Federal Support for Attracting, Training, and Retaining Educators: How Districts Receiving Teacher and School Leader Grants Use Their Funds

Ensuring students' equitable access to talented educators remains a national priority. Congress established the Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Incentive competitive grant program in 2015 to help address this goal, providing financial support to selected school districts to improve their systems for hiring, supporting, and retaining educators, particularly in high-need schools. Grantees can use TSL funds flexibly to improve their basic infrastructure for generating and managing data or on strategies that use these data to improve their educator workforce. This report provides the first comprehensive review of the activities 2017 TSL grantee districts prioritized with their TSL funds and how well these activities aligned with key aspects of the program. The report is based on interviews conducted near the end of the initial 3-year grant period for the 24 districts that were part of the 2017 TSL cohort and is part of a broader evaluation of TSL required by Congress.