Investment summary
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $100 million to support Hillsborough County Public Schools in the implementation of groundbreaking approaches to ensure that all students have access to effective teachers in every classroom. The district will also receive additional funding from the foundation to support research over the next two academic years to develop fairer and more accurate measures of effective teaching.
Background
Hillsborough County Public Schools, headquartered in Tampa, Fla., is the nation’s 8th largest school district and includes urban, suburban, and rural/agricultural areas. The district has achieved an ‘A’ rating from the state in three of the last four years.
The district already is working on many teacher quality and student achievement issues including:
- Teacher quality – bonuses and pay-for-performance can increase teachers’ pay by 50 percent, data systems measure every teacher’s ‘value added’, and principals can require that teachers serve four years of successful employment before achieving tenure.
- Preparing all students for college – the College Board’s EXCELerator program is used district-wide and participation in AP classes has increased dramatically.
- Focus on high-need students – teachers receive bonuses for teaching in high-need schools, principals in high-needs schools have first priority in choosing teachers, and schools receive additional instructional initiatives and staff development resources.
Key Components of Teacher Effectiveness Reform Plan
Through Project STARS (Supporting Teachers to Accelerate Results for Students), HCPS is committed to dramatically boosting student achievement and college-ready graduation rates by taking the following actions:
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Measuring, supporting, and rewarding effective teaching.
- Redesign the teacher evaluation system (so at least 40 percent is based on student achievement, compared with seven percent today), incorporating teams of highly trained teacher-evaluators, and linking evaluation to mentoring and professional development.
- Establish a performance-based career ladder that raises the bar for tenure—including an optional fourth year before awarding tenure.
- Refine pay-for-performance by linking it to better measurements of student learning, teacher progress on the career ladder, and observational evaluations.
- Institute an apprentice-teacher program, providing new teachers with trained mentors, one-on-one support, and weekly observation for two years.
- Provide teachers with model lesson plans and instructional guides, and better classroom tests and assignments, as well as professional development and peer support for these new tools.
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Increasing accountability by strengthening school leadership and increasing transparency.
- Align principal evaluation and compensation with student performance over three years and teacher effectiveness (based on the percent of students who make gains).
- Supply principals and teachers with better data and training to guide management, instruction, and professional development.
- Empower principals in the recruitment and dismissal of teachers based on performance.
- Create school and district performance scorecards and data dashboards to allow the public to monitor progress.
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Providing more and targeted support to students.
- Develop programs and better leadership for high-needs students (including those in otherwise high-performing schools).
- Base principal evaluations and teacher incentives, in part, on the academic gains of low-performing students.
- Create teacher-residency and principal-residency programs in high-need schools.
For more information please contact:
Hillsborough County Public Schools
Stephen Hegarty
+1.813.272.4046