As the economy continues to falter, many school districts have been faced with staffing challenges. Teacher and staff layoffs abound, but in some cases a round of layoffs is followed by another practice: last-minute hiring. To some degree, late hiring can be considered an inevitability for schools. Administrators don’t always know for sure how many students will matriculate until school actually starts, and contentious budget issues add even more uncertainty.
However, though late hiring can be a sign of relative financial health for a school district, studies have shown that it can have a “detrimental effect both on teacher retention and student performance.” A recent study of Michigan teachers showed that educators hired after the beginning of the school year were twice as likely to leave the school and the teaching profession within one year. Furthermore, there is a financial cost to this high turnover rate. It is estimated that losing a teacher can cost a district between $5,000 and $18,000, depending on the district’s size.
Late hiring due to financial uncertainty has also led some school districts to rely on long-term substitute teachers to fill vacancies. This unfortunate but necessary practice of doing what must be done to get a “body in the room” can cause serious disruptions to school culture, educational quality, and student achievement. A 2010 study by Harvard’s Center for Educational Policy Research found that math teachers hired after the start of the school year performed less well on average than those hired before school began.
Some states and districts are beginning to take note of and address the issue. Last year, Delaware appointed a Teacher Hiring Task Force to study the problem of late hiring and make recommendations for improving practice. Based on these recommendations, Delaware lawmakers adopted a policy that would shift student counts for teaching funding to the spring of each year, instead of a head count taken at the end of September. This will mitigate financial uncertainty for schools, making late hiring less likely.
Louisiana is also taking steps to improve teacher hiring practices, running pilot projects in four districts to create a streamlined, online application process for candidates. Principals were also trained in how to “sell” their schools to candidates, and how to better screen candidates through effective interviewing techniques. Principal involvement has also been the key to streamlining the hiring process in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC school district. Rather than having a hefty pre-screening process take place all in the central office, creating a “bottleneck,” some of the pre-screening duties have been handed off to principals.
To read more, please visit http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/21/04hiring.h31.html?tkn=TYPF0GQsC%2B6y%2F3%2Fc9uuu%2Fk35wGNOyRq%2Fhmce&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2
