Certify, Blink, Hire: An Examination of the Process and Tools of Teacher Screening and Selection

Abstract

While much has been written about the process of employee selection in other occupations, there has been little discussion on the process and tools of teacher selection and why it occurs as it does. To understand this question, we conduct an extensive literature review in which we compare teacher hiring with hiring in other occupations. We also present findings from a study of school principals and district administrators in a midsized Florida school district. Our results suggest that the screening and selection process in teaching is not much different from occupations that have similar levels of job complexity. A theory emerges from the review and analysis that explains the process and reliance on certain tools in teacher hiring. The theory focuses especially on the costs of various tools and processes, the types and quality of information that come from them, and the distinctive features of teaching as an occupation and schools as organizations.

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Erratum

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the United States Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences. We would also like to thank Robert Floden, David Monk, and Andrew Shouse for their comments on an earlier version of this article. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Notes

1. We choose to focus on screening and selection because they are the two steps of the process that are primarily under the control of school and district administrators. Recruitment of teachers involves district, state, and federal actors. The job offer is usually a formality overseen by the district.

2. See Liu & Johnson (2006) for a discussion of the importance of the P-O fit in the context of the retention of new teachers.

3. See Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Pease (1983) for models of the organization of teaching.

4. We identified eight studies in our review of research that provided data that was relevant to our study. Seven of the studies obtained data from surveys of principals and school administrators who had responsibility for teacher hiring in their districts. One study compared the responses of undergraduate students, teacher educators, and principals. The surveys sought respondents' views about the relative importance of certain characteristics and other attributes desired in an applicant. None of the studies focused on screening or selection tools. Instead, the researchers included a mix of characteristics and tools in the surveys. For this paper, we draw only on the information related to our discussion of selection tools.

5. Studies have considered candidate age and maturity, which are arguably related to experience. Young and Voss (1986) find that in simulated settings there is a preference for younger candidates, while Young and Pounder (1985) find that age is not a major influence for decisions made on the basis of interviews. As a result, Pounder (1987) indicates that the results are mixed regarding the role of candidate age.

6. Some principals who were interviewed in the first year retired or left in the second year. The principals who replaced them were included in the second interview.

7. Principals in our study did not technically “hire” the teachers; however in practice, principals' recommendations to the district were rarely overridden.

8. The national data on principals comes from the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) as reported in the Digest of Education Statistics (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004).

9. In order to test whether the interviewed principals were representative of the district, we compared some of the measured characteristics of the schools (percent of students who are minority, percent FRL, Title I status) and principals (race and gender) with those of the interviewed principals. No statistically significant differences were found with one exception: the percentage of principals in the sample who were black was roughly half of the percentage black in the district as a whole.

10. In their study of hiring in four states, Liu and Johnson (2006) find that 45.9 percent of teachers are hired directly by the school principal, 23.2 percent are hired directly by the district, and the rest are hired through a hybrid process in which the district oversees the organization of materials and principals oversee the selection of teachers.

11. While there is an ample supply of teachers in the sample district, this does not mean that individual schools were unconstrained. There were opportunities for within-district transfers that affected the supply of teachers in individual schools. As one principal of a Title I school noted, “we see even our very, very most effective [teachers] pick up and go to one of those [high-SES] schools … and then they're there for a long time.” Conversely, a principal of a high-SES school noted that “I have none that transfer out of here to another area school. I am fortunate … it just happens to do with being a big, new beautiful school.”

12. All of the principals in the study reported including teachers in the hiring process as members of the hiring team and as interviewers. Principals also all reported that while they considered the recommendations of teachers in the hiring decision, they were responsible for the final decision.

13. We presented our preliminary results to the school district superintendent and to principals at a monthly district meeting. Five principals and district administrators, commenting on our initial draft of this study and/or our presentation of the initial results, indicated that it was a valid depiction of the district's hiring process and of how principals consider the various characteristics and tools. No principals or administrators indicated any disagreement.

14. The latter two were excluded deliberately from the prespecified list because of their vagueness. The resume includes information about experience, college grades, and many other factors. However, principals often responded with general references to the resume rather than specific parts. A similar statement can be made about education; in that case, our prespecified list breaks this down into grades, university attended, and certification, rather than the more general term “education.”

15. The difference is greater when considering annual earnings because teachers have most of the summers off and go unpaid or opt for 9-month salaries to be spread over 12 months.