Unintended consequences - PDF document

3 Foreword 4 EXECUTIVESUMMARY 8 CHAPTERONE Teacher Transfer and Excess Rules in Urban Contracts: How They Work 12 CHAPTERTWO The Impact on Urban Schools 31 CHAPTERTHREE Recommendations for Change 40 CONCLUSION 41 APPENDIXA How the Five Studied Districts Place Voluntary Transfers and Excessed Teachers 42 APPENDIXB What Happens in Your District: A Primer 45 APPENDIXC Methodology TABLEOFCONTENTS 4 executive summary EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Nearly everyone involved in the enterprise of schooling understands the profound impor-and sustaining a high-quality team of teachers. Moreover, the researchis clear: the single most important school-based determinant of student achievement isthe quality of the teacher in the classroom.Yet, urban schools must often staff their class-rooms with little or no attention to quality or fit because of the staffing rules in theirThis report focuses on the contractual staffing rules governing Òvoluntary transfersÓ andÒexcessed teachers.ÓVoluntary transfers are incumbent teachers who want to movebetween schools in a district, while excessed teachers are those cut from a specific school,often in response to declines in budget or student enrollment.To better understand the impact of the voluntary transfer and excessrules on urban schools, The New Teacher Project studied five represen-tative urban districts (we identify them as the Eastern, Mid-Atlantic,Midwestern, Southern, and Western districts).Within each district, weextensively analyzed data for internal teacher movements and newteacher hires. We surveys in the Eastern and Western districts, and interviews of schooland central staff in all districts. Our findings demonstrate the extent towhich these rules undermine the ability of urban schools to hire andkeep the best possible teachers for the job.In focusing our report on the adverse effects of the current transfer andexcess rules, we are not minimizing the unfair practices that led to theiradoption or the other staffing barriers urban schools face, in such areasas school leadership, human resources, and budgeting. We will argue,however, that without significant change to these staffing rules, anothergeneration of urban students will bear the cost of well-intentioned,mately inadequate, school improvement efforts. demonstrate the voluntary transfer and excess rulesschools to hire andfor the job. 6 executive summary 3 ) New teacher applicants, including the best, are lost to late hiring Only after the forced placements of voluntary transfers and excessed teachers occur areschools typically allowed, by contract, to place new hires, including seasoned veterans fromother districts. By then, however, it is too late to compete with neighboring districts forthe best new teacher talent. Significantly, with only one month to go before the start ofschool, the studied districts still had to hire and place between 67 and 93 percent of theirnew teachers.Our previous research showed that urban districts that hire teachers afterMay 1 lose large numbers of applicants, including the best, to districts that hire earlier. 4 ) Novice teachers are treated as expendable regardless of their contribution to Even once schools manage to hire new teachers, the transfer and excess rules place theirjobs in constant jeopardy. Novice teachers are, by default, the first to be excessed and, inmany districts, can be ÒbumpedÓ from their positions if a more senior teacher needs or justwants their job. For example, in three of the districts, anywhere from 10 to 50 percent ofnovice teachers, often with a full year of experience at their school, were at risk of losingtheir jobs if other more senior teachers simply wanted to transfer into them. Almost one-quarter (23 percent) of Eastern district principals reported having at least one new hire ornovice teacher bumped from their school the prior year. We recognize that the talent ofmost new and novice teachers is either unknown or not fully developed, but these rulestreat all novice teachers as expendable, including those who are capable or show promise. SCHOOLS, SYSTEMS, AND STUDENTS PAY THE PRICE Taken together, these four effects significantly impede the efforts of urban schools tostaff their classrooms effectively and sustain meaningful schoolwide improvements.Forced to take teachers who may either be poor performers or ill suited to the specificschool context and culture, prevented from hiring many of the best new teacherapplicants, and unable to adequately protect teachers they hope to keep, urban schoolscannot exert sufficient control over the most important school-based factor thatThe damage, however, extends beyond individual schools; the overall operation of entireurban districts suffers. The transfer and excess processes require excessive centralizationof