Despite the Los Angeles Unified School District's standardized screening system for vetting teachers,some school principals still rely on their own tactics to recruit applicants, even when they believe the system is beneficial, a new study found.
Implemented in 2013, the district-wide system - called the Multiple Measures Teacher Selection Process - includes a rigorous multipart assessment that aims to identify the best-qualified applicants for the district's 25,000 teaching positions. Candidates who pass all eight of the assessments along with background and credential checks are added to an eligibility list that is circulated to the principals of the district's more than 1,000 public schools, according to the study.
In interviews with 30 of these school principals, a team led by first author Jennifer L. Nelson, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found that those with positive or mixed views of the system exercised the most autonomy in recruiting prospective teachers. These principals said they often recruit candidates by word of mouth through teachers' networks, local universities' teacher education programs or based on other principals' recommendations.
Nelson and co-authors Paul Bruno, a professor in the department who has studied the system extensively, and doctoral student Marisol Jimenez conducted the research in partnership with the LA Unified School District. They interviewed principals about their perceptions of the screening system and the influence that the dynamics between principals and district officials have on teacher selection. The team published their findings in the journal American Educational Research Association Open.
Bruno found in two previous studies - including a 2019 review of the MMTSP co-written with Katharine O. Strunk of the University of Pennsylvania - that applicants' scores on the assessments were "meaningfully predictive of teachers' outcomes," suggesting that the process is effective in identifying the best qualified candidates.
"Adoption of these centralized, data-oriented human resource policies is gaining traction, especially in large urban districts across the country," Nelson said. "And this is because there is pretty compelling evidence about the efficacy of teachers based on the attributes on which they screen."
The study sought to understand how school administrators' attitudes toward the policy affected their implementation of it. "Hiring is at the top of the list for something principals don't want any incursions or infringements on," Nelson said. "If a principal can't choose the teacher they think is the best fit, then they'll feel like they've lost control over their school to a large extent."
The team found that principals' views of the system varied widely, from very positive to very negative, depending on their experience with hiring teachers through it, as well as factors particular to their schools, their individual leadership style and their preferred recruitment methods.
Principals who found the system beneficial said they appreciated its thoroughness and time-saving capacity in filtering out less-qualified applicants. However, 11 of the 15 principals with favorable views of the system said they also autonomously used hiring strategies that were outside the role envisioned for them in the centralized system, including using word-of-mouth to recruit candidates.
Those who had strong networking relationships with other principals told the researchers that they often shared information about highly qualified teachers with each other, particularly when they had to displace instructors through mandated downsizing or restructuring.
Individuals who had mixed or negative views said they wished the district provided them with details about applicants' performance on the assessments as opposed to only a list of those who passed. Some principals questioned the value of certain components - such as teaching a mock lesson before district screening specialists versus interacting with students the ages they would be teaching - and whether the process reliably predicted candidates' capability of delivering quality instruction and effectively managing a classroom.
Some principals said they relied solely on the centralized system and sanctioned techniques - which the researchers defined as strategies directly affiliated with the school district, such as recruiting faculty members at sponsored job fairs or through postings on the district's website.
Those who were assertive in recruiting teachers viewed the centralized system as being just one of many recruitment tactics available to them, Nelson said. Highly assertive principals used an average of four different recruitment and hiring strategies. However, those who were Asian American said they tended to use up to six different methods, the team found.
"Consistent with research on glass cliffs - the theory that women and racial minorities are disproportionately placed in leadership roles that are precarious or face greater challenges - we found that the bulk of the Asian American principals in our sample were in regions of the LA Unified School District that they perceived as having more teaching shortages," Nelson said. "Therefore, it could be that they felt that they had to be more autonomous to fill those positions."
Almost half of the principals in the sample used at least one unsanctioned strategy, such as posting positions on hiring boards like LinkedIn, by cultivating and leveraging connections with local universities or by encouraging existing faculty to take on student teachers whom they could then recruit to hire, the team found.
"We found some suggestive evidence that middle and high school principals tended to perceive teacher hiring as more challenging, and therefore they felt like they needed to be more creative or go outside the sanctioned process more often to meet their schools' staffing needs," Nelson said.
While applicants can be disqualified based on their total score or their scores on individual assessments, they can receive exemptions based on the judgment of district screening specialists or school principals seeking to hire these applicants. Principals who had strong connections with staff in the school district office sometimes leveraged these contacts during recruiting and hiring, Nelson said.
"However, other principals did not, either because they did not have these relationships or they felt uncomfortable asking for exceptions," Nelson said. "But it is not always the case that these principals are requesting special treatment for a teacher they want to hire. It is possible that the teacher would pass the screener anyway, but they were seeking to fast-track the process."
