Education Week - March 16, 2016 - 6

Boston's Revamp of Teacher Hiring Sparks Gains, Costs
Study cites rise in 'excessed' teachers
By Stephen Sawchuk
The Boston district's move to begin
its hiring process earlier and to allow
principals more say over who they
bring on board has resulted in a stronger and more diverse pool of teacher
candidates, a new analysis concludes.
But the shift has also bumped up
against some of the same challenges
that have complicated similar efforts elsewhere-notably a costly
pool of teachers without permanent
positions, says the report from the
Boston Municipal Research Bureau,
an independent nonprofit organization that reviews city policies.
Teacher hiring, once a dusty and
ill-understood corner of the teacherquality pipeline, is receiving renewed
attention as more districts nationwide
struggle to bring on talent during a
period of regional shortages and to
address a mismatch between a mostly
white, female teaching force and an
ever more diverse student population.
Boston's efforts were influenced by
research from the teacher-training
and advocacy group TNTP. In reports dating from the early 2000s,
that group suggested that large
urban districts often lost out on
qualified candidates by waiting too
long to bring them on board.
"I don't want to overstate it and
say it's easy, but it is doable in a
pretty short period of time," said
Dan Weisberg, the CEO of TNTP,
about hiring earlier in the year. "It's
an operational improvement that
just about any district can make

and see big progress in one year."
The Boston district's concurrent
move to a "mutual consent" system,
in which teachers can't be placed
without agreement from school leaders, follows similar moves in Baltimore, Denver, and New York, among
other locations.

Earlier Hiring
As recently as 2013-14, Boston's hiring was a highly centralized process,
begun each cycle with the district
sorting out voluntary teacher transfers and placing "excessed" teachers-
those returning from maternity leave,
for example, or displaced because a
school decided to eliminate a program.
Such placement decisions were largely
based on seniority, and some teachers
without positions were ultimately
"force placed" by the central office before schools got to consider hires from
outside the school system.
The process could take well into
the summer, and although "open
positions" that principals could fill
at their own discretion were technically allowed under the teacher contract, few schools used them.
In 2014, the district began a
human capital initiative to improve
its hiring process, an effort supported by some $25 million in donations from local business and philanthropic groups. In essence, it now
posts all positions by March 1 and
opens them to candidates inside and
outside of the school system.
In 2014-15, the first year of the

initiative, some 63 percent of new
teachers were hired before July 1;
the prior year, only 9 percent were,
according to the BMRB report. And
teachers hired before June last year
were about twice as likely to receive
top teacher-evaluation marks compared to those hired in later months.
And finally, the district didn't require any principal or teacher to
agree to any placement he or she
didn't want.
"We did not force-place last year at
all," said Emily Kalejs Qazilbash, the
district's assistant superintendent of
human capital. "We do not think that
it creates a strong school culture."
On the other hand, the pool of
excessed teachers without placements has increased. The district
began both of the last two school
years with more than 400 teachers
without positions. (Those figures
dropped to below 100 via retirements, terminations, and other exits
by the end of each year.)
That's a red flag for the city's
teachers' union.
The excessed teachers "have all
been recruited, are proficient and
exemplary, trained under school district professional development and
vetted by colleagues who now reject
them," protested Richard Stutman,
the president of the Boston Teachers
Union. "Doesn't the school district
have any faith in its own system?"
And the pool is costly. In all, the hiring reforms cost $10 million in 2014-15
and $13 million in 2015-16, and salaries and benefits for teachers in the
excess pool were by far its largest
cost. (The district says that the external support from philanthropies

doesn't pay for salary expenses.)
The excessed teachers are still involved in instructional duties, such as
academic enrichment and tutoring,
and they are even evaluated annually. They also don't fit a single profile.
Some, Qazilbash said, haven't been on
the job market in a while and need to
update their résumés. Some aren't in
licensing fields with high demand. And
some have poor evaluation ratings.

