If a teacher with a designation moves, does the amount of her compensation change?

The February PEIMS snapshot date will be used to determine the teacher's location. The teacher's allotment will be based on the campus where they teach on that February date.

How does TEA determine the amount of the allotment?

House Bill 3 in the Texas Legislature was the mechanism to develop the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). The goal of the TIA is to attract and retain teachers in the highest need schools through a compensation incentive model. The allotment is calculated by TEA based on socioeconomic factors and on the rural/non-rural status of the campus. The socioeconomic factors are taken from the 2020 census data. The TIA Funding Allocation Interactive Map will show the allotment amounts by designation for each campus in Texas. The allotment is recalculated by TEA annually.

Why is the District using a phased-in approach to the distribution of allotment funds?

TEA requires the District to have a clear, written plan to abide by the spending requirements in TEC 48.112, including spending at least 90% of the TIA funds awarded on teacher compensation on the campus where the designated teacher works. The District may hold 10% of the allotment for implementing and managing TIA (e.g., developing/paying for assessments). 

Because the District is using a phased-in approach to expand eligibility, the decision was made to phase-in the amounts going to the designated teacher. By statute, 90% of the TIA funds must go to teacher compensation on the campus where the designated teacher works. Therefore, in Year 1 of distribution, 70% will go to the designee, and 20% will be divided and distributed evenly to the other 087 PEIMS-coded teachers on that campus. Each year, the designee will earn more of that allotment as additional content areas are added to the eligibility group. 

A designated teacher will be able to earn a higher designation during the five years of designation. If a teacher earns a higher designation, the five years start over. The distribution of funds phase will not start over. Meaning, if the teacher earned a higher designation in the third year of implementation, the compensation will be 80% of the allotment to the teacher that year, 85% the next, and 90% for the remainder of the designation allotment period.  For more information about the TIA, please see the guidebook.

Who is eligible?

Please see the TIA Guidebook for the eligible courses. 

Will Nationally Certified Teachers be considered as a Recognized Teacher even if her content area is not in the eligibility band?

Yes. Every 087 PEIMS-coded teacher in the District who has earned a National Board Certification will be automatically designated as a Recognized Teacher, regardless of teaching assignment, and will be eligible for the Teacher Incentive Allotment.

What is it that teachers should be doing now to prepare for consideration in the TIA?

The TIA recognizes teachers for the great work they are already doing. The best thing a teacher can do to earn a designation is to ensure he/she is participating and implementing professional learning based on T-TESS goals, designing effective lesson plans, following instructional best practices in the classroom, and meeting students where they are (differentiating, monitoring & adjusting) in order to help students grow!

What will I have to submit to earn a designation?

Teachers will not be required to submit anything. Teachers should continue to do the excellent work that they do daily.

Teacher observation and student growth are the two required indicators by statute, and the District may add local options to the TIA designation system.

The District will compile the data from the walkthroughs, formal observations, and end-of-year conferences posted in Eduphoria!, as well as the student growth measures and any other components used.

This information will be collected and sent to Texas Tech and TEA for data verification. TEA will determine whether the teachers have met the requirements for designation.

What happens if a teacher changes grade levels next year?

TIA is always a year behind. The data from this year will be used to determine designations for next year. If teachers do not earn a designation, their data from this year can be submitted for consideration in the next year.

Once earned, can a teacher lose the designation?

The only ways teachers can lose their designations and allotments are if the teachers 1) lose their certification(s) or 2) move out of a teaching position. The designated teacher holds a designation for 5 years. During those 5 years, the teacher may be considered for a higher designation, which will cause the 5-year period to start over. The allotment is paid to the teacher annually for 5 years.

If a teacher with a designation moves, does the amount of her compensation change?

The February PEIMS snapshot date will be used to determine the teacher's location. The teacher's allotment will be based on the campus where they teach on that February date.

Are instructional coaches, data analysts, or librarians eligible for the Teacher Incentive Allotment?

By statute, the TIA is only available to 087 PEIMS-coded teachers. Instructional coaches, data analysts, and other non-teachers are not eligible and will be evaluated using the District-approved evaluation tool.

The District’s Teacher appraisal and student growth outcomes are reviewed alongside the State’s Performance Standards to determine the district’s final TIA decisions for Observation and Growth, as well as the inclusion of minimum performance requirements. Fort Worth ISD strives to demonstrate consistent excellence in both teacher observation and student growth. Districts are given the latitude during each annual data capture to run a variety of performance standard models that best support and ensure that the district will perform well in data validation (which is required before teacher designations can be awarded) and uphold an equitable, valid and reliable designation system.

I received a scorecard that stated, "no change in designation." What does this mean?

TEA does not award additional years for teachers who would earn the same level of designation. Therefore, teachers were notified that the designation had no change. As long as the designated teacher remains in the classroom, they will be paid the allotment according to the distribution of funds as outlined in the TIA Guidebook.