hiring decisions. These staffing rules also hold every school hostage to staffing 8 the rules TEACHER TRANSFERANDEXCESS RULES INURBAN CONTRACTS:HOWTHEY WORK If a school system were oriented to finding and keeping the best possible teachers, onecould imagine what its process for filling vacancies would look like: Central staff andschools would recruit as aggressively as possible to create a strong applicant pool of newteachers and experienced teachers from other districts. Then principals and school staffmembers together would interview applicants from within and outside of the system andhire the teacher most likely to succeed in the specific job. The school would commit tothat teacher early in the hiring season and provide ample induction. Because of thecurrent transfer and excess rules in urban collective bargaining agreements, however, the A. VOLUNTARY TRANSFERS: VOLUNTARY OFTEN ONLYFOR TEACHERS Imagine you are a principal with vacancies for the coming year. Sometime in the spring,you are required by your school systemÕs collective bargaining agreement to publicizethose vacancies districtwide. At this point, however, you and your staff cannot interviewand hire the teacher you believe would be best for the job. Instead, as mandated bycontract, you typically first have to consider those incumbent teachers known asvoluntary transfersÑteachers in your district who want to leave their current schools.It certainly would be reasonable to require you to consider those teachers who are inter-ested in switching schools; however, if you are a principal in four of the five districts(except for the Mid-Atlantic) studied in this report, you are obligated by contract to hirevoluntary transfers. In some situations, you have no choice over which teacher transfersinto your building: you are assigned a specific voluntary transfer applicant, usually the CHAPTERONE 10 the rules C. PLACEMENTRIGHTS OF VOLUNTARY TRANSFERS ANDEXCESSED TEACHERS TRUMPNEW TEACHER HIRING Only after voluntary transfers and excessed teachers have received school placements canyou, as a principal, typically offer jobs in your school to new hires. In many contracts,however, timetables governing the transfer and excess processes often appear to havebeen established without adequate consideration for their impact on new teacher hiring.For example, the Western contract mandates three voluntary transferÒpost-and-bidÓ periods, with the last one on July 10th. Althoughcontracts do not always require that all excessed teachers be placed in aschool before new teacher placement begins, in practice depart-ments wait to place the majority of new teachers because they knowthat they are contractually required to place every excessed teacherÑeven if it means bumping a newly hired teacher.works tocomply with the transfer and excess rules, a principalÕs ability to hire anew teacher is delayed until well into the summer or even after schoolstartsÑfar too late to hire the best applicants.The above review is not meant to suggest that the transfer and excessrules in each of the five districts are identical; they are not, andAppendix A provides a more detailed discussion of the specifics in eachdistrict. But the similarities in the contractual staffing rules across thesedistrictsÑand across urban districts more generallyÑare far morestriking than their differences. Moreover, even urban districts in non-collective bargaining states tend to follow many of the same staffing rules because theyhave been codified in district and state policies.In the next chapter, we turn to quantifying the far-reaching effects of these staffing ruleson urban schools and their students, while the final chapter of the report presents aspecific road map for reform. The process israther satisfying …Urban Principal 12 / the impact THE IMPACTON URBAN The data presented in this chapter demonstrate the extent to which the current transferand excess rules undermine the ability of urban schools to hire and keep the bestpossible teachers for the job. While these staffing rules impose an enormous cost onschools, teachers, and the entire system, in the end students are the ones who pay thehighest price in terms of the quality of teachers in front of their classrooms daily. A. SCHOOLS ARE FORCED TO HIRE LARGE NUMBERS OFTEACHERS THEY DO NOTWANTAND WHO MAY NOTBEA GOOD FITFOR THE JOB The most detrimental impact of the transfer and excess rules on urbanschools is the sheer volume of voluntary transfers and excessed teachersforced on them with no choice or restricted choice, regardless of theirfit for the job. In one hiring season, across the five districts we studied:  40 percent of vacancies, on average, were filled by voluntarytransfers or excessed teachers over whom schools had either nochoice at all or restricted choice The phenomenon of forcing incumbent teachers on schools with nochoice was the worst in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Mid-Atlanticdistricts, where anywhere from one-quarter (Eastern) to three-fifths(Midwestern) of school-level vacancies were filled with no choice by thereceiving school. Translating this from the abstract to the concrete,more than 8,000 Mid-Atlantic students, 20,000 Midwestern students,and 150,000 Eastern students were taught by an incumbent teacherimposed on their schools the prior year with no consideration for CHAPTERTWO contractual staffingrules, two out of fiveteacher vacancies,on average, wereincumbent teacherwith little or no sayfrom schools. 