A cash incentive appears to have helped seven school districts attract effective teachers to low-income schools, though the longer-term impact of the transfers on teacher retention and student achievement remains to be seen, a recent analysis concludes.
The results are the first findings from the Talent Transfer Initiative, a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Through the project, teachers with high value-added scores can get bonuses of $20,000 to transfer to low-achieving schools, which are traditionally hard to staff.
Researchers from Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, N.J., found that the project succeeded in attracting teachers to those schools, but it took a large pool to secure enough of them. Only 24 percent of eligible applicants applied, and 6 percent transferred, on average, across the districts studied.
