Los Angeles school district principals’ views on teacher hiring system vary widely

Despite the standardized screening system of Los Angeles Unified School District for verification teachers, some school directors still count on their own tactics to recruit candidates, even when they believe that the system is beneficial, revealed a new study.

Implementation in 2013, the district level system – called the teachers’ selection process with multiple measures – includes a rigorous multiple assessment which aims to identify the best qualified candidates for the 25,000 district teaching positions. Applicants who are successful in the eight assessments as well as the history and diploma checks are added to an eligibility list that circulates to directors of more than 1,000 district public schools, according to the study.

In interviews with 30 of these school directors, a team led by the first author Jennifer L. Nelson, professor of education, organization and leadership policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, noted that those who had positive or mixed opinions of the system exercised the most autonomy to recruit prospective teachers. These directors have said that they often recruit word of mouth candidates through teachers’ networks, training programs for local universities teachers or on the basis of the recommendations of other directors.

Nelson and the co-authors Paul Bruno, professor in the department who studied the system a lot, and doctoral student Marisol Jimenez conducted research in partnership with the Unified School District. They interviewed the directors of their perceptions of the screening system and the influence that the dynamics between directors and district officials has on the selection of teachers. The team published its conclusions in the newspaper Aera Open.

Bruno found in two previous studies – including a 2019 MMTSP review co -written with Katharine O. Strunk from the University of Pennsylvania – that the scores of candidates on assessments were “significantly teacher results”, which suggests that the process is effective in identifying the most qualified candidates.

“The adoption of these centralized Human Resources oriented Policy oriented to Data is gaining ground, in particular in large urban districts across the country,” said Nelson. “And it is because there is proven evidence of the effectiveness of teachers according to the attributes on which they depress.”

The study sought to understand how the attitudes of school administrators towards politics affected their implementation.

“Hiring is at the top of the list for something that directors do not want incursions or offenses,” said Nelson. “If a director cannot choose the teacher that he thinks he is the best, then he will have the impression of having lost control of his school to a large extent.”

The team noted that the opinions of directors of the directors on the system varied considerably, from very positive to very negative, according to their experience of the hiring of teachers through it, as well as the factors particular to their schools, their style of individual leadership and their favorite recruitment methods.

The directors who found the beneficial system said they appreciated its thoroughness and its capacity to reduce time in the filtering of less qualified candidates. However, 11 of the 15 directors with favorable views of the system declared that they also used hiring strategies that were outside the role envisaged for them in the centralized system, in particular using word of mouth to recruit candidates.

Those who had solid networking relationships with other directors told researchers that they often shared information on teachers highly qualified with each other, especially when they had to move instructors by compulsory reductions or restructuring.

People who had mixed or negative opinions said they wanted the district to provide details on the performance of candidates on assessments, as opposed to a list of those who have passed. Some directors have questioned the value of certain components – such as teaching a lesson simulation before specialists in the district detection compared to the interaction with the students of the ages they would teach – and if the process reliably predicted the capacity of candidates to provide quality education and effectively manage a classroom.

Some directors said they only relying on the centralized system and sanctioned techniques – which researchers have defined as strategies directly affiliated to the school district, such as the recruitment of teachers during fairs sponsored or through publications on the district website.

Those who asserted themselves in the recruitment of teachers considered the centralized system as one of the many recruitment tactics at their disposal, said Nelson. The highly assertive directors used on average four different recruitment and hiring strategies. However, those who were American Asian said they tended to use up to six different methods, the team noted.

“In accordance with research on glass cliffs – the theory according to which women and racial minorities are placed in a disproportionate way in leadership roles which are precarious or are confronted with greater challenges – we have found that most of the directors of American Asian origin of our sample were in the regions of the Los Angeles. teaching, “said Nelson. “Consequently, they may have estimated that they had to be more independent to fill these positions.”

Almost half of the sample directors used at least an unauthorized strategy, such as the publication of job advice such as Linkedin, by cultivating and taking advantage of links with local universities or by encouraging existing teachers to confront student-teaching students whom they could then recruit to hire, found the team.

“We found suggestive evidence that college and secondary directors tended to perceive teachers to hire as more difficult, and therefore they had the impression that they should be more creative or get out of the sanctioned process to meet the needs of their school staff,” said Nelson.

Although candidates can be disqualified according to their total score or their scores on individual evaluations, they can receive exemptions according to the judgment of specialists in the district detection or school directors seeking to hire these candidates. Directors who had solid links with the staff of the school district office sometimes operated these contacts during recruitment and hiring, said Nelson.

“However, other directors did not do so, either because they did not have these relationships or they felt uncomfortable to ask for exceptions,” said Nelson. “But it is not always the case that these directors requests a special treatment for a teacher he wants to hire. It is possible that the teacher passes the screening anyway, but they were trying to accelerate the process.”