Focus on Teacher Reform Legislation in SREB States: Tenure, Dismissal and Performance Pay Policies

Due to state budget challenges over the last several years, some states used federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Race to the Top (RTTT) competitive education program as incentives to alter their education policies. Both pieces of legislation required states to meet a list of minimum criteria that included maintaining state funding to education programs and revising state education statutes and policies. Six SREB states (Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee) won RTTT funding, and most SREB states accepted ARRA funds. Policy-makers in many of these states used their share of federal funds to reform education policies specifically affecting teachers. This Focus report, SREB’s second recent report on teacher reforms, highlights changes that SREB states made to teacher tenure, dismissal and performance pay policies in the last few years. Twelve SREB states made statutory changes to their teacher tenure, dismissal or performance pay policies from 2009 to 2011. � Teacher tenure statutes were modified or created in five of the 12 states: Delaware, Florida,