Sustaining the Texas Teacher Workforce: The Impact of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment

• In Event: Teacher Value Added and Long-Run Student Outcomes

Abstract

The Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) represents a bold policy initiative in Texas designed to reshape how the state recruits, retains, and rewards educators. TIA recognizes and incentivizes high-performing teachers through compensation tied directly to student achievement and growth metrics. By linking pay to performance, TIA encourages effective instruction and seeks to ensure that more students are taught by high-quality educators.

While performance-based compensation is not new, TIA stands out for its unprecedented scale and design. It offers the largest financial incentives of any teacher pay-for-performance initiative in the country and allows school districts to define local criteria for designating effective educators as either Recognized, Exemplary, or Master. Teachers are eligible for up to $32,000 in additional compensation each year if designated. Teachers in "high-need" schools or rural schools receive higher incentives than those that aren't. This combination of generous funding and district-level flexibility positions TIA as a unique policy experiment with potential implications for teacher quality, retention, and student success. To date, 452 districts in Texas have received $292 million total, of which 90% is allocated directly to teacher salaries.

The purpose of this study is twofold. We aim to evaluate the impact of TIA on teacher retention and to better understand what this looks like in the varying contexts around Texas. Specifically, we ask: Does eligibility for TIA reduce the likelihood of teacher turnover in participating districts? Does this vary by rurality, school level, subject, or "high need" status? 

To explore these questions, we analyzed over 1.1 million teacher-by-year observations from 2015-2024 using statewide administrated data from the UH-ERC. These data were merged with TIA eligibility information provided by the Texas Education Agency. Using propensity score matching to identify comparable non-TIA districts, we applied a dynamic difference-in-differences model to estimate the impact of TIA on teacher turnover over time. 

Preliminary results show that TIA eligibility significantly reduces teacher turnover in TIA eligible districts. Eligible teachers were 4 percentage points less likely to leave their districts each year. The effect was stronger in rural districts (6 percentage point annual reduction). Among teachers whose students demonstrated exceptional academic growth, turnover declined by 2.5 percentage points. These effects grew larger the longer TIA was in place. TIA offers early evidence that strategic compensation policies can reduce teachers attrition and support instructional quality.

While these findings are encouraging, we continue to analyze nuances in the data. We have just received teacher-level designations and plan to fully employ the same measures to include subgroup analysis and replicate findings for content areas at the teacher level. This data is not available to any other researchers. Our study is the only possible study which offers this type of analysis from a teacher level perspective.

Author

• Kristin Elizabeth Mansell, Texas Tech University
  Presenting Author