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Going to Scale with Smart Systems: VUE Number 28, Summer 2010
School districts are starting to respond to the need for high-quality teaching at scale by seeking outside partnerships and better data in order to build comprehensive human capital development systems.
In their article “Human Capital Management: A New Approach for Districts” in the Summer 2008 issue of Voices in Urban Education, our colleagues David Sigler and Marla Ucelli-Kashyap presented a comprehensive vision of human capital management for school districts. They argued that school district leaders must reorganize to make human capital development central to their work.
But they also noted that districts can’t make this transition alone: “A district serious about managing human capital effectively must seek outside sources of expertise and build or augment key partnerships to help them fill in the gaps” (p. 11).
Last year, as part of our sixth Emerging Knowledge Forum – a cross-sector convening to share best thinking and practice on creating whole systems of successful schools – and subsequent data collection, we focused on how two sites, Boston and New Orleans, approached human capital development. Education leaders in these cities are acknowledging what is clear from research: teachers are the single most important school-level factor in improving students’ learning. In both cities, key partner organizations have helped to prioritize the recruitment, acquisition, and, to some extent, the development of new educators.
These partnerships have involved partners in functions that have been traditionally the exclusive domain of district employees and have helped school systems develop their capacity, offer flexibility, and improve instruction. Other aspects of human capital development, however – evaluation and professional development, among other areas – remain, for the most part, in the traditional control of the school system. In this article, we describe the systems in more detail and discuss the implications for going to scale with a comprehensive approach to human capital development.
The Human Capital Context in New Orleans after Katrina
After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) took control of more than 100 Orleans Parish schools deemed “failing schools” and operated them under the authority of a Recovery School District (RSD), which reopened some of these schools and left others closed or converted them to charter schools. Currently, there are thirty-seven charter schools under the authority of RSD and thirty-three schools directly run by RSD. Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB; also known as New Orleans Public Schools) now operates four schools and has authority over twelve charter schools, while BESE has authority over two charter schools in New Orleans.
Over 4,000 teachers were laid off following the storm when schools were removed from the oversight of OPSB (BCG 2007) and the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) lost its power to collectively bargain after the storm. While schools or school systems can establish agreements with UTNO, there are no formal contracts between them at this time, and many long-time members of the union rank and file are working in independent charter schools and in both RSD and OPSB.
The Human Capital Context in Boston
The Boston Public Schools (BPS) enrolls 56,340 students in 135 schools and employs nearly 5,365 professional educators (teachers and administrators; BPS 2010b). Efforts to revamp human resources began under Superintendent Tom Payzant, and continued under the Carol Johnson administration’s “Acceleration Agenda” (Towery, Salim & Homm 2009). In 2004, BPS targeted the schedule for teacher hiring, guidelines for teacher quality and recruiting for diversity, and key content areas (Archibald 2008), which led to changes in the teacher contract negotiated with the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) in 2006-2007.1
BPS has a centralized recruitment effort, but a decentralized hiring process. The human resources department recruits candidates, targeting minority candidates and high-need content areas. It identifies a pool of teachers from the applicants; then a school site council, led by the principal and including teachers and parents,2 decides on the specific skill set needed for that particular school. The site council does the interviewing and hiring. Other agreements with the BTU have helped move up the hiring timeline so outside candidates can be considered as early as February of the school year preceding their employment. In the case of high-need areas, BPS can actually guarantee a promising candidate a contract prior to the formal hiring process, an option that has been in place since 2005. The contract between BTU and BPS will be renegotiated in 2010, and prominent voices are calling for additional changes related to teacher hiring and evaluation (Vaznis 2010).
Acquisition of High-Quality Educators
Acquiring high-quality educators involves recruitment, selection, hiring, and induction. In some school systems, these functions are typically led by the human resources office, and selection and hiring are rules that are governed by the collective bargaining contract. In both New Orleans and Boston, new organizations are taking on some of these traditional functions.
