Walnut Ridge – The Lawrence County School District was awarded $28,100 in incentive funds through the partnership with the PEER Network to honor student growth. The PEER Summative Student Growth School Incentive recognizes and rewards partner schools that have shown growth in 2023 that exceeds prior-year growth in 2022 or pre-pandemic growth in 2019.
The PEER Network is a partnership between the Arkansas Public School Resource Center (APSRC) and Crowley’s Ridge Educational Service Cooperative (CRESC). The network is funded by the federal Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Through the PEER Network, partner schools receive training, coaching, and job-embedded support. Partner schools also receive personalized performance management to ensure schools, school leaders, and teacher leaders meet or exceed their goals.
The PEER Network employs a Performance-Based Compensation System (PBCS) that provides incentives to schools when they meet their goals. The incentive structure is based on a holistic view of schools that includes student achievement and growth, the development of teacher leaders, the support of school leaders, and the use of recruitment and retention strategies to establish and maintain a diverse and highly qualified staff. The mission of the PEER Network is to meet the unique needs of rural Arkansas schools and build capacity by empowering teacher leaders in a learning community.