Other cities outstrip Philadelphia in recruiting, hiring teachers
by Betsey Useem
The Chicago public school system has accelerated its hiring of teachers, allowing schools to open with fewer vacancies. Shown here is teacher Olga Nunez-Johnson at Spry Elementary.
Despite a wind-chill factor of 25 below zero, more than 1,000 prospective teachers attended a job fair run by the Chicago Public Schools last winter. The number of job applicants per opening in Chicago has increased from 2.5 per position in 2002 to 10 candidates per slot since 2006. Since the system now expedites the hiring and assignment of teachers, schools open with few teacher vacancies.
In Boston, there is an average of 38 licensed applicants per new teacher opening (candidates can apply for more than one opening), and teachers are typically hired by the end of June.
In New York City, there are six applicants for every opening. As in Boston and Chicago, teacher vacancies have decreased.
By contrast, in Philadelphia, only two to three candidates per position applied for the 2008-09 school year. Hundreds of teachers were hired as late as the end of August or early September, and school opened with 146 teacher vacancies, almost three times the number just two years earlier.
In the last decade, school superintendents in Chicago, Boston, New York City, and several other urban districts have radically altered how they recruit, hire, and assign new classroom teachers after making reform of their human resource systems a top priority.
While none have resolved all their staffing problems, leaders in these districts succeeded in upgrading the number and quality of applicants so they could be more selective in hiring. Studies in Chicago and New York City link the improvement in the academic credentials of the teachers to gains in student achievement. These cities have also narrowed the gap in teacher qualifications between low- and high-poverty schools.
In a series of 2008 reports, researchers at the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Wisconsin described how human resources departments in New York, Boston, Chicago, Long Beach, Calif., and Fairfax County, Va. attracted a larger and more talented pool of applicants.
According to report author Allen Odden, these districts “figured out how to open school in the fall with virtually no teacher and principal vacancies.”
The set of reforms included:
- A school-based teacher selection process that “gave schools the sole power to make the final decision on which teachers [both new and transferring] to hire.”
- A significant reduction in veteran teachers’ seniority-based right to transfer to other schools.
- An earlier and faster hiring process that enabled districts to snare promising prospects before they signed on with other districts.
- The use of electronic tools to automate the hiring and school assignment process.
- Development of new and more selective talent pools through agreements with national organizations, particularly The New Teacher Project and Teach for America, and through the creation of homegrown teacher residency programs.
The researchers also found that superintendents in these cities have typically been in their position for six or more years and are backed by powerful city mayors.
“The reality in urban districts [is that] union-management collaboration is often essential for moving forward,” noted CPRE researcher Julia Koppich.
Philadelphia’s district-union relations, however, have always tended to be more antagonistic than cooperative.
While Philadelphia has not kept pace with the advances made in these other cities, the District did make some progress between 2002 and 2007 in revamping its hiring and assignment processes.
Under the Paul Vallas administration, the District largely replaced “emergency-certified” teachers with “intern-certified” teachers – mostly from Teach for America and The New Teacher Project – who typically had much stronger academic backgrounds.
Moreover, a 2007 report by Research for Action found that between 2002 and 2006, the percentage of new teachers in Philadelphia who were certified rose from 47 percent to over 92 percent, and teacher vacancies dropped.
The 2004 contract between the District and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers allowed for school-based selection of all new teachers, all teachers hired in newly created schools, and half of all other vacancies.
Comments (7)
Submitted by chattyC (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 22:11.
Well who would want to work under these conditons that she is setting forth? I've been with this district for almost 30 years and have never seen such a blatant attempt to rip things apart, amd demoralize professional people.
Ackerman Lays Out 'Reform' Plan
In s series of meetings with newspaper editorial boards, Arlene Ackerman laid out her reform plan:
Performance Pay
Full site-based hiring of teachers
Adding 24 minutes to the school day
Assigning teachers wherever the district chooses
Submitted by chattyC (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 22:19.
A significant reduction in veteran teachers’ seniority-based right to transfer to other schools >>
Has anyone ever read the numerous PFT studies that have consistenly shown that veteran teachers enjoy working as close to home as possible, with a friendly and supportive staff and administrator? WHY do we keep reading this same line over and over, that veteran teachers only want "good" schools? It's a figment of the imagination of those who want to get rid of the seniority system, which would be only the beginning of mass chaos, and favoritism.