13 / the impact While the percentage of vacancies filled with no choice was lower in the Southern andWestern districts (19 percent and 10 percent, respectively),the difference is more thanmade up for by the number of additional vacancies in both districts filled with restrictedchoiceÑa process in which schools generally are required to choose from a group oftransfer applicants. In fact, two out of five vacancies in the Western district and almosthalf of the vacancies in the Southern district were filled through either no choice orrestricted choice on the part of the receiving school.As a result, a majority of schools in every district were forced to fill at least one vacancy,if not two, three, or more, through no choice or restricted choice processes. For example,in one hiring season, almost half of all schools in the Midwestern district and more thanone-quarter of schools in the Eastern district were forced to hire three or moreincumbent teachers with no choice. In the Southern district, almost half of all schoolsfilled three or more vacancies with no choice or restricted choice over the teacher. Source: District Teacher Tracking Systems 15 / the impact Not surprisingly, urban principals feel the same way. One Western district principalexplained the devastating effect on his school of his lack of choice over teachers: Selecting the right teachers for my school is my greatest responsibility as aprincipal....It is unfair to hold principals accountable for student achievementwhen they do not have the ability to choose teachers. I work hard at professionaldevelopment and building collaborative teams at each grade level and oftenmust accept someone for a position who I know will not contribute to the workof the grade-level team and will, in many cases, be a detriment to children. B. POOR PERFORMERS ARE PASSED ALONG FROMSCHOOLTO SCHOOLINSTEAD OF BEING TERMINATED Compounding the problem of forced hiring is the fact that a subset of the voluntaryand excessed teachers forced on schools appears to be poor performers, passedalong from other schools because of the absence of a viable evaluation and dismissal system. 1) Problems in quality of voluntary transfers and excessed teachers By all accounts, there are significant problems with the quality of the incumbentteachers passed from school to school through the transfer and excess processes.  Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of Western district principals and more than half(55 percent) of Eastern district principals who took voluntary transfers orexcessed teachers during a hiring season said that they did not wish to have oneor more of them.  In the Western district, where we were able to survey principals directly abouttheir perceptions of the transferred and excessed teachers who had moved totheir schools, we found the following:Ð More than one-quarter (26 percent) of principals reported that all or almostall of the excessed teachers placed in their schools have been unsatisfactory.Nearly one-third of principals (30 percent) reported that at least 75 percentof them have been unsatisfactory.Ð More than one-fifth (21 percent) of principals reported that more than halfof the voluntary transfers they received through the post-and-bid processwere unsatisfactory. 17 / the impact Western principals(45 percent) said they were generally satisfied with the quality ofvoluntary transfers they received through the post-and-bid process, reflecting thepresence of satisfactory performers seeking new professional opportunities. 2) Transferring and excessing teachers: The de factoŽ removal process Nevertheless, while there is a mix of talent levels in the transfer pools and even amongthe excessed teacher pools, it is clear that these processes are a mechanism used byprincipals to remove teachers from their schools.Principals admit as much:  37 percent of the principals surveyed in theEastern district and 26 percent in the Westerndistrict reported that they either had encouragedapoorly performing teacher to transfer or hadplaced one on an excess list. Numerous staff members detailed how this is done:A principal may tell a teacher to apply for a voluntarytransfer to another school to avoid an unsatisfactoryOr, Òwhen the schoolÕs budget is cut, theprincipal picks the weakest teacher to excess, even if itisnÕt the least senior.