Improving Teacher Quality in D.C.'s Low-­Income and Low-Performing Public Schools

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Since 2009, DC Public Schools (DCPS) have engaged in a series of human capital reforms focused on improving student outcomes by improving teacher quality, with particular attention given to improving outcomes in the district’s low-income and low-performing schools. Chief among these reforms were the introduction of IMPACT and IMPACTplus, the employee evaluation and compensation systems implemented throughout the district in the fall of 2009. Under IMPACT, all teachers are evaluated based on multiple measures of teaching effectiveness and assigned an IMPACT rating. As shown in Table 1, DCPS’ low-performing teachers face consequential sanctions, whereas the district’s highest-performing teachers are eligible for meaningful financial incentives. Moreover, high-performing teachers in high-poverty schools are eligible for larger financial incentives than high-performing teachers in low-poverty schools.

IMPACT and IMPACTplus were designed to improve teacher quality by attracting, retaining, and developing high-performing teachers while simultaneously decreasing the retention of low-performing teachers. Moreover, the differential incentives offered to Highly Effective teachers in low versus high-poverty schools were intended to encourage high-performing teachers to teach in low-income schools. Prior research focusing on the effects of IMPACT and IMPACTplus during the first three years of their implementation (i.e., the 2009-10 to 2011-12 school years) indicates that IMPACT and IMPACTplus have indeed influenced teacher retention and teacher performance.

However, DCPS introduced several new reforms as well as revisions to IMPACT and IMPACTplus that took effect during the 2012-13 academic year (hereafter AY1213). Specifically, the district identified its 40 lowest-performing schools and made a public commitment to improve student proficiency levels in these “Targeted 40” schools by 40 percentage points by 2017. In addition to providing Targeted 40 schools with supplementary resources, DCPS also made substantial revisions to IMPACTplus with the explicit intention of encouraging high-performing teachers to serve in the district’s low-income and low-performing schools. As shown in Table 2, the revisions to IMPACTplus all but eliminated financial incentives for high-performing teachers in low-poverty schools and reserved the largest financial incentives for high-performing teachers in high-poverty and Targeted 40 schools.

My study uses descriptive and quasi-experimental methods to examine whether the reforms and revisions DCPS introduced during AY1213 encouraged high-performing teachers to teach, and stay, in the district’s low-income and low-performing schools. Descriptive trends indicate that Highly Effective teachers were more likely to move from low-poverty schools to high-poverty schools after AY1213. Highly Effective teachers were also more likely to continue teaching in high-poverty schools after AY1213. Some of these descriptive results are confirmed by quasi-experimental comparisons, but these empirical estimates are not robust to the inclusion of covariates known to be associated with teacher employment decision. As such, although the preliminary results of my analysis suggest that the reforms DCPS implemented in AY1213 may have encouraged the district’s highest-performing teachers to teach in high-poverty schools, these results must still be interpreted with some caution. Nonetheless, given that teacher quality is the most important school factor influencing student outcomes, , , efforts to improve teacher quality in low-income and low-performing schools continue to be of central importance to education policy makers. My work contributes to a growing body of literature that examines the potential of improving teacher quality in hard-to-staff schools through the offer of targeted financial incentives.

Author

• Veronica Katz, University of Virginia