New Orleans: A Focus on Recruitment
In the years since Katrina, New Orleans has, through a concentrated effort on recruitment, moved from considerable teacher shortages to a thriving supply of teachers coming from traditional and alternative routes.
The quantity of teacher candidates throughout all New Orleans systems – RSD, OPSB, and charters – is more than adequate for the city’s staffing needs. National alternative route programs such as Teach for America and Teach NOLA (an initiative of the New Teacher Project) have taken a leading role in recruitment in New Orleans and have attracted national talent to the city, particularly to traditional and charter schools within RSD.
The programs supplying teachers have internally developed parameters for identifying candidates who will be successful in the classroom and, in some instances, in supporting teachers and monitoring their performance and improvement once they are placed in a school. Site-based selection of teachers is present across all systems, resulting in considerable competition across schools for the most talented teachers. Concurrently, RSD is providing training to principals in how to adequately identify, select, and retain teachers who are a good fit for their building.
Boston: An Inside-Outside Strategy to Address Supply and Demand Mismatches
Teach for America has also partnered with Boston, with twenty candidates placed in the 2009-2010 school year. But a key piece of BPS’s human capital focus has been the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR). BTR’s mission is to recruit, prepare, and sustain excellent teachers in and for Boston’s public schools. BTR prepared over 300 BPS teachers between 2003 and 2010.
BTR was started in 2003 as a response to heavy teacher turnover and a shortage of specialists and educators of color. As a district leader told us,
There are lots of universities here and we have strong partnerships with some of them… [but] there is a very large supply and demand mismatch. We don’t need who they are training.
BTR is housed at the local education fund, the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), though the director and staff work closely with BPS human resources, teaching and learning, and professional development staff.
BPE and BPS leadership deliberately designed BTR as a “one foot in, one foot out” model (Childress, Marietta & Suchman 2008). As one respondent said, “[We] didn’t want to put it in the district because [we] didn’t think it would have a chance to grow, take risks, try things out.” Another told us,
It is hard to be innovative if you are fully inside the district. BPE has worked in the past by piloting something, then handing it over to BPS. This is really a BPS program managed within BPE.
The thirteen-month program is modeled on a medical residency program, combining practical training with rigorous coursework. During their preparation year, residents receive an $11,400 stipend to help defray living expenses. Tuition is $10,000, but that is immediately offset by a $10,000 loan. If the candidate successfully completes the residency and teaches in BPS for three years, the loan is completely forgiven.
Each resident is matched with an active mentor teacher; they work side by side in the classroom four days per week for a full school year. Residents participate in a specialized curriculum tailored to BPS’s guidelines on the dimensions of effective teaching on Fridays, after school, and in summer sessions before and after the school year. Residents graduate from the program with a Massachusetts Initial Teacher License in their primary content area and a master’s degree in education awarded by the University of Massachusetts–Boston. They also work toward dual licensure in special education.
Overall, we found that BTR has successfully recruited and retained teachers in the unmet areas of special education, English language learning, math, and science. In its first five cohorts, over half of all BTR residents have been people of color and over half of middle and high school residents teach in the areas of math and science. In 2008, BTR had trained over 60 percent of the school system’s new math and science teachers (BTR n.d.).
Many respondents suggested that BTR did a good job of preparing teachers to be part of BPS. Residents reported that they felt ready to be teachers in BPS; as one told us,
We have been here almost nine months and we are ready. By June, we’ll be even more ready. I feel prepared. I feel capable and qualified.
The principals we spoke to said they appreciated the expertise of teachers coming from BTR. Residents also cited a number of advantages of BTR, including being specifically prepared to teach in BPS and being taught by active teachers and faculty who were involved in writing the BPS curriculum. As one resident put it,
BTR uses people who have been in the classroom as instructors; they’re not just talking about theory. We can glean from their wisdom and knowledge strategies to use in the classroom and practical skills.
