Highly Effective Teachers And Low-performing Schools

The bill creates the highly effective teacher incentives program (program) to enable school districts, boards of cooperative services that operate public schools, and charter schools (local education providers) to offer salary bonuses to attract highly effective teachers to teach in elementary, middle, or junior high schools that are implementing priority improvement or turnaround plans (low-performing schools).

The department of education (department) and the state board of education (state board) will implement the program by distributing grants in 2-year cycles. The amount of a grant is based on the number of highly effective teachers who meet the requirements for receiving salary bonuses and are employed by local education providers in low-performing schools. Each local education provider that applies and meets the requirements for a grant will receive a grant, subject to available appropriations. A local education provider may use the grant only to pay nonbase-building salary bonuses to eligible highly effective teachers. A local education provider that receives a grant and is already paying incentives to highly effective teachers who teach in low-performing schools must pay the bonuses funded by the grant money in addition to the other incentives.

A highly effective teacher must meet specified criteria to receive the salary bonus. The amount of the salary bonus depends on whether the teacher was working in a high-performing local education provider and changed employment to work in a low-performing school or is continuing to work in a low-performing school and whether the highly effective teacher works in a low-performing elementary, middle, or junior high school.

The bill creates the highly effective teacher incentives fund (fund), which consists of a one-time appropriation of $4 million from the state education fund. The state board will disburse approximately one-half of the money in the fund in the first grant cycle and approximately one-half of the money in a second grant cycle.

By December 15, 2025, the department must submit to the education committees of the general assembly a report concerning the implementation and effectiveness of the program.

(Note: This summary applies to this bill as introduced.)