For all the talk about the importance of recruiting the most talented teachers to our schools, there’s surprisingly little data about whether the tools districts use to vet candidates can actually predict anything about outcomes later down the road. This study by Dan Goldhaber and colleagues explores the predictive validity of hiring rubrics used in Spokane Public Schools. Teacher candidates in Spokane go through three steps before being hired: First they are pre-screened based on a rubric that assesses their experience and skills. The applicants who pass are then evaluated by additional screeners and principals using a more detailed evaluation rubric that assesses would-be teachers on ten criteria, including certification, training, classroom management, instructional skills, interpersonal skills, etc. Those results are then used to select candidates for in-person interviews. Analysts compared results from hired teachers to those not hired but employed elsewhere in the state. They merged a variety of teacher demographic and outcome data with the hiring data and found that the screening tools predict teacher value added in student achievement, as well as teacher attrition. Specifically, a one-standard-deviation increase in the score on the more comprehensive tool is associated with approximately a 0.07 standard deviation increase in math achievement, up to a 0.05 standard deviation bump in reading, and a decrease in attrition by roughly 2.5 percentage points. Of the subcomponents on the rubric, a few areas have the strongest relationship to teacher effectiveness: They include classroom management for both reading and math—and, for math only, it’s instructional skills, depth and quality of training, and whether the teacher is willing to learn new concepts and procedures (what they call “flexibility”). Certification and education background have a much weaker relationship to effectiveness. Keep in mind that results might not generalize to other districts. That said, the report suggests that we can indeed improve the quality of the teacher workforce through more effective hiring practices, and that includes using screening tools.
SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, and Nick Huntington-Klein, “Screen Twice, Hire Once: Assessing the Predictive Validity of Teacher Selection Tools,” Center for Education Data & Research, Working Paper 2014-9 (2014).
