Investing in Excellence: Elevating Teacher Effectiveness for Student Success in Beech Grove City Schools
In the fall of 2021, Beech Grove City Schools (BGCS) received a federal Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Incentive Program grant to strengthen their human capital management system and create opportunities for professional growth. Through this grant, BGCS partners with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to enhance their implementation of the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP System). Through the TAP System, BGCS offers educators career pathways, provides professional learning to improve classroom instruction, builds supportive school cultures, and recognizes effective educators through performance-based compensation. Through the first two grant years, BGCS has made progress in enhancing educator effectiveness, retaining effective educators, and improving student performance.
Throughout the two grant years, teachers have advanced their effectiveness while continuing to teach in BGCS, and student performance has benefited from the improved teacher effectiveness. The findings include:
- 94% of teachers were rated effective or higher in the second grant year.
- 99% of effective teachers from the second grant year were retained into the third grant year.
- Student growth on state assessments nearly double that of comparison groups from before the grant to the second year.
These findings underscore the effectiveness of BGCS in implementing a system and structure to sustain high levels of teaching and learning to accelerate student achievement.