The abrupt federal freeze on grants that helped develop effective teachers and school leaders have put districts in a bind—they need to scramble to fund these initiatives themselves or put a complete stop to them.
The three-year Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program, or TSL, was one of three teacher-training grant programs eliminated last month by the U.S. Department of Education in an effort to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts or any recruiting strategies based on race. It supported coaches and mentors to retain quality teachers in high-poverty or high-need schools, while also creating pathways for them to advance within their districts and, sometimes, offering additional pay.
Now, continuing to fund these teacher-leadership positions in schools, as well as implementing new recruitment and retention strategies for effective teachers, will be a challenge for the remaining one-and-a-half years left in the grant period, district leaders told Education Week.
A letter sent to TSL grantees stated that the grant would be terminated “in its entirety” and any unobligated funds that aren’t “prioritized to be retained” need to be returned to the Education Department. There were 29 recipients of the grant in 2023—a combination of school districts, local education agencies, and nonprofits.
Ed Hermes, a board member at the Osborn school district in Phoenix, said losing access to these funds in the middle of the school year was “devastating.”
“We’re going through all the five stages of grief. As a public school district, Osborn doesn’t have a lot of extra money laying around to help to kind of fill those [hiring] gaps,” Hermes said. “It’s been really terrible, frankly, and we’re trying to find the money this school year to cover those positions that we’re contractually obligated to [fund].”
The 2,425-student district will need to dip into its contingency budget for an estimated $250,000 to meet its obligations to the master teachers, who essentially work as instructional coaches, and district staff whose salaries were previously funded through the TSL grant, Hermes said.
Districts nationwide have leveraged the TSL grant since its inception almost two decades ago to create coach/mentor positions, like master teachers who help train and support newer teachers. This support has become even more crucial for the growing number of teachers who are now entering the profession through non-traditional pathways and under emergency certification.
The grant also helped districts give performance-based financial incentives to teachers and principals who met their goals and improved student outcomes—a recruitment and retention strategy to keep qualified educators in schools that need them the most.
Losing the ability to give these incentives has been “the hardest,” said Jody Penland, the superintendent of the Laurens Country school district in South Carolina. The district was supposed to receive approximately $2.6 million for incentives to teachers in the second and third year of the grant.
“Our teachers have poured their hearts and souls this year [to] learn the new system, to really implement the new components, and they’re not rewarded for their success,” Penland added.
Research shows TSL programs have improved student outcomes
The programs run through the TSL grants have shown results, said Joshua Barnett, the chief executive officer of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, a nonprofit that’s partnered with some TSL grantees to implement the grant.
Barnett pointed to a 2017 report by the research firm Mathematica that showed a positive connection between teacher incentives and student performance: By the second year of the grant’s implementation in a sample of school districts, performance bonuses improved reading and math achievement by 1 to 2 percentile points—the equivalent of about four weeks of additional learning.
More recently, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2023 showed that a performance pay system implemented under the TSL program improved outcomes for 8th graders in South Carolina districts. Those students were more likely to enroll in 12th grade, more likely to graduate on time, less likely to be arrested, and less likely to go on social services, said Barnett. NIET partnered with these districts to implement the TSL grants.
Four districts that responded to Education Week’s questions about the TSL cancellation said they will appeal the Education Department’s decision to block funds that were already appropriated and awarded by Congress. Organizations that support teacher-preparation programs have sued the Trump administration over the elimination of this grant and two others.
The Education Department did not respond to Education Week’s request for comment.
What the loss of TSL grants has meant for districts
Here’s how those four districts used their TSL funding, and what will happen to their programs.
- Wake County, N.C., $13.5 million: The 161,400-student district used approximately $3.7 million from the first year—and part of the $3 million budgeted for the second year—to hire 133 teachers since January 2024, reducing staff vacancies by 42 positions. Wake County relied on the TSL grant to streamline its hiring processes, which included guiding candidates through the process and supporting new hires through tuition assistance and professional development stipends. The grant also helped the district hire teachers for 24 high-need schools more quickly, according to an emailed statement sent by the district, and keep them in place through retention bonuses. The district did not clarify if they have an alternative plan to pay for these hiring initiatives.
- Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., $7.6 million: The TSL grant created a “Teacher-Leader Pathway” to retain effective teachers in the 144,100-student district. Through the grant, the district funded seven positions for program specialists who supported 827 teacher leaders in schools. The teacher-leaders coach principals and area superintendents and give direct support to new teachers on teaching strategies. Support for these 827 positions is now at risk, as the district isn’t sure how it will fund the specialist positions, according to an emailed statement.
- Laurens County, S.C., $13.5 million: The 6,350-student district leaned on its board for financial support once the TSL grant was terminated. For this school year, the board has approved the use of $800,000 to support 18 teacher-leaders who coach 462 teachers in the district’s high-need schools. The grant had covered half the salary of a teacher leader, so this money will fill in the gaps. The district won’t be able to pay out teacher incentives—approximately $3,000 a piece—to educators who meet their performance goals.
- Three Arizona school districts, $16 million: Three districts, including Osborn in Phoenix, were awarded a shared TSL grant to support teacher coaching and retention. Osborn’s portion of the money was meant to support five teacher-leader positions and a district coordinator over three years. The teacher-leaders, said board member Hermes, not only coached and supported new teachers so they would stay longer, but also covered classrooms in schools with a teacher shortage. The grant also helped the district create positions that teachers can aspire to, giving them a pathway to grow within their schools. The district will used its contingency funds to pay teacher-leader salaries, but they will not be able to pay performance-based incentives to teachers.
Hermes said the Osborn district was “elated” to receive the grant because it was awarded at a crucial time—just as the federal pandemic-relief funding was coming to an end.
Districts that received the TSL grant understood the funding was limited to three years, said Barnett.
The money served as a runway “to implement, demonstrate effectiveness, get your teachers, get your community, get your school board to understand what you’re doing and show that it’s making an impact,” Barnett said. “That’s the purpose of these innovation grants given by the federal government.”
The DEI question
While the Education Department said in its announcement that it had terminated grants that “included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race,” districts contend that their grants didn’t do that.
“We’re looking at hiring the most highly qualified teachers and administrators in everything,” Penland said. “We don’t look at trying to diversify a certain population.”
A spokesperson for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district said “DEI was not a focus” of their TSL-funded program. “In fact, the demographic information of candidates is not collected or shared with the talent pool [teacher] screening committee at any point in the application process,” the spokesperson said.
The teacher incentives are based on student achievement data and classroom observations, the spokesperson added.
Penland said one potential flag for DEI was a “competitive preference priority” in the TSL grant application process. That priority talks about “supporting a diverse educator workforce and professional growth to strengthen student learning.”
While the districts said they only hired or incentivized teachers based on their merit, their grant proposals may have included words like “diversity” and “inclusion” to indicate that they would meet the priorities of the grant.
The Trump administration could have misunderstood the goals of the TSL grants, said Barnett. Instead of cutting these programs down, the administration should be “visiting, celebrating” the districts for advancing merit, he added.
In fact, performance pay for teachers has traditionally been a Republican priority and was included in the 2024 GOP education platform. On President Donald Trump’s campaign website in 2023, he said he planned to “adopt Merit Pay to reward good teachers.”
Barnett said he worries that taking away this grant could, in the long run, dissuade educators from trying something new based on evidence that it works well for their students.
“They are excited about it, they go down that road, and the rug is taken out from under them,” Barnett said. “It causes them to pause the next time someone presents that same information and tries to get them to move down that road.”
