Meanwhile, a recent Brookings Institution report finds that white education majors are hired at higher rates than those who are black or Hispanic. The CAP study also found that only one in three surveyed districts “actively recruit from institutions and organizations that serve primarily minority populations.” This, despite the fact that the teaching force is predominantly white, and black students in particular benefit from having black teachers. Many districts aren’t doing a good job recruiting or hiring teachers of color However, districts should consider providing both support and accountability to make sure principals are making wise hiring decisions. For instance, evidence and common sense suggest that some teachers are better matches with certain schools. research showed that principals often did not make hiring decisions based on interview ratings. A North Carolina study found that teachers certified in-state had higher retention rates and were slightly more effective.Ī key problem is not being able to ensure that principals have access to such information and, when appropriate, use it. Research has shown that certification status is a strong predictor of a teacher’s likelihood of remaining in the profession. Teacher-evaluation measures, though sometimes biased against teachers with lower-achieving students, have a significant degree of year-to-year reliability. A paper examining New York City teachers found that though no single trait was strongly predictive of teacher quality, a combination of measures was. Similarly, separate research done in Washington, D.C., showed that the district’s applicant rating system - based, in part, on a model lesson - was correlated with teacher effectiveness among those who were subsequently hired. Research shows this is possible.Ī study of the Spokane, Wash., school district showed that its structured interview process was a decent predictor of teachers’ likelihood of remaining in the classroom and their ability to improve student test scores. Providing principals with more data, and conducting more-thorough interviews, will, of course, help only if the data and interview process are useful. “Even when principals were aware of the data available to them, they did not necessarily know how to access the data,” the study says. The researchers, who conducted extensive interviews with school principals, also found that many school leaders said they wished for information that was, in fact, available to them - though often not in a user-friendly format. Source: Education Administration Quarterly Even fewer central offices provided such data directly to principals, even though the information was likely readily available. Notably, when hiring teachers within the same district, about one in three principals didn’t consider teachers’ evaluation scores. Use of data varied from district to district and from principal to principal. One third of those districts didn’t ensure that candidates met with a school’s hiring principal.Īnother study, published last month in the peer-reviewed research journal Education Administration Quarterly, examined hiring practices in six large districts and two charter school networks. Teachers often aren’t required to conduct sample lessons, and principals aren’t always supported in using dataĪccording to a December report from the Center for American Progress - a left-of-center think tank that backed the Obama administration’s teacher accountability policies - fewer than 20 percent of 108 districts surveyed required applicants to perform a demonstration lesson, either to students or adults.
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