Ó That over one-third of excessedteachers, on average, had 10 or more years of seniority intheir subject area certainly provides additional evidenceAlthough passing poor performers to other schoolsdismissal data suggest that this may be a rational responsepathway for legitimately dismissing poorly performing tenuredteachers. While often not rigorously tracked, the termination data provided by laborrelations staff in the five districts suggest that every year, on average, only one or twotenured teachers are formally terminated for performance. PERCENT OF PRINCIPALS ENCOURAGING A POORLY Western KEY: DISTRICT 05%10%15%20%25%30%35%40% 3726 26 In addition, as the chart at left illustrates, eventhey face a very limited likelihood of success.Reflecting on this situation, one legal counselasked: ÒWhat rational person would invest15 percent of her time for two years just toget the teacher back in her building? It istaken as a given that when it comes to incom-petent tenured teachers, the best you can doMoreover, it appears that many parties are involved in this practice. One principaldescribed what happened when she gave an unsatisfactory rating to a teacher with sig-nificant seniority who had transferred to her school the prior fall. A union representativetold the principal, ÒIf you reverse her unsatisfactory rating, then we will transfer her outand then you wonÕt have the headache.Ó In the absence of a viable termination process,this kind of offer becomes far harder for principals to refuse. EVALUATION AND DISMISSALREFORM: NOTA SILVER BULLET In light of these findings, it would be tempting to believe that reforming the evaluation anddismissal systems would resolve the problems created by the forcing of incumbentteachers on schools. After all, if you can dismiss incompetent teachers, how bad canforcing be? There are two problems with this position. First, this idea assumes that as long as a teacher is competent, he or she can be a goodfit for any school and position. We know this is not true, and that fit depends not only onwhether a teachers certification area matches the job opening, but also on the teachersprior experiences, skills, and commitment to a schools mission and programs.Moreover, we believe that meaningful evaluation and dismissal reforms are unlikely tooccur unless the forced placement of incumbent teachers is eliminated. Right now,principals are able to pass on their poor performers because the transfer and excess rulesrequire other schools to hire them. This escape hatch, however, minimizes the impetus forthe system to invest the time and political capital to achieve meaningful evaluation anddismissal reform. Eliminating the forcing of poorly performing teachers on other schoolscould provide the necessary incentive for the system to reform dismissal processes once 19 / the impact YEAR TOTAL ACTIONSDISMISSALSINITIATED 2000 238 2001 254 2002 623 2003 203 SUCCESS RATE FOR DISMISSALS IN District Labor Relatio 21 / the impact Significantly, our prior data showed that to hire the best new teacher applicants, urban complete the vast majority of their new teacher hiring (including school-level placements) by May. Yet, as the chart above shows, the vast majority of hiring inthe five districts studied for this report happens in July or later.In the Midwestern, Southern, and Mid-Atlantic districts where we were able to obtainthe exact placement dates for new teachers, we found the following:  In each district, more than 80 percent of hiring occurred after June 1Ñalreadytoo late to get the best new teachers.  With only one month to go before the start of school, these districts still had toplace from 67 percent to 93 percent of new hires.  Anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of teachers who filled summer vacancies werehired after school started .29 Ideally, the vast majority of new teacher hiring should be completed which the vast majority of new teachers receive school-level Source: Collective Bargaining Agreements, District Hiring Databases, and Interviews with District Staff JAN FEB MAR APR MAY THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE NEW TEACHER HIRING TIMELINE TO THE New Teacher Hiring Western New Teacher Hiring New Teacher Hiring New Teacher Hiring New Teacher Hiring New Teacher Hiring Voluntary Transfers Voluntary Transfers Voluntary Transfers Voluntary Transfers Voluntary Transfers 23 / the impact until late September, but remain as a substitute until then, I will do everythingto try to hire you.Ó Then, you call the liaison back when you know all of theexcessed teachers have been placed someplace else, and say, ÒOh I actually doneed someone.