What is CLASS?

An effective teacher has the single greatest influence within the classroom on how well a student learns.

The CLASS Project is fundamentally an initiative that puts that research-demonstrated statement into practice.

An acronym for Creative Leadership Achieves Student Success, CLASS provides districts with a framework which integrates

  • expanded career paths,
  • relevant professional development,
  • effective performance evaluations
  • and new compensation models

To empower educators and give them the time and tools to constantly strive for excellence for themselves and their students and be recognized and rewarded for doing so.

Each district’s CLASS Project design looks different because each district has different student and staff needs, but every design strives to strengthen effective teaching and raise student achievement.

Read more about why CLASS focuses on these four components of an educator’s career by clicking on the links to the right. Or check out the specific plans of the Participating Districts.

What is TIF?

In October 2010, Chalkboard, in partnership with seven of the CLASS districts, received a federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant.

The following materials provide more information about the grant and its relationship to the CLASS Project.

What will the TIF grant do?

  • Chalkboard’s TIF grant, in partnership with Albany, Bend-La Pine, Crook County, Lebanon, Oregon City, Redmond and Salem-Keizer, funds the work of the CLASS Project while expanding the project to meet federal TIF requirements.
  • In short, TIF regulations will require that participating districts define effective teaching, based in part on multiple measures of student achievement, and then redesign evaluation and compensation to recruit, reward, and retain effective teachers.
  • Participating districts will have a year to locally design the integration of new career paths, relevant professional development, effective performance evaluations and new compensation models. The new models will include:
    • Differentiated levels of compensation for effective teachers and principals
    • Fiscal sustainability of the comprehensive models, including the new compensation systems
    • Use of value-added measures of student achievement
    • Increased recruitment and retention of effective teachers to serve high-need students and in hard-to-staff subjects and specialty areas in high-need schools