At The Lens, part of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Paul Hill offers a model for finding existing star performers in underperforming urban school districts.
Every school district has teachers and administrators who are part of the problem but also teachers and administrators who are already or are very willing to be part of the solution. The question is, however, how can a new leader in a large, urban school district know who is who?
CRPE offers a five-step approach for CEOs, superintendents, or chief implementation officers to find hidden talent:
1. Announce an autonomy pilot (control of budgets, hiring, schedule, and professional development funds) for one in every ten district schools and see what individuals, including incumbent principals and teachers, apply.
2. Let those applicants interview one another about how they would use their autonomy and how that would raise instructional quality and student achievement. Select those that make the best case and admit them to the pilot.
3. Let the principals and teachers selected to lead schools in the autonomy pilot decide whether to stay in the district schools, seek charters, or go to work for CMOs that are looking for principals. Guarantee that those that stay in the district autonomy pilot can hire any teacher who will come to work for them. Interview those principals about why they chose the teachers they did and what others they considered seriously.
4. Repeat every year for three years, giving possible applicants for school autonomy the chance to meet with and shadow principals in charter schools or autonomous district schools.
5. Track autonomous schools’ student performance, applications for admission, workforce stability, and teacher absenteeism. Prune the dismal failures, including the teachers autonomous schools are trying to get rid of.
After four years, reform leaders should have a very good picture of the principal and teacher talent they have. From this pool, they can select principals for the toughest assignments or as the foundation for CMOs. The pool of teachers in autonomous schools will include teachers around whom strong school cultures can be built, and possible future principals.
None of this will eliminate the need to attract new talent from outside the district or train already existing faculty and staff, but it can prevent wholesale losses of talented people, and greatly increase the rate at which families have access to strong schooling options.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.crpe.org/thelens/conserving-principal-and-teacher-talent