Ó You say, ÒI have some resumesÓ and pretend to just findsomeone for the slot even though I had them all along. If you are a smartprincipal, you do this all of the time. But it is very hard to do this where thereare a lot of excessed teachers, like in social studies.But as a principal in another district said, the game-playing necessary to hire the bestpossible teacher is exhausting. ÒThe energy it takes to do something deceptively versusby the book is such a waste.Ó D. NOVICE TEACHERS ARE TREATED ASEXPENDABLE REGARDLESS OF THEIRCONTRIBUTION TO THE SCHOOL Finally, even once a school hires its new teachers, including teacherswho may have many years of experience in another district, theirpositions are in constant jeopardy. In fact, in their effort to accommo-date the placement rights of more senior teachers, the transfer andexcess rules send novice teachers one message: you are expendable nomatter how good you are and how much your school wants to keep you In emphasizing this effect, we are not minimizing the importance of teacher experience. The research is clear that experience matters,particularly the experience gained during a teacherÕs initial years in theclassroom,and schools without experienced teachers suffer. Never-theless, building an effective team depends on maintaining the stabilityof a staffÑboth the high performers and those with significantpotentialÑregardless of their seniority. Moreover, given the intensecompetition for high-quality new teachers and the retention problemsurban districts face, they can ill afford to disadvantage new and noviceteachers in the ways mandated by their contracts. Given the intensecompetition forretention problemsthey can ill afford todisadvantage newand novice teachers contracts. 25 / the impact  In the Southern district, 10 percent of first-year teachersÑor 65 teachersÑwere placed at risk of losing their positions, and half of these teachers weresubsequently bumped by incumbent transfers.  Ten to 15 percent of the Western districtÕs novice teachersÑmore than 100teachersÑhad their positions posted as vacancies for transfers. In addition to being bumped from their placements through these kinds of re-postingrequirements, in some of the studied districts, novice teachers can also lose their positionif a more senior excessed teacher needs a job but no vacancy exists for him or her. In theEastern district, for instance, if a vacancy is not available for an excessed teacher to fillwithin his or her regional division, that teacher may bump a teacher with less seniorityAlthough districts generally do not track the magnitude of the bumping problem, oursurvey of Eastern district principals sheds some light on it:  Almost one-quarter (23 percent) of Eastern district principals reported having atleast one new hire or novice teacher bumped from their school the previous year. 2) Novice teachers are the default option for excessing Novice teachers also remain most vulnerable to the excessing that results from school-level cuts. In the Midwestern district, the only district we studied in which the excessedteacher must always be the least senior teacher in the program area being cut, excessinghas a devastating impact on first-year teachers. Our data show that within one year ofbeing hired, 13 percent of the districtÕs new teachers were excessed. This means that onein eight new teachers involuntarily had to switch schools, principals, and colleagues.In the other four districts, as discussed earlier, schools may seek volunteers forexcessing.Yet even with these volunteer provisions, novice teachers are the defaultoption for excessing and anywhere from 26 to 46 percent of excessed teachers were intheir first three years in the district.The ability to seek more senior volunteers ensures that high-quality novice teachers inthese four districts are much less hard hit by the seniority-driven excessing rules thanthey otherwise would be. However, principals are still forced to give up at least somenovice teachers they want to keep. 27 / the impact E. SCHOOLS, SYSTEMS, AND STUDENTS PAY THE PRICE 1) Schools cannot build an effective staff, attract betterleadership, or sustain meaningful improvements As a result of these four effects, urban schools are not allowed to hireand keep the teachers they believe are the best possible ones for the job,and are often forced to hire teachers they know are wrong for the job.As such, the transfer and excess rules continually frustrate the efforts ofurban schools to staff their classrooms effectively and build stronginstructional teams organized in pursuit of a common mission.Reflecting on these effects, one urban superintendent concluded, ÒWewill never get stability and significant improvement in our schoolswithout changing these rules.