Stakeholder Engagement And Communication In TIF Program - A Case Study

A case study with associated questions will be published on the course web site during the study period.  A mark (out of 40) will be awarded for the analysis and delivery of a detailed report reviewing the case while covering base components such as:

• What stakeholder engagement is and its relevance to the case
• Formal models and structures applicable to the case.
• Informal methods and strategies that could be useful for the case in question 

while also providing answers to directed questions for the case. 

Stakeholder engagement and its significance in TIF program

The Stakeholder engagement has been the fundamental section of the CSR or “Corporate Social Responsibility” with gaining the “triple bottom line”. The organizations have been engaging their various stakeholders for finding the environmental and social issues. This is done to enhance the accountability and decision-making.

The TIF or the “Teacher Incentive Fund” grant program has been established for implementing and developing the PBCS or the “Performance-Based Compensation System” for the teachers and the principals in the large-need schools. The challenges and the stakeholder engagement and communications in TIF are required to be met.

The following report defines the stakeholder engagement and its significance with this case. The formal and informal models with their structures and strategies are analyzed keeping the above scenario in mind.

The stakeholder engagement has been the approach utilized by various companies for engaging the relevant stakeholders. This is done to achieve the desired outcomes. In the current world the term has been emerging as the umbrella word including a wider, inclusive and consistent method between the organization and those who have been effectively influenced. This has encompassed a domain of approaches and activities and spends the whole life of the project (Milanowski and Finster 2016). However, it has not been the end by itself. It has been the methodology to help in creating efficient relationships with the societies upon which the people have been operating. This finally leads to the developed performance and planning of the business (Milanowski, Heneman III and Finster 2015).

The TIP stakeholders have been the individuals and groups claiming or vesting interests in compensation program funded by TIF. The two wide stakeholder group related to the study is the internal and external stakeholders.

The Internal stakeholders have been incorporating those whose compensation has been influenced by that program. It has been also including the individuals who have been obligated regarding the actualizing and approving the latest remuneration strategy. In a region based teacher program of TIF such as the internal stakeholders incorporate educators and their affiliations or the unions, the administrator, other school and area regulatory staff, and the school board locally (Fermanich, Carl and Finster 2015).

The external stakeholders are the team and people who have an enthusiasm for the program and its results. However they might be less straightforwardly and promptly influenced by that. These incorporate media, guardians and the group such as the business group, whose possibility to retrieve sustaining dollars regarding that program could be noteworthy (Carter 2014).

The effective communications, as such, giving applicable and opportune data to both inside and outer partners, has been basic to create and maintain reinforcement for this TIF program. The inner stakeholder, particularly instructors whose compensation has been liable to change, has been required to be comprehended for the fundamental segments of this program. It has been needed to find who has been qualified for new dollar. The honor criteria have been required to be searched (Hoyer 2015). The extents of the incentives are needed to be determined.  In the event that one fails to gain a reward one year, the chance to procure it the next year is to be analyzed.  The stakeholders outside, the guardians and the more extensive community need to know how new planning for payment might add to enhancing teacher viability.

1.1. Discussion on Stakeholder engagement

Moreover, it must be also determined accordingly, the enhancing levels of achievements of student. The media has been indicating an extraordinary case of external stakeholders (Federal Register, 2017). The things that the localized media has been printing or saying in regards to a program of guarantee could produce or subdue urge for this. This has been among both the stakeholders inside and also other outside.

Characterizing the partners has been making it conceivable to shape the proper correspondence methodologies (Www2.ed.gov, 2017). As TIF grantees have been found, deciding the structure of inside and outer stakeholders groups has been the first stage among the number of communication and engagement challenges. However, the meeting of these changes is proved to be crucial for implementing the programs of TIF.

The TIF grantees faced various dilemmas regarding the communication and engagement while mitigating latest programs of payment. There are two challenges standing out most effectively while shifting by information. These are the communicating regarding the compensation planning for a wide range of stakeholders and the maintaining and securing the support and buy-in for the educators (King Rice et al. 2016).  

It is the prominent statement of elements used and establishes relationship among them. The formal models have been estimated through surveys, mathematical calculations and so on. They have been precisely communicated in the TIF program since they have been defined well. They have provided replicable results. The TIF grantees have made use of numerous plans to create the buy-in and support of the educators (Max et al. 2014). The most used are the issue-specific task forces of compensation, advisory boards of TIF and the steering committees of multi-stakeholders.