Teacher Development
Teacher development involves initial placement, mentoring and support, evaluation, and professional development and is tied to ideas about what makes an effective teacher. In New Orleans, each of the alternative-route teacher suppliers has internally defined methods of identifying people who have the characteristics of being an effective teacher.
BPS has adopted a set of “dimensions of effective teaching,” including areas such as equity and high expectations, professionalism, and content knowledge. Our informants told us that these dimensions were developed in part from BTR’s efforts to identify the competencies they wanted to develop in residents. The induction seminars for new teachers are organized around the dimensions of effective teaching. Also, in a negotiated agreement with the Boston Teachers Union, teacher evaluation in BPS is linked to the dimensions of effective teaching.
New Orleans: Uneven Quality of Professional Development
Given the influx of new talent into New Orleans, charter management organizations, reform support organizations, and alternative route programs are beginning to play an increased role in developing and retaining high-quality teachers and administrators. A growing number of professional development supports, including coaching, content support, and leadership development, are provided by alternative-route providers working in partnership with the various school systems. 
Alternative-route programs also have evaluative systems, which include ongoing data collection and feedback, to determine if their teachers and administrators are on track to meet their goals. This is not tied to formal evaluation from a school or district.
OPSB, which has the benefits of being smaller in scale, composed of schools that have a history of being relatively successful, and staffed with a greater number of veteran teachersand administrators, was described as having a more comprehensive system of supports, with site-based, data-driven professional development that is linked to observation, evaluation, and support. Some schools in Orleans Parish are participating in the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), a national initiative that provides a comprehensive process of ongoing teacher evaluation that is focused on increasing excellence in teaching. Locally, TAP is led by the Louisiana Department of Education. Participating schools must voluntarily commit to a more rigorous process of improvement. The program places teacher leaders in schools across all systems in Orleans Parish that provide school-based, job-embedded professional development for teachers through a coaching, feedback, and evaluation model. TAP was widely seen by teachers as a promising initiative, and its presence in New Orleans is growing.
Professional development in RSD was described as being repetitive and not designed to address teacher needs and varying levels of experience. Some teachers we spoke with did commend the United Teachers of New Orleans for providing meaningful professional development that met their needs. But in general, when teachers and principals noted instances of effective professional development, it was developed and implemented internally in the schools, based on teacher needs, or with the assistance of partner organizations.
Among charter schools, there is a greater variety in the content and types of teacher supports because development opportunities are provided at the discretion of each school. In addition to traditional after-school and summer workshop opportunities, much school-based professional development tended to provide either formal or informal opportunities for teachers (usually of the same grade level) to meet during the school day to discuss practice issues and share lessons.
Many respondents felt that, with the possible exception of some charter and OPSB schools, teachers and leaders overall are not getting the level of support they need either from administrators or the system at large. There is a challenge across systems in providing professional development that is responsive to teacher needs. New teachers were of particular concern in a system and environment that even veterans acknowledge as being consistently challenging.
Boston: The Challenge of Linking Professional Development to School and Educator Improvement
One of BPS’s “Seven Essentials for Whole School Improvement” is to “Invest in professional development to improve instruction.” The district is addressing this essential in several ways. For new teachers, the state of Massachusetts requires an induction program to move from initial licensure to professional licensure. BPS had nominally fulfilled this requirement for several years, but in 2005-2006 the district began implementing a much more intensive support system.3 Centrally, the BPS human resources department and the Office of Teaching and Learning each have dedicated three staff members to be part of a new teacher support team – a central point of contact to help new teachers navigate BPS from the time they are hired through their first year in the system. All new teachers take part in an initial three-day induction program and are offered the opportunity to take part in new teacher seminars throughout their first year of teaching.
Every teacher new to BPS has a mentor; teachers with no teaching experience get the most intensive support. They are assigned to “new teacher developers” – teachers who are completely released from teaching duties and who are paid 5 percent more to mentor new teachers. Each new teacher developer has about fourteen new teacher mentees. Other new teachers receive support from veteran teachers in their schools. Centrally, there is particular focus on schools that hire a large proportion of new teachers.
