Teaching Profession

$200 Million for Performance Pay in Stimulus

By Stephen Sawchuk — February 12, 2009 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

This just in from my intrepid colleagues at Politics K-12: The conference agreement on the stimulus will include $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, a federal performance pay initiative. Looks like the Obama administration, which supported the extra funding for TIF, managed to carry the day on this one.

In the grand scheme of the multibillion-dollar stimulus, $200 million is chump change. But that’s not the case in the world of performance-based teacher pay, where the figure amounts to more than twice what TIF got in the last appropriations cycle.

One of the challenges of performance-based pay is how to secure sustainable funding, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this supports continuation grants to the 34 existing TIF grantees. But perhaps the U.S. Education Department will also seed some programs that explore new and innovative ways to incorporate teachers of non-tested grades and subjects, teachers of students with disabilities, and teachers of English-language learners in differentiated-compensation programs.

Related Tags:

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teacher Beat blog.