How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
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Let me start with a vignette. Back in 2017, we published a brilliant award-winning report on TRAC written by a young intern. This looked specifically at cross-subsidies in universities from Teaching (international students) to Research.
Back then, there was no clear cross subsidy towards home students, as they (more than) paid for themselves due to £9,000 fees. But the subsidy from international students towards research was large, as it remains today.
We held a launch event at the LSE for the paper. This remains seared on my mind for, instead of being impartial, the eminent professor in the Chair attacked our young intern for having the temerity to publicise the split in resources for teaching and research.
His (widely shared) view was that, at an institution like the LSE, research informs teaching and teaching informs research, so policy makers should not look too closely under the bonnet but instead let universities spend their resources as they see fit.
The interesting part of this story is that the person who asked us to write the report was the LSE’s own Director of Research. He was frustrated that his colleagues seemed not to understand the financial flows in their own institution.
A second reason why we should shine a spotlight on how universities work is that teaching and research are now split down the middle when it comes to political oversight:
We might prefer it if it were not so, but it is naïve to think substantial cross-subsidies within institutions fit as naturally with these arrangements as they did with the arrangements in place back at the turn of the millennium, when TRAC was first mooted.
In our 2017 report, we showed that, according to TRAC, only 73% of research costs were recovered. On revisiting the issue in another report three years later, we found cost recovery had fallen to 69%. Today, as the KCL report shows, the number is just 66%.
In other words, during a decade when politicians have exalted the power of R&D to transform Britain, the level of cost recovery has been falling at almost 1 percentage point a year.
However, what has changed over time is that this is now fairly well understood. For example, TRAC data were heavily used to show the sector’s challenges in both the Universities UK Blueprint and the recent Post-16 Education and Skills white paper.
Let me focus on that white paper for a second. It is a slightly odd document, where you can see the joins between the three Secretaries of State (for Education, Work and Pensions and Science, Innovation and Technology) who share responsibility for it.
In particular, the white paper recommits to improving cost recovery for research while simultaneously looking for new ways to crack down on the international students who currently provide big cross-subsidise for research.
The end result, as the white paper itself admits, is likely to be less research:
We will work with the sector and other funders to address the cost recovery of research. … We recognise that this may result in funding a lower volume of research but at a more sustainable level.
While some research-intensive institutions may celebrate this concentration, it does not feel like we have talked enough about the consequences in terms of what it could mean:
In other words, what we have in the white paper is the perhaps inevitable result of giving the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, Lord Vallance, the additional role of champion for the ‘Oxford-Cambridge corridor’.
So far, I have assumed the TRAC numbers are accurate, yet we all know they are rough – or worse. A 10-year old piece on TRAC in Times Higher Education quotes one university finance director as saying: ‘if you put garbage [data] in, you will get garbage out.’
In preparation for this session, I spoke to one academic at a research-intensive university, who even argued: ‘TRAC is a piece of fiction to conceal how much teaching subsidises research.’
He went on to explain that your contract might say 40% of time should be on Teaching and 40% on Research (with 20% for admin): ‘If you spend 60% on Research and 20% on Teaching, you would be in violation of contract so no one will admit to it.’
A second academic I contacted was similarly scathing:
‘I think it is a classic case of looking for a lost wedding ring under the lamppost, even when you lost it a mile away. Universities obviously have an incentive to say that teaching UK students and doing research is more expensive, because they hope to get more money from the government. That is why TRAC does not lead to better business models – the stuff is known to be suspect.’
Such criticisms may explain why I have only ever been able to find one university that has followed the logic of their own TRAC numbers by refusing to take on any major new research projects (and even they only had the ban in force temporarily).
The lesson I take from all this is that TRAC is useful, but not enough. Some sort of calculation needs to occur to inform policy makers, funders and managers. But TRAC is not the slam dunk that people sometimes like to think it is because:
Finally, TRAC is meant to help politicians understand the world but I think we also need to recall the motivations of political leaders. When I was in Whitehall, we struggled to persuade the Treasury to move towards full economic costing. They caricatured it as buying new test tubes when the alternative was shiny new buildings. In the end, politicians in hard hats cannot go to topping-out ceremonies for new test tubes.
From a judge’s order to reinstate Education Department grants to calls for virtual schooling amid ICE raids, what did you learn from our recent stories?
How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
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North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles program, which allows highly effective teachers to receive salary supplements for teaching additional students or supporting other teachers, is having positive effects on math and science test scores, according to an evaluation presented by NC State University’s Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at the State Board of Education meeting last week.
Since 2016, the ATR initiative has allowed districts to create new career pathways and provide salary supplements for highly effective teachers — or Advanced Teachers — who mentor and support other educators while still teaching part of the day. Their roles include Adult Leadership teachers, who lead small teams and receive at least $10,000 supplements, and Classroom Excellence teachers, who take on larger student loads and receive a minimum of $3,000 supplements.
