How HISD Turned Insight Into Action: Staff Support for Performance Pay System
Houston Independent School District (HISD) was generating community concern over test scores, budgeting and staff turnover. After state intervention, a new Superintendent was appointed to bring a fresh perspective to addressing chronic issues. In his effort to balance the budget, adopt new curriculum and meet mandates while maintaining focus on student success, the Superintendent introduced the OUR social platform for collaborative decision-making.
The Superintendent onboarded roughly 1,000 principals, vice principals and management staff from the district’s 274 schools on the OUR app. One potential solution to his budgetary challenges was instituting a pay-for-performance compensation plan for teaching staff, an insurmountable task without expressed approval and buy-in from staff.
The Superintendent used the OUR polling app to gather sentiment from HISD staff in response to the following statement: “Teachers will love the new Pay-for- Performance compensation plan.” With an 89.3% response rate, the Superintendent received overwhelming support for pay-for-performance compensation in the district. He learned that 20% of staff “strongly agreed” and 57% “agreed,” for a 77% approval overall. Approximately 21% remained neutral and only 1% of teaching staff disagreed with instituting a pay-for-performance system for teachers. HISD recently released plans for the new pay-for-performance system for its 10,600 teachers, which will go into effect the 2026-27 school year, becoming the nation’s largest such model. OUR HISD was leveraged to determine a performance rating formula to scale teachers’ pay on student test scores and other measures, thereby tying teachers’ pay to their ratings to help incentivize good instruction. Preliminary data released by HISD showed that students in grades 3-8 and at the high school level districtwide had one of the highest years of academic growth the district has ever experienced. By summer 2024, 55 district schools had improved from a D or F rating to an A or B. Districtwide, the number of “A” and “B” rated schools increased by 82%, from 93 in 2023 to 170 in 2024, according to data released by the district.