ÓMoreover, even when a school is able to make progress, these staffingrules increase the likelihood that it will be short lived. Several principalsexplained how, the moment they start building a strong staff andmaking improvements in their schools, senior teachers apply to transferinto them. And, if the rules accord transfers the right to fill positions whether or not thereceiving principal wants them, the result can be an influx of potentially poor performers.As a Western district principal cautioned, ÒHigh-performingschools will not remain highperforming, if every year poorly matched teachers are forced on them.ÓWe recognize that many urban principals need to become better at judging quality andhiring the best teachers. However, the current rules negate the ability of any principal,even those who are effective leaders, from working with their staff to hire teachers basedMoreover, urban school systems will never be able to attract and retain a better pool ofprincipals, nor hold them accountable for outcomes, when principals cannot hireteachers whom they regard as the right matches for their school. One principalarticulated why: Many of the provisions in this contract go against any logic in effective man-agement. You cannot say, ÒWe need to see resultsÓ and not let us have thepeople in place to do it. It is impossible and doesnÕt work. I am being evaluatedon what I am able to get my team to produce but I canÕt pick who is on my We will nevergetstability andsignificant improve-ment in our schoolswithout changing …Urban Superintendent 29 / the impact 3) Urban students lose the most: What the research shows The effects of the transfer and excess rules are most pernicious in their impact onchildren. They do not work to ameliorate the achievement gap or provide a bulwarkagainst other policies that disadvantage urban school students (from budgetingtimelines and funding inequities to decrepit buildings and overcrowded classrooms).Instead, these policies serve to further disadvantage the very students who are alreadyasked to compete on an uneven playing field.First, urban students, in need of the highest-quality teachers, bear theloss of the best teacher applicants to surrounding districts that can hireearlier. Those new teachers who are finally hired are not able to be bestmatched to a school and classroom or prepared for their new responsi-bilities. In fact, students start the year with, at best, unprepared newteachers and, at worst, a pool of revolving substitutes. Further, as new teachers get moved from school to school, the chancethe chance that students will have yet another brand new teacherincreases. That increases the probability that students will learn less asstudy after study has proven that teachers are better in their second yearthan they are in their first year.Finally, urban students must endure thewidespread mismatches between teacher skill and school need and arecaught in the crossfire as poor performers who cannot be legitimatelyremoved get passed from one school to another. The long-term effects of having a poor teacher are well documented andsurprisingly strong. Rivers and Sanders estimate that a student who hasthree ineffective teachers in a row will perform 50 percentile points loweron a standardized test than a demographically similar peer with similarpast performance who has benefited from three years of effective teachers.This same research shows that the impact of even a single ineffectiveteacher can be measured for four years after the student has left thatteacherÕs classroom.Truly, lifetimes of learning for thousands of children are being put atrisk by the contractual transfer and excess rules, which place hundreds, and sometimeseven thousands, of teachers in classrooms each year with near total disregard for the appro-priateness of the match, the quality of the teacher, or the overall impact on schools. rules are mostpernicious in theirchildren. They ameliorate theachievement gap,but furtherdisadvantage thevery students whoare already asked uneven playing field. RECOMMENDATIONS FORCHANGE These findings have led us to conclude that urban schools desperately need a new con-tractual framework in the areas of teacher staffing and hiring. The recommendationsbelow are Òmodel contractÓ policiesÑdesigned to provide a substantive map for urbandistricts that want to combat the problems described in this report and staff their class-rooms effectively. Our proposed reforms focus on five areas: 1) voluntary transfer rules,both how and when they happen; 2) excess rules, including how andwhen they happen; 3) the provisions within the transfer and excess rulesthat currently disadvantage novice teachers; 4) evaluation and dismissalprocedures; and 5) new rewards for effective senior teachers.Our recommendations advocate for neither limitless principal hiringauthority nor the elimination of all protections and preferences formore senior teachers. At the same time, we believe the placement rightsstudents and schools and have crafted our transfer and excess reforms toachieve the following three essential results:  Ensure that transfer and excess placements are based on themutual consent of teacher and receiving school  Permit the timely hiring of new teachers  Better protect novice teachers who are contributing to theirAlthough our proposed transfer, excess, and evaluation reforms are anecessary precondition to turning around urban schools, also needed are majorimprovements in school leadership, human resources departments, budgeting, andoverall planning. By the same token, we will argue that reforms in these other areas willonly be effective if they occur in concert with the contractual reforms we recommend. 