PEAK-Public Educators Accelerating Kids

The PEAK Rewards program is a pilot program for 15 schools in the Fort Worth Independent School District.

2008-2009 marked the beginning of the PEAK program.  The purpose of the PEAK program is to reward teachers financially for their students’ academic growth.  PEAK encourages collaboration, cooperation and professional growth—not competition.  It is consistent with the philosophy that teaching is a team sport, and building leadership capacity in each school through developing teacher expertise will ultimately have the greatest impact on student achievement.

The PEAK Rewards Model utilizes a value-added approach.  Value-added analysis is a statistical method that helps educators measure the impact schools make on students academic progress rates from year to year.  Utilizing this information teachers can observe students’ progress, predict students’ future academic performance and amend instruction practices to address all students’ needs.  The district can evaluate the impact of educational practices, classroom curriculum, instructional techniques and professional development, make data-driven decisions and identify and implement more effective programs for students.

PEAK schools offer many advantages such as an additional five contract days at the daily rate, extra clerical support for teachers, structured mentoring for new teachers.  At many schools data analyst and added instructional support for each content area are provided.

Participant schools are: Dunbar HS, Eastern Hills HS, Polytechnic HS, South Hills HS, Diamond Hill-Jarvis HS, Dunbar 6th, Dunbar MS, Handley MS, Kirkpatrick MS, Meadowbrook MS, Como ES, Morningside ES, Oaklawn ES, Sunrise-McMillian ES and Turner ES.

PEAK will be funded by the state DATE grant and matching funds from the Fort Worth ISD.

For the 2008-2009 school year 762 teachers received Rewards of 2.4 million dollars.

It is essential that we continue to hear from you as we evolve the PEAK program. Please share your ideas, thoughts and observations. Send your comments to peak@fwisd.org.