The Ohio's TIF allow have been including four urban areas. They are Toledo, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. Each of these regions keeps up a multi-partner administering board to manage their program of TIF. South Carolina, similar to Ohio, a state of TIF grantee, has assigned an Advisory Board program (Chiang et al. 2015). This has been done to help organize TIF endeavors over the state. A Principal Design Committee has been established by Denver. This has been done to build up its foremost pay program of TIF-subsidized. Some grantees have also coupled wide based guiding panels and admonitory boards with focused teams. Weld Re-8 has initiated a TIF Steering Committee and additionally stakeholder’s teams (EdCentral, 2017). They have been are accused of prescribing to the transaction group measures of student achievement. This also includes the estimations used to grant monetary prizes for the non-center educators.

The TIF Steering Committee and the stakeholder teams never suggested the money related levels of the monetary prizes. Amphitheater of Arizona acquires the multi-stakeholder configuration groups on educator remuneration, school executive assessment, and instructional support with the student appraisal (Wellington 2015). Various grantees including the Charlotte-Mecklenburg among them, have utilized reviews to perform two fold duties. This has been both for gathering information regarding how instructors have been seeing the TIF program, particularly what they comprehend about it and where they need adequate comprehension (Mathematica Policy Research, 2017). This has been also to improve the buy-in by making teachers feel that they have been the component of the procedure and that their thoughts have been added in forming the program.

1.2 Relevance of stakeholder engagement with the TIF program

Charlotte-Mecklenburg has built up a far reaching review plan to request perspectives from all significant voting public gatherings. Then afterward they have utilized the information to educate program choices. The Eagle County of Colorado has discovered buy-in of stakeholders basic to move the locale's TIF program forward. At first actualized without instructor contribution, the Eagle added educators to its pay panel and directed concentration gatherings to survey instructor comprehension (Eckert 2013). This has been of and support for the recently developing pay program. As per the locale the support and buy-in enhanced notably. TIF grantees actualizing the TAP or Teacher Advancement Program have been needed to have potential taking part schools vote on whether they would progress toward becoming the "TAP schools."The South Carolina or Chicago or Texas, all the TIF stipends utilizing TAP, ensured that the educators in possibly taking an interest in the schools have partaken in the program (Wong et al. 2016).

The New York City has not been a TIF grantee. Rather as of late executed, it has been another compensation program of new teachers. The conditions of the program have additionally needed the educators to vote on the chance that their school would partake (Hoyer 2015). Requesting that instructors settle on the choice regarding the taking part in a new program of pay-in has been another system to construct the buy-in and support. Making a choice has been giving the instructors a quick personal stake in the program that has positive outcomes.

A break in the continuity of leadership could add to blended, hazy, or conflicting messages being transmitted to the regional staff around a set up or just receiving off-the-ground program. As one TIF extend chief commented as the administration transformed they have encountered more than a couple obstacles in that program (Wellington 2015). The engagement plans of the TIF program executives, at that point, require incorporating consistent checking in with local or state initiative. This has been required to guarantee that those at the highest point of the authoritative chart have been remaining onboard with and proficient about this program of TIF.

The understanding recognizing the TIF program parts and, for inner stakeholders, how to apply to them might appear as an essential to buy-in and support. The experience, in any case, recommends that this might not exactly be the situation. Numerous grantees have discovered that notwithstanding when teachers acknowledge the general layouts of the new pay program and appear to comprehend it, that apparent comprehension could go to pieces when the payouts start.

Numerous TIF grantees have discovered that what gave off an impression of being instructors' grip of the fundamental components of the TIF program has been far less firm than they envisioned. At the point when lacking understanding meets startling money related results, the outcome could reduce trust in that program among the instructors.

Dallas found that instructors have not comprehended its TIF program qualification necessities. This has been the methodology that enabled them to select in or out, or prerequisites for the classroom perception component of the program. Weld experienced trouble with teachers understanding its payout system of pay program (Eckert 2013). This quandary was intensified in Weld when the area found after the primary payout that the framework had not been appropriately aligned and should have been significantly modified.

Formal models and structures applicable to TIF program

Various TIF grantees have found that they have to take exceptional care to guarantee that instructors in any case have a sufficient awareness of the framework “value-added” to trust it. These teachers have not required a profound comprehension of the complexities of the statistical calculations (Carter 2014).

The Chicago TIF decision-makers have been managing the concerns about the educator about the value included by getting extra counselors externally from the Chicago Public Schools. This has been done to brace comprehension of the compensation model and upgrade the support for that. Specifically, delegates of “Value Added Research Center” at “University of Wisconsin-Madison” and authorities of the “American Federation of Teachers”, the parent union of “Chicago Teachers Union”, invested times in the locale. They have been guaranteeing that the stakeholders had the data and understanding expected to acknowledge the value (Federal Register, 2017). This has been included as a component of the formula of compensation.

