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2017
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Annual Goals

This report lists the annual improvement goals reported to ESE in the educator preparation program provider’s state annual report. Providers may report up to three goals for the upcoming year and are asked to report on progress made toward the prior year’s goals. Annual goals are reported in May of the academic year listed.

Annual Goals - 2017
Educator preparation program improvement goals for the upcoming program year
Goal #1 TRAIN & SUPPORT: Provide high-quality initial training and ongoing support to teachers and leaders such that they make a significant impact on students. 1) Support corps members and alumni such that an increasing share of partner schools perform in the top quartile of student growth in both math and English Language Arts on statewide assessments. 70% of priority partner schools will meet this goal in the 2015-16 school; an increase of 10% from the 2014-2015 school year. 2) Provide high-quality, localized training to incoming cohort of corps members. Train 125 new corps members through our fourth regional Lawrence institute in Summer 2017.
Goal #2 RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 1) Foster a strong corps culture such that Massachusetts ranks in the top 10 of all regions for corps member satisfaction. 2) Provide support such that corps members complete their two-year commitment at high rates. a. 2016 teachers: 90% will complete their 2-year commitment b. 2017 teachers: 95% will complete their first year of teaching; in service of 90% completing their 2-year commitment
Goal #3 RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 2) Provide support such that corps members continue to teach beyond their two-year commitment at high rates and mobilize the rest to work towards the fulfillment of our mission from another position in education. 50% of 2015 corps members will stay at their placement school, 70% will continue teaching in MA, 80% continue teaching in US, and 90% will continue to work in education.

Annual Goals - 2016
Educator preparation program improvement goals from the prior year
Goal #1 Goal #1: TRAIN & SUPPORT: Provide high-quality initial training and ongoing support to teachers and leaders such that they make a significant impact on students. 1) Support corps members and alumni such that an increasing share of partner schools perform in the top quartile of student growth in both math and English Language Arts on statewide assessments. 60% of priority partner schools will meet this goal in the 2015-16 school; an increase of 8% from the 2014-2015 school year. 2) Provide high-quality, localized training to incoming cohort of corps members. Train 115 new corps members through our third regional Lawrence institute in Summer 2016.
Goal #2 Goal #2: RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 1) Foster a strong corps culture such that Massachusetts ranks in the top 10 of all regions for corps member satisfaction. 2) Provide support such that corps members complete their two-year commitment at high rates. a. 2015 teachers: 90% will complete their 2 year commitment b. 2016 teachers: 95% will complete their first year of teaching; in service of 90% completing their 2-year commitment
Goal #3 Goal #3: RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 1) Provide support such that corps members continue to teach beyond their two-year commitment at high rates and mobilize the rest to work towards the fulfillment of our mission from another position in education. 70% of 2014 corps members will teach for a 3rd year and 85% will continue to work in education.