Evidence suggests that the new teacher developers and other new teacher supports have been successful in increasing retention of new teachers. In fact, BTR graduates are being retained at an 87 percent rate over the first three years (BTR n.d.).
With the exception of this new teacher development program, professional development in BPS is highly decentralized and primarily school-based.4 In BPS’s 2010 Acceleration Agenda, Superintendent Johnson pledged to work with the Boston Teachers Union to revamp professional development (BPS 2010a). Centrally, BPS is working to better track teachers’ involvement in professional development and to use the dimensions of effective teaching and school improvement plans to design professional development offerings. Currently, however, according to a BPS leader, there is “a menu of things out there that are, to some extent, aligned with broader district goals but don’t necessarily meet all people’s needs.”
In terms of evaluation, there are still only two ways a teacher can be evaluated: satisfactory or unsatisfactory. A district leader told us that evaluation is not really about helping teachers improve.
The culture here is that the teacher evaluation process is heavily geared toward evaluating out poor performers, because it is difficult to get a teacher out once they are tenured. The evaluation is not really used for teachers [who are] performing well.
As the contract is renegotiated in 2010, teacher evaluation tied to student outcomes will certainly be an issue.
Issues for Developing Human Capital
Boston and New Orleans have reaped many advantages by involving external partners in their efforts to attract, acquire, and develop new teachers. New Orleans, a storm-ravaged city, has attracted a steady stream of young, energetic teacher candidates. BPS has succeeded in developing teacher candidates with certifications in high-need areas such as English language learning, science, and special education. However, concerns about equity, mentoring, and sustainability remain.
In both cities, for example, there were concerns that the initial placement of recruited teachers/teacher residents was not equitable. In New Orleans, some participants indicated that charter schools have an edge in attracting teachers, for a variety of reasons: compensation packages that are more suitable to people who know they will not be career educators, opportunities for professional growth and advancement, and organizational culture. As one administrator in a charter network said,
[As a charter] you can court people and try harder. Plus, you have a better reputation – you get the cream of the crop. Other schools have whoever’s left. As a city, that’s concerning.
The issue is not as pronounced in Boston, where much smaller proportions of new teachers are placed. However, some evidence suggests that teacher residents, when placed, aren’t necessarily going to the hardest-to-staff schools in the district. Childress, Marietta, and Suchman (2008) reported that residents end up in schools with historically higher achievement levels than the average Boston public school.
Mentoring is also a concern in both systems. Boston teacher residents are matched with a mentor teacher, and when mentor quality is not high or a mentor does not “buy into” BTR’s philosophy, our respondents told us it negatively impacts the resident’s experience. BPS is committed to providing school-based mentoring and professional development through the new teacher developers but has struggled to link that with centralized, measurable indicators of good teaching. With the large influx of new teachers in New Orleans, there is a shortage of high-quality educators available to mentor new teachers.
At times, our respondents also questioned the sustainability of these efforts. In New Orleans, high rates of turnover exist in many schools, and many new recruits are not generally considered to be career teachers. One leader said,
Easily the biggest weakness surrounds issues of sustainability. We’ve got pretty good news on performance so far, but I take a longer term view of that. … A lot has happened in Louisiana since Katrina, and lots of out-of-town folks and new talent and attitude have provided for great synergy and enthusiasm, but I don’t know if we have the depth to sustain this for the long term. I look at the long hours people are working. I worry that the talent is thin and the turnover will persist.
Several participants spoke about the need to build local capacity by finding and nurturing local talent. Some partnerships with local universities exist or are being developed in various parts of the system. Conversely, some leaders particularly valued the energy, drive, and abilities of novice teachers coming through alternative routes and felt that given a willingness to accept a certain amount of ongoing attrition, this model of recruitment could be sustained on a broad scale.