Conclusion: 

The TIF or the Teacher Incentive Fund has been the funded program done federally. It has been supporting efforts to evolve and incorporate the compensation systems of the principals and the teachers based on performance within the high-schools. The report has identified the stakeholders who have required to get engaged. It has been with them the communication has been necessary for creating the support and buy-in of the program. Instances of these kinds of audiences are the internal stakeholders and the external stakeholders. The internal ones are the principals and teachers. The external ones are the media and the parents. The communication and engagement of the stakeholders has been always the work in progress. The latest rising challenges and issues have been the natural accompaniment for changing. The grantees have required availing themselves of a range of planning and methods. This has been for assuring that they have been communicating and engaging consistently with the diverse stakeholders of the TIF. Lastly it should remind that this task has never been a static one.

References: 

Carter, A.W., 2014. Teacher and Administrator Perceptions of the Implementation of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) Grant in Mississippi Pilot Schools.

Chiang, H., Wellington, A., Hallgren, K., Speroni, C., Herrmann, M., Glazerman, S. and Constantine, J., 2015. Implementation and Impacts of Pay-for-Performance: The 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) Grantees After Two Years (No. fd92f16391424872854c5489abbf1dcc). Mathematica Policy Research.

Eckert, J., 2013. Increasing Educator Effectiveness: Lessons Learned from Teacher Incentive Fund Sites. National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.

EdCentral. (2017). Teacher Incentive Fund - EdCentral. [online] Available at: https://www.edcentral.org/edcyclopedia/teacher-incentive-fund/ [Accessed 7 Jun. 2017].

Federal Register. (2017). Applications for New Awards; Teacher Incentive Fund. [online] Available at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/05/31/2016-12733/applications-for-new-awards-teacher-incentive-fund [Accessed 7 Jun. 2017].

Fermanich, M., Carl, B. and Finster, M., 2015. Development and Implementation Costs of Student Learning Objectives: Considerations for TIF Grantees. Teacher Incentive Fund, US Department of Education.

Gran, J., Young, M. and Broin, A., 2015. Teacher Leadership: Federal Policy Recommendations. New Leaders.

Hoyer, K.M., 2015. Making the hidden visible: A cost analysis of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF)-supported educator incentive projects (Doctoral dissertation).

King Rice, J., Malen, B., Jackson, C. and Hoyer, K.M., 2016. Administrator Responses to Financial Incentives: Insights from a TIF Program. Leadership and Policy in Schools, pp.1-27.

King Rice, J., Malen, B., Jackson, C. and Hoyer, K.M., 2016. Administrator Responses to Financial Incentives: Insights from a TIF Program. Leadership and Policy in Schools, pp.1-27.

Mathematica Policy Research. (2017). Pay-for-Performance: Evaluating the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF). [online] Available at: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/our-publications-and-findings/projects/teacher-incentive-fund [Accessed 7 Jun. 2017]

Max, J., Constantine, J., Wellington, A., Hallgren, K., Glazerman, S., Chiang, H. and Speroni, C., 2014. Early Implementation Experiences of the 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund Grantees (No. 96c3382ca5804951917a487fc1ea5858). Mathematica Policy Research.

Milanowski, A. and Finster, M., 2016. Ways to Evaluate the Success of Your Teacher Incentive Fund Project in Meeting TIF Goals. Teacher Incentive Fund, US Department of Education.

Milanowski, A., Heneman III, H.G. and Finster, M., 2015. Peer Evaluation of Teachers in Maricopa County's Teacher Incentive Fund Program. Teacher Incentive Fund, US Department of Education.

The Advisory HUB. (2017). Our Approach to Stakeholder Engagement - The Advisory HUB. [online] Available at: https://www.theadvisoryhub.com.au/our-approach-to-stakeholder-engagement/ [Accessed 7 Jun. 2017].

Wellington, A., 2015, November. Evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund: Implementation and Impacts of Pay-for-Performance after Two Years. In 2015 Fall Conference: The Golden Age of Evidence-Based Policy. Appam.

WONG, K.K., 2016. Commentary: Toward Systemic Reform in Urban School Districts. Thinking and Acting Systemically: Improving School Districts Under Pressure.

Www2.ed.gov. (2017). Teacher Incentive Fund. [online] Available at: https://www2.ed.gov/programs/teacherincentive/index.html [Accessed 7 Jun. 2017].