Over the past several years, we have investigated an even more comprehensive effort in Texas that, to date, has received far less attention. Starting in 2013, the Dallas Independent School District completely replaced its traditional pay scales for principals and teachers with an evaluation and compensation system based on multiple measures of effectiveness, including student achievement and student survey responses. The district also established new, robust definitions of educator excellence, performance-based reviews for school principals, and cash incentives to encourage highly rated teachers to move to low-performing schools.
In the four years after Dallas adopted new performance-based teacher evaluation and compensation systems, student performance on standardized tests improved by 16 percent of a standard deviation in math and 6 percent in reading, while scores for a comparison group of similar Texas schools remained flat. Teacher turnover in the wake of these reforms was concentrated among lower-rated teachers. And a program that offered sizable financial incentives to reassign top-rated teachers to struggling elementary campuses immediately improved teacher quality and student achievement and had dramatic, lasting, positive effects on student learning through middle school.