Progress Toward Goals - 2016
Progress made toward prior program year goals
Goal #1 Goal #1: TRAIN & SUPPORT: 1) Support corps members and alumni such that an increasing share of partner schools perform in the top quartile of student growth in both math and English Language Arts on statewide assessments. 60% of priority partner schools will meet this goal in 2015-16; an increase of 8% from the 2014-2015 school year. PROGRESS: Headlines from the 2015-16 MCAS/PARCC Partner Data Analysis: Only 9 schools – 21% of our partners from last year (of those who have SGP data) – were top quartile in Math/ELA for Student Growth. That is both far from our goal of 60%, and meaningfully down from last year 52%. More promising, 57% of our schools were top quartile in SGP in EITHER math or ELA, which is close to 60%, and a promising sign that many schools had strong performance at some level. Edwin Reports/Additional Performance Data Analysis for our Program Completers: This past year, we conducted an updated performance data analysis for our program completers, to include the 2014-2015 school year. This analysis included Student Growth Percentile for our 2013 TFA alums in their third year of teaching. This snapshot of data indicates that of our 15 program completers represented, 87% are at high or moderate for SGP in ELA, and 80% are at high or moderate for SGP in math. Both of these outperform state averages, by 11% and 7% respectively, and verifies that our young teachers are leading students to academic growth. We recognize this is a small sample size of our program completers. While this data shows strong progress, we hope to continue to see this improve. This analysis also included Educator Evaluation Data for all 2009-2012 TFA alums who are in their 3rd-5th year teaching, Program Completion Years: 2010-11 to 2014-15, MA Evaluation Year: 2015-16, Organization: Teach for America, Program Type: Post-Baccalaureate - Apprenticeship/Teacher of Record Program Category: Initial. Over 95% of our young alums were rated Exemplary or Proficient, and not a single one was rated unsatisfactory. Our rate of exemplary teachers – the highest rating – surpassed the state rating. We will be conducting a similar analysis for the 2015-2016 school year as this data becomes available, and we look forward to continuing to partner with the Department to gather data on our program completers to have this data inform the continuous improvement of our program. 2) Provide high-quality, localized training to incoming cohort of corps members. Train 115 new corps members through our third regional Lawrence institute in Summer 2016. PROGRESS: Overall, we had a strong third year at the Massachusetts Institute, as evidenced by the following data: 98% of corps members agree/strongly agree that they are "committed to working, now and in the future, to ensure that all children have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." 94% of corps members feel that they are growing the capabilities needed to play a role in the movement. 92% feel the School Director provided effective leadership. 82% feel content and literacy sessions were helpful (up from 60% in 2015). 84% feel one-on-one coaching and classroom observations were helpful. We achieved our strongest operations results to date (over 90% indicating satisfaction). In addition to self-reported corps member data, we are urgently focused on ensuring the summer school students we reach receive high quality learning and survey their full-time principals and school leaders. Once again, 100% of school partners agreed that our teachers, even in the summer, have a strong impact on student learning. Areas we are focusing on improving include strengthening corps culture: While we improved from 2015, corps culture (as indicated by CSI data) is still not where we want it to be. The 2016 Massachusetts corps has a 53% net positive CSI score, which is above the national average by 2% (45% in 2015, 73% in 2014).
Goal #2 Goal #2: RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 1) Foster a strong corps culture such that Massachusetts ranks in the top 10 of all regions for corps member satisfaction.PROGRESS: As of January, we were not on track to reach our goal as we ranked 32 out of 51 regions. However, while not currently meeting the goal, our region is still above national averages on most of our corps culture metrics, which gives us confidence that we can move in an upward direction by the end of the year.  In order to do so, we have implemented culture plans to focus on improving culture results by the end of the school year.  This includes building corps relationships and community, school-specific support strategies and strategies for celebrating teachers.  This has included increasing the number of corps member workshops and professional development opportunities, more networking and social gatherings and mentoring new school leaders who support our teachers. 2)  Provide support such that corps members complete their two-year commitment at high rates. 2015 teachers: 90% will complete their 2 year commitment. 2016 teachers: 95% will complete their first year of teaching; in service of 90% completing their 2-year commitment. PROGRESS: 2015 teachers: 86% are on track to complete their 2-year commitment.  We are not on track to meeting our 2-year retention goal of 90% due to having had some of these teachers resign from our program for personal reasons, including medical conditions. However, this is a 3% increase in 2nd year teacher retention compared to our 2014 teachers.  For corps members struggling with mental health, we have put into place additional mental health resources, including a mental health resource guide and investing in external facilitators to provide a session on how to manage self-care as a teacher. In some of these cases, teachers not passing MTELs was a factor.  In response to this, we are continuing to provide individualized coaching plans to struggling teachers as well as increased MTEL resources and support, such as paying for MTEL workshops.  A large percent of our teachers who resigned were a part of our Western Massachusetts sub-region.  We have implemented additional strategies to provide additional support and improve culture and as a result, for this current school year, we have had 100% retention of all corps members in Western Massachusetts.  We are even moreso heartened that over 60% of our current 2nd years have already committed to teach in year 3 in Western Massachusetts, showing we can retain people in that part of the state.  Our overall year two retention is at 96%.  This data suggests that when we have attrition, the majority is in year one or occurs over the summer in between years one and two.  Once our teachers begin their second year, the vast majority stay and fulfill their commitment.   2016 teachers: 97% are on track to complete their two-year commitment.  We are therefore on track to meet our retention goal of 95% with our first year teachers.  We have continued to prioritized relationship-building with our teachers and school partners as part of our coaching model in order to more proactively anticipate and address the needs of our teachers.  We are also continuing to identify struggling teachers earlier, during our summer Institute training, in order to offer differentiated and increased support at the start of the year.  We have also clustered more of our teachers at fewer schools, which has helped them receive support from their fellow Teach For America peers and alums.
