No abstract

New teacher effectiveness measures have the potential to influence how principals hire teachers as they provide new and richer information about candidates to a traditionally information-poor process. This article examines how the hiring process is changing as a result of teacher evaluation reforms. Research Methods: Data come from interviews with more than 100 central office personnel and 76 principals in six urban school districts and two charter management organizations. These sites were systematically sampled based on the amount of time and resources devoted to creating data systems and implementing processes that allow principals access to teacher effectiveness data. In addition to the fieldwork, we also surveyed all principals in six of the eight systems. A total of 795 principals responded to the survey, with an overall response rate of 85%. Findings: The findings suggest that while teacher effectiveness data can be used to inform hiring decisions there is variation in how and the extent to which principals use these measures in hiring. This variation is explained by central office practices as they mediated how principals approached teacher effectiveness data in the hiring process, as well as individual principal characteristics such as principal knowledge and skills, perceived validity of data, and social capital. Implications for

Increasingly, states and districts are combining student growth measures with rigorous, rubric-aligned teacher observations in constructing teacher evaluation measures. Although the student growth or value-added components of these measures have received much research and policy attention, the results of this study suggest that the data generated by high-quality observation systems have potential to inform principals’ use of data for human capital decisions. Interview and survey data from six school districts that have recently implemented new evaluation systems with classroom observations provide evidence that principals tend to rely less on test scores in their human capital decisions. The consistency, transparency, and specificity of observation data may provide benefits for principals seeking to use these data to inform their decision making.

School districts increasingly push school leaders to utilize multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, such as observation ratings or value-added scores, in making talent management decisions, including teacher hiring, assignment, support, and retention, but we know little about the local conditions that promote or impede these processes. We investigate the barriers to principals’ use of teacher effectiveness measures in eight urban districts and charter management organizations that are investing in new systems for collecting such measures and making them available to school leaders and the supports central offices are building to help principals overcome those barriers. Interviews with more than 175 central and school leaders identify barriers in three main areas related to accessing measures, analyzing them, and taking action based on their analysis. Supports fall into four categories: professional development, connecting principals to sources of expertise, creating new structures or tools, and building a data use culture. Survey analysis suggests that indeed principals in high support systems perceive lower barriers to data use and report greater incorporation of teacher effectiveness measures into their talent management decisions.

No abstract