Those in adult leadership roles teach for at least 30% of the day, lead a team of 3-8 classroom teachers, and share responsibility for the performance of all those teachers’ students. Classroom excellence teachers are responsible for at least 20% more students than before they enter the role.
“Our ATR program was designed to allow highly effective classroom educators to reach more students and to support the professional growth of educators,” said Dr. Callie Edwards, the program’s lead evaluator, at the State Board of Education meeting last Wednesday. “ATR aims to improve the quality of classroom instruction, the recruitment and retention of teachers, as well as ultimately impact student academic achievement.”
In the 2024-25 school year, 26 districts operated ATR programs across 400 schools — 56% of which were elementary schools — employing 1,494 Advanced Teachers who supported nearly 4,000 classroom teachers statewide, according to the evaluation. Edwards said that 88% of Adult Leadership teachers received at least $10,000, and 85% of Classroom Excellence teachers received $3,000 or more.
Statistical analysis of the 2023-24 school year’s data found that students in ATR schools outperformed their peers in non-ATR schools in math and science, showing statistically significant learning gains.
“Across the various programs I’ve evaluated, these are positive results — especially in math and science — where the impact of ATR is equivalent to about a month of extra learning for students,” said Dr. Lam Pham, the leading quantitative evaluator. “The results in ELA are positive but not statistically significant, which has been consistent for the last three years,” Pham said, referring to English Language Arts.
These effects on math and science grow over time, according to the evaluation. Math scores improved throughout schools’ first six years of ATR implementation — though they are no longer significant by the seventh year of implementation, according to the presentation. For science scores, statistically significant gains began in the fifth year after schools began implementing ATR.
Additionally, math teachers in ATR schools reported higher EVAAS growth scores than their peers in comparable schools.
Teachers in ATR schools also reported feeling like they have more time to do their work compared to teachers in non-ATR schools.
This year’s report featured data on teachers supported by ATR teachers for the first time. The evaluation found no positive effects on test scores for students taught by supported teachers compared to students taught by teachers who are not in the program. The researchers also found no effect on turnover levels for teachers supported by Advanced Teachers. However, the report says additional years of data will be necessary to verify if those effects appear over time.
The evaluation recommended that principals in ATR schools should foster collaboration and communicate strategically about the program with staff, beginning during Advanced Teachers’ hiring and onboarding.
“It’s important to integrate ATR into those processes,” Edwards told the Board. “That means introducing Advanced Teachers to new staff and making collaboration, especially mentoring and coaching, a structured part of the day.”
Edwards said these practices have been adopted in some schools, but principals reported needing more time and support to build collaboration opportunities into the school schedule.
The report also urges district administrators to coordinate with Beginning Teacher (BT) programs, advertise ATR in recruitment materials, and improve their data collection practices. It also calls on state leaders to standardize the program to ensure consistency across participating districts.
“Districts need standardized messaging, professional learning opportunities, and technical assistance to support implementation,” Edwards said. “The state can also create more opportunities for districts to share what’s working with one another and expand the evaluation beyond test scores to capture things like classroom engagement, social, emotional development, and feedback from teachers and principals.”
The evaluators also said “there’s more to do” to expand the program in western North Carolina after Board members raised concerns about uneven participation across the state’s regions.
After the Friday Institute’s presentation, Board members heard a presentation on proposals for the next round of districts to join the ATR program from Dr. Thomas R. Tomberlin, senior director of educator preparation, licensure, and performance.
Tomberlin said DPI received 15 proposals representing 22 districts. These proposals have been evaluated by seven independent evaluators, Tomberlin said. The Board had to choose the program’s next participants by Oct. 15 to comply with a legislative requirement.
The state can only allocate $911,349 for new implementation grants in 2026-27 — less than one-sixth of the funding required to fund all applications. That level of funding is “very low” compared to previous years, Tomberlin said. In the 2023-25 state budget, the General Assembly appropriated $10.9 million in recurring funds for these supplements in each year of the biennium.
Tomberlin recommended that the Board approve the three highest-scoring proposals for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and fund these districts at 85% of their request. If the Board approves this recommendation, the state would still have $37,981 in planning funds left over for districts approved during the 2026 proposal cycle.
Tomberlin said districts are already struggling to pay for the program’s salary supplements. The Friday Institute’s report showed that, despite the high median supplements, some districts are offering supplements as little as $1,000.
“Some districts are not able to pay the full $10,000 because they have more ATR teachers than the funding that we can give them in terms of those allotments,” Tomberlin said. “And we had requested the General Assembly, I think, an additional $14 million to cover those supplements, and we didn’t get any.”
The Senate’s budget proposal this session included funds to expand the ATR program over the biennium, while the House proposal did not. The General Assembly has not yet passed a comprehensive state budget, and its mini-budget did not include ATR program funding.
Tomberlin said DPI would be in touch with the three districts to verify if they can proceed with the program despite limited funding.
This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.