We did not force-place
[teachers] last year at
all. We do not think
that it creates a strong
school culture."
EMILY KALEJS QAZILBASH
Boston Public Schools

The teachers' union, however, contends that teachers in the pool tend
to be more senior and therefore more
expensive for the district. And Stutman pushed back on a finding in
the BMRB report that some of the
excessed teachers have not made an
effort to apply for open positions. "I
think it's true that some of the teachers grew frustrated and didn't apply.
That's not something we condone,"
Stutman said. "But the vast, overwhelming majority of these teachers have gone out for interview after

interview and haven't gotten jobs.
Older equals costlier equals rejection, and the school district is looking
to get rid of the state tenure law to
move these people out."
To the latter point, there is no current mechanism in Massachusetts
state law or in the teacher contract
by which teachers who remain in
the excess pool can ultimately be let
go, as is the case now in Denver and
the District of Columbia.

Questions on Diversity
The district and union also disagree on the extent to which the
hiring reforms have diversified the
composition of the teacher workforce.
The report credits the early hiring
system for bringing in more teachers of color, many of whom might
have been lost to charter and private
schools.
But Stutman contends that the
teachers in the excess pool are more
likely to be black. The union has
filed open-records requests for a demographic breakdown; neither the
report nor the district provided one.
The district and the union are now
renegotiating the city teachers' contract, which expired this year. They
have completed two bargaining sessions, but both declined to comment
on whether hiring practices could be
revisited during the process.
Coverage of policy efforts to improve
the teaching profession is supported by
a grant from the Joyce Foundation, at
www.joycefdn.org/Programs/Education.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.

Amid Scrutiny of School-Based Officers, Atlanta to Hire Own Force
Associated Press
One of Georgia's largest school
systems plans to end its school
security contract with the Atlanta police department and form
its own security team that is
"aligned with its social-emotional
learning approach," the district has
announced.

The Atlanta district is moving
ahead with the plan despite warnings from the city Mayor Kasim
Reed that the move could have
"catastrophic consequences" for
children.
The school system is taking steps
to form its own police force and to
replace the city police officers currently patrolling schools with of-

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ficers directly accountable to the
district.
In a letter sent Feb. 22, the district's operations chief, Larry
Hoskins, notified the city that Atlanta schools would terminate the
contract effective June 30.
Reed said recently that the school
system's decision to end its contract
with the city police department was
"beyond" him.
"Everyone knows APS is independent. They're expressing their independence. But I think they're going
to make the children of the Atlanta
school system far less safe," Reed
said.
District officials suggested earlier
this year that the in-house department could cost more than the district's annual $5.6 million contract
with the city, The Atlanta JournalConstitution reported. But district
spokeswoman Jill Strickland said
last week that the new department
would not actually cost more, and it
was unclear why the cost estimates
changed, the newspaper reported.
On its website, the district announced plans to hire 55 school
resource officers as well as a chief
of police, a compliance officer, and
a number of other ranking officers,

with a new force expected to be in
place at the start of the new school
year in August. The district's move
comes as schools around the country
are re-evaluating the relationships
between police and their schools.
Some larger districts prefer to run
their own police forces, saying that
such an arrangement gives them
more oversight over how officers
and resources are used in their
schools. Many large districts, including Los Angeles, have independent
police forces.

Video Captures Incidents
School-based officers have faced
additional scrutiny recently after
videos of incidents of harsh student treatment by school officers
surfaced on social media. In Baltimore, which has a district-run force,
two officers face criminal charges
after one of them was captured recently on video slapping and kicking a teenage boy outside a school. A
video last year of a sheriff's deputy
violently removing a South Carolina
teenager from her desk sparked a
state-run task force to re-examine
school discipline and a move by
some lawmakers to rethink the

causes for student arrests.
Civil rights advocates have used
both incidents to call for more
sweeping changes, including fewer
police in schools and more oversight over how officers interact
with students.
In a 2014 civil rights guidance on
school discipline, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education put
districts on notice that they are responsible for ensuring that officers
in their schools respect the rights of
their students, whether or not they
are employed by an outside force.
Atlanta police spokeswoman
Elizabeth Espy said in a statement
that the department will work with
the school system to make sure the
change is a smooth one, The Journal-Constitution reported.
"The Atlanta police department's
priority is to protect city residents
and visitors, which includes students in the Atlanta public schools,"
Espy said. "We will work with APS
to ensure a smooth transition so
that student safety continues to be
our focus, regardless of our physical
presence in the schools."
Staff Writer Evie Blad contributed to this
report.

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Education Week - March 16, 2016

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