Public Impact

Recruitment

Recruiting for Hard-to-Staff Schools

By Sharon Kebschull Barrett; first published in School Administrator magazine. You know rock star teachers when you see them. They are capable of commanding attention day in and day out, and they motivate students to achieve well beyond standard expectations. They even help other teachers succeed.   So how can school districts attract them, especially to […]

How to Hire Great Teachers and Teacher-Leaders: Free Toolkits

In an Opportunity Culture, districts and schools offer new roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets and without forcing class-size increases. The new roles put districts in a much stronger position to hire great teachers—but only if they recruit and select well.

We’ve posted two new toolkits to make that work easier, walking human resources officers and principals through the steps to great hiring, informed by the experiences of early Opportunity Culture districts. These tools are useful for any district hiring teacher-leaders, team teachers, blended-learning teachers, elementary subject specialists, and advanced paraprofessional support—not just Opportunity Culture positions.

The Recruitment Toolkit, downloadable as a PDF, walks districts and schools through the major steps of a successful recruiting effort. It explains why districts that rely on passive strategies—expecting candidates to find out about available positions and apply—will not get the recruitment results they want.

The toolkit addresses key details, such as the timing of recruitment, which ideally begins each year no later than March, to attract a large pool of excellent candidates and capture their interest before they commit to other jobs. Strong recruitment enables districts to attract great candidates regionally, even nationally, who could be a perfect fit for Opportunity Culture or similar roles—including those not actively seeking a new job.

Once schools and districts have a pool of great candidates, what next?

The Teacher and Staff Selection Toolkit provides a four-step guide to help districts and schools select teachers and staff members from competitive talent pools. Districts that have created an Opportunity Culture have seen a surge of applications, even in high-poverty schools. This toolkit helps leaders adapt to a higher volume of applications and the opportunity that volume offers to become very selective in hiring.

The selection kit helps leaders screen and prioritize candidates for these new roles, which require new behaviors and skills beyond those needed in a one-teacher-one-classroom setting. Each step includes a set of considerations, action steps, and links to relevant tools and resources.

Recruit Great Teachers with Great Opportunities, 4 Key Steps

What brings excellent teachers in droves to apply for jobs in hard-to-staff schools? Project L.I.F.T. in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District started by offering a complete Opportunity Culture package of career advancement roles that let great teachers stay in the classroom, help more students, and collaborate with and lead peers. These roles provide significantly higher pay and offer on-the-job development to all teachers–within regular school budgets. With that package on offer, four key recruitment steps got teachers’ attention.

And so, in its second year of Opportunity Culture implementation in four schools, Project L.I.F.T. saw a strong uptick in both the quantity–more than 800 applications for 27 spots–and quality of applicants for teaching roles at schools that previously saw many positions go unfilled.

Dan Swartz, L.I.F.T.’s human capital strategies specialist, and L.I.F.T. Superintendent Denise Watts explain how they got there in a new vignette from Public Impact, Recruiting in an Opportunity Culture: Lessons Learned, with an accompanying video of principals and district leaders sharing how an Opportunity Culture attracts great teachers.

  • First, Swartz says, start early—by March, if not earlier, before the best teachers find jobs elsewhere.
  • Second, communicate clearly about the benefits—A complete package of sustainable career advancement opportunities is rare in education, and teachers won’t expect it. Districts must communicate the whole picture of opportunities, support, and pay.

Turnaround Principal Competencies A process for hiring the most skillful leaders for changing the fortunes of the most-troubled schools

By Lucy Steiner and Sharon Kebschull Barrett; first published in School Administrator magazine. When the Minneapolis Public Schools first set out to hire turnaround school principals, administrators followed their usual process — which focused largely on reputation and anecdotal support and considered mainly internal candidates. Yet success at the complicated task of turning around the […]