TEACHER INCENTIVE ALLOTMENT (TIA)

Texas House Bill (HB) 3 was passed by the 86th Legislature and signed into law by Governor Abbott in 2019. It established the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program to provide a realistic pathway to pay outstanding teachers at traditionally hard-to-staff schools significantly more money annually. In turn, TIA will help Pasadena ISD recruit, retain, and reward highly effective teachers throughout the district.

Ultimately, the goals of TIA are to put children at the forefront by supporting districts with recruiting, retaining, and rewarding highly effective teachers.

• Recruit: Secure teachers for priority schools or grade bands
• Retain: Keep effective educators in the classroom 
• Reward: Ensure top teachers who become designated are rewarded with additional compensation

There are several key points to TIA: 

• In order to participate in TIA, local education agencies (LEAs), like Pasadena ISD, are required by the state to develop a local designation system in order to designate high-performing teachers as Recognized, Exemplary, or Master, based on state-wide performance standards for each designation level.
• Eligible National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT) will be automatically designated as Recognized.
• Based on state requirements, local designation systems must have a teacher observation and student growth measure component. Other components, such as student perception surveys, school-wide growth scores, and achievement scores, are optional.
• Only teachers that are 1) coded as 087 in PEIMS, 2) meet minimum instructional time requirements, 3) have observations with an unmodified T-TESS rubric, and 4) have student growth data directly linked to their instruction are eligible to participate in the local designation system.
• LEAs will be eligible to receive $3,000-$32,000 each year for every designated teacher that is employed in the district.*  
• 90% of TIA funding will go to teachers on the campus where the designated teacher works and the remaining 10% will be used to support LEA’s with implementing the local designation system.

The following are some key terms that are used throughout this webpage:

• TEA: The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is the state agency that oversees primary and secondary public education. It is headed by the commissioner of education and works to improve outcomes for all public school students in the state by providing leadership, guidance, and support to school systems.
• Local designation system: A system used to assess teacher effectiveness and identify designated teachers based on teacher classroom observation and student performance scores.
• Student performance/growth: Student academic progress achieved in response to the instructional practices of teachers, as measured at the individual teacher level by one or more measures of student growth aligned to the standards of the course.

TIA RESOURCES Teacher Incentive Allotment TIA Local Designation System

Through the state-funded TIA local designation system, teacher effectiveness will be measured by evaluating classroom instruction using T-TESS and student growth results. For phase one of TIA at Pasadena ISD (the initial teaching assignments eligible for designation), value-added measures for NWEA Map student assessments will be leveraged to assess student growth.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)