NASHVILLE, Tenn.-Vanderbilt University Peabody College researchers, in partnership with Mathematica Policy Research, have won a five-year, $7.9 million contract from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to conduct a national impact evaluation of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program.

“As more money is invested in pay for performance programs across the nation, there is urgent need to better understand the effectiveness of these programs and what elements may constitute an optimal incentive system,” Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives and one of the principal investigators on the study, said. “The Mathematica-Vanderbilt partnership will rigorously assess a range of performance pay models that will be implemented under the TIF program so we can expand our understanding of this popular, and potentially important, education reform.”

TIF supports performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools. Created by Congress in 2006, the program was expanded and supported with an additional $200 million in funding by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Rigorous evaluation of the program is required under ARRA.

TIF’s goals include improving teacher achievement by increasing teacher and principal effectiveness; reforming teacher and principal compensation systems to support rewards based on improved student achievement; increasing the number of effective teachers teaching poor, minority and disadvantaged students in hard-to-staff subjects; and creating sustainable performance-based compensation systems.

The Mathematica-Vanderbilt study will evaluate performance-based compensation systems in districts receiving TIF grants in 2010 to determine the impact on student achievement and other important outcomes. The study will also examine the range of performance-based compensation strategies implemented to answer pressing policy questions about how the programs are designed, communicated and implemented.

The next round of TIF grants will be awarded in July 2010, and the research team will begin working with grantees immediately. Springer is a research assistant professor of public policy and education.

For more information about the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, visit http://www.performanceincentives.org. For more Vanderbilt news, visit VUCast, http://news.vanderbilt.edu/.