Building Instructional Excellence and Advancing Student Achievement in Indiana
Developing Effective Teachers
To continue to grow, teachers need a supportive environment that allows them to develop their instructional skills. School and district leaders can build a supportive environment through enhancing their human capital management system (HCMS) to include (a) coaching and mentoring, (b) high-quality professional learning with frequent opportunities for feedback, (c) opportunities for career advancement and leadership roles, and (d) competitive compensation.
Supporting Teachers to Improve Student Performance
The National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) partnered with Indiana districts through a federal Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Incentive Program grant to enhance the districts’ HCMSs by implementing the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP System).
The Indiana TSL district partners served urban, rural, and small city communities. The partnership impacted more than 120 administrators, 1,800 teachers, and 26,000 students in grades PK - 12, with most of the students coming from economically disadvantaged households. Both teachers and students benefited from the Indiana TSL partnership due to the implementation of the supportive framework of the TAP System in partner schools.
Teachers, across performance levels, advanced their instructional skills and student achievement benefited from this improved instruction. Key findings include:
● 99% of effective teachers maintained their performance above the effectiveness rating.
● 91% of developing teachers improved their performance to above the effective rating.
● The TSL partner schools outperformed matched comparison schools on English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics state assessments.
Continuing to Build Success
By enhancing their HCMS with the elements of the TAP System, Indiana TSL district partners created supportive environments that improved instructional skills for teachers. The instructional improvements helped students in partnership schools to perform better in ELA and mathematics than students in the comparison schools. Through their implementation of the TAP System, the Indiana TSL partner districts have built educator capacity, ensuring sustained impacts for both teachers and students.
For more information on the TSL grant’s impact in Indiana and how NIET helped partners succeed, read the full research brief and summary below or visit the latest NIET blog on its key findings.