TAP: More than Performance Pay

Since its inception, the program has tackled the most challenging issue facing the teaching profession: how to align systems for managing schools' human capital with goals for improving student achievement. In addition to pay, the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) shapes new approaches to on-the-job training, career advancement, and evaluation in ways that yield insights about how such features can be arranged so teachers embrace them. It has attracted national attention, also. Seven of the Teacher Incentive Fund grantees have adopted the TAP model, and more could be on the horizon now that the federal program, which supports differentiated pay, has received $200 million in the economic-stimulus legislation.