The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, designed and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to dramatically improve student outcomes by increasing students' access to effective teaching. Participating sites adopted measures of teaching effectiveness that included both a teacher's contribution to growth in student achievement and his or her teaching practices assessed with a structured observation rubric. The measures were to be used to improve staffing actions, identify teaching weaknesses, and overcome them through effectiveness-linked professional development, and employ compensation and career ladders  as incentives to retain the most-effective teachers and have them support the growth of other teachers.

Beginning in 2009–2010, three school districts in Florida, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, and four charter management organizations participated in the Intensive Partnerships initiative. AIR and the RAND Corporation conducted a six-year evaluation of the initiative, documenting the policies and practices each site enacted and their effects on student outcomes. This report describes the findings of this initiative.