Submitted by chattyC (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 22:30.
When schools vote for full school based site selection they are signing themslves out of a fair system, that has worked for over 30 years. The ss based committees are a small group of like minded people, who sit around a table and decide if someone fits the "mold" of their school.
These same people sometimes volunteer out of the school themselves, so why does the "philosophy" of the school really matter, when all you really need is a qualified teacher.? The principal has ALWAYS retained the option of writing someone out, so why is such a radical shift needed?. Partial site selection is a decent option, and scrapping the seniority system is going to create a lot of discord and resentment.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 09:22.
chattyC, teachers want to work close to home, right? But this a problem because few of our best teachers live in our worst neighborhoods. The result is that the worst neighborhoods continue to get the worst teachers. In a sense, "close to home" is just a euphemism for "good schools" or good neighborhoods. If you were right that seniority isn't a problem, then we wouldn't have the serious inequitable teacher distribution that plagues our district.
Submitted by Ron Whitehorne on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 10:23.
ChattyC says the seniority based transfer system has worked well for 30 years. Worked well for whom? Not for those students in schools that are plagued with high teacher turnover and higher numbers of unqualified teachers. This problem needs to be faced squarely. Of course it is true, as the PFT has repeatedly pointed out, that schools in the poorest neighborhoods that have good leadership attract and retain experienced teachers But simply pointing this out doesn't solve the problem. We all know that effective school leaders don't grow on trees. There is a need for measures that can address the teacher quality problem in low achieving schools.
CEO Ackerman, based on recent interviews with the Inquirer, seems bent on assigning teachers centrally regardless of seniority or their wishes. She's indicated that she may invoke powers under the state takeover law to act unilaterally. This would be a big mistake, further demoralizing teachers and undermining retention efforts.
To counter this the PFT needs to put forward a program of incentives that can attract effective teachers to underserved schools and could also, in and of themselves, support higher student achievement. Lower class size, example.
The debate over site based selection versus a seniority based transfer system is an important one, but it's unclear even if there was full site based selection that this would solve the teacher quality/equity problem. Most teachers would be inclined to apply at those schools that have positive repuations. These schools would get the pick of the litter, the other schools would scramble for what is left. To preserve some degree of choice for teachers and address the inequities in quality a robust incentives program is needed.
Submitted by chattyC (not verified) on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 18:38.
I say it's wokred for 30 years because I've heard accounts from folks slightly older than I (Ted Kirsch's account for example) on what it was like when there WAS no seniority system It was pure favoritism and nepotism, and this not good any way you slice it, I am however getting used to partial site selection which I think is a good compromise.
If a principal (or committee) can choose a certain percentage of teachers, WHY is it necessary to choose ALL of your teachers, and the notion that veteran teachers should be given the same status as newly appointed college grads, is preposterous. Hey, why not sign away ALL of our rights at the same time? I think Jordan is spot on about this, and ever time a school votes for full site selection, it's another nail in the coffin.
I'm not in a SS postion, and when I go down to choose a school, it is an orderly process, based on your seniority- simple and clear cut, with no bad feelings or resentment toward anyone else.
Submitted by chattyC (not verified) on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 18:54.
Submitted by Ron Whitehorne on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 10:23.
ChattyC says the seniority based transfer system has worked well for 30 years. Worked well for whom? Not for those students in schools that are plagued with high teacher turnover and higher numbers of unqualified teachers >RW
It is a FAIR system for staff, and we as working adults are not always talking "about the children" (this is sometimes a divisive term and tactic). If I was hired in March of 2007 and someone else in Feb of the same year, that person gets first pick of available schools. Not everyone raises their hand to teach at Central or Masterman for example, that's a fallacy. However, wouldn't you rather teach in a school that has a reputation for being relatively safe and orderly? Most people would.
I do agree with Whitehorn on incentives to teach at hard to staff schools- definitely. Incentives are a postive route, and perhaps a veteran teacher looking ahead toward retirement is looking for an incentive too. For some reason "veteran teacher" is now a bad word, and how did we come to that?
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