Catalyst for Change is the final summative report for the Denver Pay-for-Performance initiative that focused on developing a link between student achievement and teacher compensation, and launched a national movement in performance-based reform. This CTAC evaluation is a groundbreaking longitudinal study of impact of performance-based compensation on student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and systemic change. This study found that students whose teachers crafted high quality SLOs outperformed their peers and showed significantly greater gain on two independent measures of student achievement at all three school levels during all years under study. This study provided the research and evaluation base for Congressional approval of the Teacher Incentive Fund.