Goal #3 Goal #3: RETAIN: Support teachers and leaders such that they remain in their schools and in the field of education at high rates, building a sustainable pipeline for long-term change. 1) Provide support such that corps members continue to teach beyond their two-year commitment at high rates and mobilize the rest to work towards the fulfillment of our mission from another position in education. 70% of 2014 corps members will teach for a 3rd year and 85% will continue to work in education.PREOGRESS: 72% of 2014s are currently teaching in their third year in the state of Massachusetts.  85% of 2014s are still working in the field of education. We surpassed our past year's goal of 70% of our second year teachers staying to teach for a third year.  We actively encourage our program participants to continue teaching for a third year and are proud to report that the majority of our most recent cohort of second years elected to stay in the classroom.   For the 2015 corps members (our current second year teachers), we are trending behind where we were last year in terms of commitments to return to teaching next year. As of April 1, 2017, 44% of our current second year teachers have committed to teaching in Massachusetts next year (compared to 64% at this time last year). Compared to last year, more of our second year corps members are undecided about their plans for next year. Because many want to continue teaching, but have not committed to a particular school yet, we still feel that our goal of 70% continuing to teach is within reach. To achieve this goal, we are rallying schools to engage in retention conversations with their teachers, offering alumni fellowships, and providing targeted career coaching to our second years.

Annual Goals - 2015
Educator preparation program improvement goals from the prior year
Goal #1 Teacher Effectiveness: By the end of the year, 50% of all our teachers will achieve significant academic growth with their students. (Significant = over 1.6 years growth in elementary, 1.9 in secondary; mastery =80% mastery or higher; 70% mastery or higher on ANet) AND 100% of CMs will achieve solid growth. (Solid growth=at least 1 year; mastery = 70% mastery or higher) using high quality assessments vetted by the Teach For America staff.
Goal #2 Retention: 2014 teachers: 90% will complete their 2 year commitment 2015 teachers: 95% will complete their first year of teaching; in service of 90% completing their 2-year commitment
Goal #3 Teach Beyond 2: 70% of 2nd year teachers will teach for a 3rd year.