BTR, which has become a national model for teacher recruitment and development and is being adopted by other cities, also faces issues of sustainability. Several interviewees cautioned that the success of the program is threatened by the budget challenges of the district. When positions are lost to budget cuts, there are fewer spots for new teachers and early career teachers are typically the first to lose their jobs. Additionally, intensive support programs like the new teacher developers and professional development opportunities are often curtailed under such circumstances. However, both programs have continued through recent budget challenges.
Beyond Human Resources; A Comprehensive Human Capital Management System
Sigler and Ucelli-Kashyap presented this scenario in their 2008 article in Voices in UrbanEducation:
Consider a situation present in many mid- to large-sized urban districts today. A district has an excellent recruitment and marketing campaign in human resources, paired with a high level of customer service for applicants and new hires. At the same time, this district’s office of professional development has inconsistent and poor-quality mentoring and a lack of quality professional development options for teachers. The result for our imaginary school system, just as it is for most school systems with similar circumstances, is predictable: high turnover. Today’s high-quality new hires quickly become tomorrow’s attrition statistics. ( p. 8 )
This quote underscores the main lesson from our research in New Orleans and Boston. While it is important to build effective recruitment, acquisition, and new teacher development, it is not enough. In a comprehensive human capital management system, a broader set of key functions – Sigler and Ucelli define them as Acquisition; Development, Deployment, and Advancement; and Accountability and Exit – must be tied together. This cannot be done through traditional human resource offices alone.
Leaders in our two sites recognized this and brought in partners to strengthen some of these functions. But they also acknowledged that there is a strong need to develop a comprehensive human capital system with the tools and data to look at teacher quality in a more sophisticated way. This human capital system, involving school district leaders, partners – including teacher unions – and educators themselves, must be linked to student outcomes and to a continuum of supports and tied to evaluation. Getting to scale in developing human capital will require much greater coordination among these key functions, continuing collaboration with key partners and the wherewithal to maintain the focus on improving teacher quality.
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Footnotes
1 Improvements in the technical supports for human resources (e.g., updated technology) and in customer service orientation of the human resources department were also part of this effort, though we do not focus on those in this article.
2 The requirement that parents be involved in the selection of new teachers has been eliminated, though some schools still voluntarily involve parents in the selection process.
3 Archibald (2008) reported that in 2003, the Boston Teachers Union filed a lawsuit against BPS to get the district to implement this law.
4 The contract with the Boston Teachers Union allows for four days of professional development (when students are not present) and eighteen hours of after-school professional development.
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References
Archibald, S. 2008. Boston. Madison, WI: Strategic Management of Human Capital, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Boston Consulting Group. 2007. The State of Public Education in New Orleans. Boston, MA: BCG.
Boston Public Schools. 2010a. Acceleration Agenda, 2009–2014: A Five-Year Strategic Direction to Transform the Boston Public Schools. Boston, MA: BPS.
Boston Public Schools. 2010b. Boston Public Schools at a Glance 2009–2010. BPS Facts, no. 17 (February). Boston, MA: BPS Communications Office.
> Download PDF [2 pages]
Boston Teacher Residency. n.d. “The BTR Impact,”
> Boston Teacher Residency Web site
Childress, S., G. Marietta, and S. Suchman. 2008. Boston Teacher Residency: Developing a Strategy for Longterm Impact. Publication no. N9-309-043 (rev. September 17). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School.
Sigler, D., and M. Ucelli-Kashyap. 2008. “Human Capital Management: A New Approach for Districts,” Voices in Urban Education 20 (Summer).
> Download PDF [51 pages]
Towery, I. D., K. Salim, and V. Homm. 2009. Hiring (and Keeping) Urban Teachers: A Coordinated Approach to New Teacher Support. A Report of the Boston Plan for Excellence and the Boston Public Schools. Boston, MA: Boston Plan for Excellence.
Vaznis, J. 2010. “Tensions Grow as Boston Prepares for Teacher Contract Talks, Boston Globe (May 18).
> Available online
