The Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) was created by the Texas Legislature as part of House Bill 3 to provide a realistic pathway for top teachers to earn six-figure salaries and to help attract and retain highly effective teachers at traditionally hard-to-staff schools.

Great Hearts Texas has grown quickly over the last seven years, meeting the demands of families and students all over Texas for a classical liberal arts education. As we expand our reach to more and more families, we will do so with a plan to ensure quality teaching and student learning. We aim to accomplish this by participating in the Teacher Incentive Allotment. We must focus on the formation, professional development, and accountability of the teachers we currently have as well as those who come aboard in the future. It is our goal to create a consistent definition of teaching excellence across Academies so that we can better support and coach our people. We want to reward excellence fairly by creating clarity around what excellent teaching looks like. In the future, we want to have scalable training that is available on specific, actionable techniques to support our teachers’ growth.

Designations are determined through classroom observations and student growth data.

Teachers who do not earn a designation in a given school year will have the opportunity to earn it the following year.

No. The TIA incentivizes teachers to perform at their best and to achieve outstanding results for their students. There is no limit to the number of teachers that Great Hearts may designate, so long as those teachers meet the designation criteria and the eligibility requirements under the rules defined by TEA.

TEA maintains a public, searchable database of designated teachers. How and when teachers will be notified of their designation status is an element of our TIA application and has yet to be determined.

TIA designations are determined using both classroom observation and student growth data, not proficiency data. Students who have earned low proficiency scores are still able to achieve high student growth relative to their peers.

Designated teachers who move to a Role ID other than 087 will maintain their designation. However, they will not generate annual allotment funding if they are not in a 087 teaching role for that year of service.

All teachers in eligible teaching assignments even if not eligible to earn a designation, must have a minimum of one 45-minute observation during the data capture year, including scores on all observable domains. There is no maximum number of observations.

Yes, the designation follows the teacher whether their new school has adopted TIA or not.

See this TIA Funding Map for the specific allotment amounts on your campus. Average allotments for Great Hearts Texas campuses range from $3,500 to $13,500.

See How Funding Allotments are calculated for detailed information about how TIA determines allotments for campuses.