How will students count for teachers in TIA for student growth?

Students will be counted for a teacher in the following way:

• • Must be in a teacher’s classroom at the October snapshot date (it does not matter with whom students took the BOY  assessment).
  • Must be on the teacher’s roster for the EOY administration.
  • Any student rostered to that teacher from BOY to EOY will count toward that teacher's growth percentage for TIA.

What if students have "no assessment" listed as part of their IEP?

We will follow any student's IEP as required by law. This will not count against the teacher when calculating MAP growth scores.

What percentage of the students need to meet or exceed the expected growth for the teacher to qualify?

The TEA has set minimum performance standards for student growth. They are 55% for Recognized, 60% for Exemplary, and 70% for Master. Please see the TEA document listed here. TEA and Fort Worth ISD reserve the right to adjust these performance standards.

Students in the dual language program take the Reading in English and Spanish. Are all three tests used (Math and reading in both languages), or does just native language count, or whichever language made most growth? 

The students will be counted three times in this case. So, say the teacher has 20 students in dual language—math & reading—(all 20 have BOY & EOY and are there at October snapshot), the students would count 3 times. So, the teacher would have 60 data points. We do not average the tests separately. We look at them holistically to calculate an overall met growth percentage.

How is CLI (CIRCLE) measured for Pre-Kindergarten?

For CLI (CIRCLE), the reading score used for the TIA growth measure is a summation of the CIRCLE measures: Rapid Letter Naming, Rapid Vocabulary, and Phonological Awareness. Only students who had scores for all three measures were counted. Students with scores in both English and Spanish were applied.

The math score used for the TIA growth measure is the CIRCLE math composite score from the Math measure. This measure consists of Rote Counting, Shape Naming, Number Discrimination, Number Naming, Shape Discrimination, Counting Sets, and Operations. Only students who had a composite score for Math were counted. Students with scores in both English and Spanish were applied.

Does MOY on MAP impact the measurement of student growth?

For TIA purposes, only BOY and EOY scores are considered.  For the MAP assessment specifically, at the beginning of the year there is a projection from BOY to MOY and a separate projection from BOY to EOY. We use the BOY to EOY projection.  The BOY to EOY projection for a student does not change based on the student’s MOY performance. 

How was the student growth calculated for the English 1 STAAR EOC?

For Cohort E, student growth in English 1 & 2 and Reading 1 & 2 is calculated using TEA released STAAR Transition Tables that compare prior year and current year performance.  The performance indicator for the prior year is compared to the performance indicator for the current year and a point value (0, ½, or 1) for student growth is determined based on the TEA Transition Table.  All FWISD students who yielded the ½ point annual growth (per TEA Transition Table) were calculated as 1 whole point for a teacher’s growth rate metric for 2022-2023 data capture.

For students who came to FWISD from charter schools or private schools, they didn’t have an eighth grade STAAR test to mark the BOY growth for English I or English II.  Were they included in the pool of students used to calculate the student growth component for high school English?

Charter schools are required by TEA to administer STAAR assessments. For students not enrolled in FWISD last school year, the district follows a process to request student historical data from the state. If a student took the STAAR assessment at a charter school the previous year, then that student’s STAAR score is obtained and used to calculate the student growth component for English.

However, private schools do not administer the STAAR. Students who attend a private school have no score available to calculate growth from the Transition Tables, and so the student will not be included in the teacher’s growth component.

What is the connection between FOCUS scheduling and student growth measures? 

FOCUS scheduling drives the connection between students and teachers for calculation of the growth measure. Only scores for the students assigned to the teacher in FOCUS are used to calculate growth measures.

I teach 5th grade. My growth measure does not match what is on the NWEA Achievement Data and Growth Summary score.  Why is that?

5th grade teachers who teach reading, math, and science have three assessment scores utilized in their growth measure calculations: NWEA MAP Growth Math, NWEA MAP Growth Reading and 5th grade STAAR Science. If a 5^th grade teacher is scheduled in FOCUS to only teach one specific subject area, only the scores for that subject area will be included for the students that they teach.  

Who qualifies for a T-TESS observation waiver?

There are specific criteria for qualifying for a T-TESS waiver. See the T-TESS manual for more information.

What components of T-TESS does a teacher in the eligibility band need?

Teachers in the eligibility band must have a full T-TESS cycle. This means, the teacher must have a professional goal and a student growth goal. The appraiser is responsible for completing the required number of walkthroughs (as stated in the proration guide), a full observation cycle (pre-conference, formal observation, and post-conference), and an end-of-year conference. The professional development plan should be completed during or after the end-of-year conference by the teacher and acknowledged by the appraiser.

TEA and Texas Tech will analyze the data from Domains 2 and 3 of the EOY conference as well as from the student growth data. If anomalies are found, they may request additional data and explanations.