opportunities for rich dialog between the RCC provider and the SEA client to determine a viable direction for the SEA to pursue.

Because the educator career continuum is a system, changing one component of the system will impact others. The Compensation and Incentives pathway intersects primarily with Performance Management and Professional Development. The RCC provider can help the state determine how initiating differentiated compensation will impact both of these pathways. How will differentiated compensation impact performance management? What strategies will need to be in place to ensure reliable teacher evaluations in the new system? How will professional development efforts need to change to support teachers in improving instruction so that all have opportunities for success and advancement? How will the state's definition of "effective teaching" drive professional development? This tool can also help anticipate the other components of the system that will inevitably be affected in the implementation of the differentiated compensation initiative (e.g., leadership; induction; and, to some extent, hiring).

This tool, with its readily accessible resources and the technical assistance provided by the RCCs in using it, can guide the SEA to view the educator career continuum as a system—a system that can meet the dual goal of teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers with careful and strategic consideration of options and the intentional use of new resources.