Progress Toward Goals - 2015
Progress made toward prior program year goals
Goal #1 GOAL #1: Teacher Effectiveness: By the end of the year, 50% of all our teachers will achieve significant academic growth with their students. (Significant = over 1.6 years growth in elementary, 1.9 in secondary; mastery =80% mastery or higher; 70% mastery or higher on ANet) AND 100% of CMs will achieve solid growth. (Solid growth=at least 1 year; mastery = 70% mastery or higher) using high quality assessments vetted by the Teach For America staff. PROGRESS: This past year, we have proactively shifted the way we measure corps member impact on student achievement. Instead of measuring the percentage of corps members who met a static target (solid growth or significant growth), we found it is more accurate to measure the percentage of individualized ambitious student achievement goals that corps members led students to achieve. Using this method, known as benchmark achieved, means that different corps members can set specific and varying goals that are ambitious and tailored for their students, grade level, and content area. In the last school year, our corps members led their students to achieve 78% of their ambitious goals, which is above the national Teach For America network average. Our overall benchmark achieved for the current school year is 102% as of April 2016. This means that as an overall corps, we tracking ahead of a rigorous goal of all classrooms being at 1.6/1.9 years growth, or 80% or higher. Edwin Reports/Additional Performance Data Analysis for our Program Completers: This past year, with support from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE), we conducted a performance data analysis for our program completers for the 2013-2014 school year. This analysis included Student Growth Percentile for our 2011 TFA alums in their third year of teaching, and 2010 TFA alums in their fourth year of teaching, as follows: SGP ELA Math # Included % High % Moderate % Low # Included % High % Moderate % Low All Teacher of Record completers 90 34% 50% 16% 90 34% 49% 17% All Baccalaureate completers 194 24% 52% 24% 193 24% 50% 26% All Post-Bac completers 783 21% 57% 22% 784 24% 51% 25% TFA 2011 alums (in year 3) 22 50% 32% 18% 22 50% 32% 18% TFA 2010 alums (in year 4) 15 53 40 7 15 47 40 13 This analysis also included Educator Evaluation Data for all 2009-2011 TFA alums who are in their 3rd-5th year teaching, respectively: The headlines from this analysis included: • Over 95% of our young alums were rated Exemplary or Proficient, and not a single one was rated unsatisfactory • Our rate of exemplary teachers – the highest rating – was more than double the state rate. We will be conducting a similar analysis for the 2014-2015 school year as this data becomes available, and we look forward to continuing to partner with the Department to gather data on our program completers to have this data inform the continuous improvement of our program.
Goal #2 GOAL #2: Retention: 2014 teachers: 90% will complete their 2 year commitment 2015 teachers: 95% will complete their first year of teaching; in service of 90% completing their 2-year commitment PROGRESS: 2014 teachers: 83% are on track to complete their 2-year commitment. We are not on track to meeting our 2-year retention goal of 90% due to having had some of these teachers resign from our program for personal reasons, including medical conditions. In some of these cases, not passing MTELs was a factor. In response to this, we are continuing to provide individualized coaching plans to struggling teachers as well as increased MTEL resources and support, such as one-on-one tutoring. We are also working to provide additional health resources for our teachers, including mental health resources. Our year two retention is at 97%. This data suggests that when we have attrition the majority is in year one or occurs over the summer in between years one and two. Once our teachers begin their second year, the vast majority stay and fulfill their commitment. 2015 teachers: 96% are on track to complete their 2-year commitment. We are therefore on track to meet our retention goal of 95% with our first year teachers. We have prioritized relationship-building with our teachers and school partners as part of our coaching model in order to more proactively anticipate and address the needs of our teachers. We are also working to identify struggling teachers earlier, during our summer Institute training, in order to offer differentiated and increased support at the start of the year. We have also clustered more of our teachers at fewer schools which has helped them receive support from their fellow Teach For America peers and alums.
Goal #3 GOAL #3: Teach Beyond 2: 70% of 2nd year teachers will teach for a 3rd year. PROGRESS: 68% of 2013s are currently teaching in their third year in the state of Massachusetts. 89% of 2013s are still working in the field of education. We came very close to meeting our past year's goal of 70% of our second year teachers staying to teach for a third year. We actively encourage our program participants to continue teaching for a third year and are proud to report that the majority of our most recent cohort of second years elected to stay in the classroom. For the 2014 corps members (our current second year teachers), we are on pace to surpass our goal of 70%. As of April 1, 2016, 64% of our current second year teachers are already committed to teaching in Massachusetts next year. We are especially proud of our work with our second year corps members teaching in the South Coast (Fall River and New Bedford, MA). In the South Coast, 57% (15/26) of our second year teachers have committed to returning and teaching for a third year. This is a tremendous increase from last year. Many of our 2014 corps members are still making their decisions for next year, but we project we will land slightly above 70% across the MA region, with over 85% committed to staying in the field of education. We continue to readdress strategies that will influence second year teachers to choose to teach in their third year, including alumni fellowships, increased alumni support, and career coaching.