A new study by Brian Jacob and colleagues examines the relationship between teacher hiring data and subsequent teacher performance in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS).
Analysts focused on information gathered between 2011 and 2013 through TeachDC, the district’s centralized application process that collects data on applicants’ education history, employment experience, and eligibility for tenure (the study includes over seven thousand applicants). TeachDC winnows down applicants based on their performance on subject-specific assessments, interviews, and teaching auditions. Those who pass all three stages are put in the recommended pool to be seen by principals (though new hires can also be hired outside the pool). Data also included IMPACT, D.C.’s teacher evaluation system, for all district teachers between 2011–12 and 2013–14.
There are four key findings. First, applicants with no prior teaching experience are less likely to be hired by DCPS schools than those with prior experience. Second, teachers with better academic credentials (e.g., ACT or SAT scores) appear to be no more or less likely to be hired. Third, for those who are hired, achievement measures (undergraduate GPA, SAT and ACT scores, and college selectivity) and some screening measures (such as applicants’ performance on mock teaching lessons) mostly did not predict hiring outcomes, but were all nonetheless positively related to performance. (Those with graduate degrees have higher performance scores as well—contrary to the findings of other studies). Fourth, the three application scores were also positive predictors of teacher performance.
Applicants who are hired by DCPS do tend to have higher average predicted performance, though there are also many applicants who are not hired but whose predicted performance exceeds the average of those who are. Analysts find that principals appear not to pay much heed to the discrete information gathered in the hiring process beyond the recommendation for hiring applicants by simply placing them in the recommendation pool. That’s a mistake—there is other powerful information in the hiring database. Explaining this to principals and encouraging them to better leverage the information could do even more to usher highly effective teachers into classrooms.
SOURCE: Brian Jacob, Jonah E. Rockoff, Eric S. Taylor, Benjamin Lindy, and Rachel Rosen, "Teacher Applicant Hiring and Teacher Performance: Evidence from DC Public Schools," NBER (March 2016).