31 / recommendations CHAPTERTHREE Our recommenda-tions do notprotections andpreferences formore seniorprotections with the RECOMMENDATION 2 : EXCESSING REFORMS Some might agree with the need to eliminate outright forcing of voluntary transfers, butstill want to maintain restricted choice. Although in some cases restricted choice maynot be as damaging as outright forcing, a system of restricted choice can quicklyapproach a system of no choice, depending on the number of bidders for a particularposition and their quality. More important, since matching teacher skill and school needmatters, the interests of schools, students, and teachers cannot be served by a system thatmakes the outcome a matter of chance rather than of careful planning and deliberate 33 / recommendations SUMMARY  Provide every opportunity for excessed teachers to receive a satisfactory placement in„ The right to apply for positions during the preferential review period for transfers„ The right to participate in an early April job fair for excessed teachers„ Ongoing opportunities to interview for vacancies, with continued support from to find a job„ Three weeks before the start of school, can start matching excessed teachers to vacancies contingent upon principal acceptance  End the forcing of excessed teachers on schools that do not believe they are a good fit Ongoing opportunities to receive a new job placement Budget uncertainties and urban student mobility necessitate the creation of a fair anddeliberate process for placing excessed teachers. Our proposal is designed to providenumerous opportunities for excessed teachers to receive a satisfactory placement inanother schoolÑin fact, far more opportunities than they currently have to interviewfor new placements and find a match that is mutually agreeable to them and thereceiving school. 35 / recommendations Eliminate all re-posting and bumping requirements All re-posting requirements should be eliminated. The right of a senior teacher whoalready has a job to take another job should never trump the interest of a school inwants to stay.Similarly, bumping should be prohibitedÑthe bumping not only of novice teachers butalso of new hires who have already received confirmed placements before the school yearhas begun. Fortunately, the implementation of the excess reforms described earlier Identifying excessed teachers If a school needs to cut a position, it should not automatically have to cut its most juniorteacher, even if no one else volunteers. At the same time, while schools should be ableto consider need, quality, and contribution to the school in determining whom toexcess, there should be significant safeguards to minimize abuse.We advocate that every school designate a staff committee, with significant teacherrepresentation, to be in charge of recommending whom to excess. While the principalshould retain the ultimate authority in this area, such a committee could provide asignificant check on the principalÕs final decision. SUMMARY  Eliminate re-posting requirements and end all bumping of newly hired or novice  Allow schools to consider need, quality, and contribution to the school, in addition toseniority, in determining whom to excess, but establish safeguards to minimize RECOMMENDATION 3 : ELIMINATE THE CONTRACTUALREQUIREMENTS THATTREATNOVICE TEACHERS ASEXPENDABLE 37 / recommendations As part of these reforms, districts need to take far more advantage of the opportunity toremove poorly performing novice teachers while the requirements are less burdensome.Moreover, the success of any new evaluation and dismissal procedures must be judged,at least in part, by a meaningful change in the rate of successful removals and otheroutcome measures. The weight we put on this recommendation is not meant to suggest that large numbersof teachers are incompetent and should be dismissed, only that there needs to be a viableprocess for removing poor performers. Without such a process, students of thoseteachers will continue to suffer unfairly, and the school system as a whole will continueto bear the burden of the illegitimate voluntary transfers and excessed teachers thatresult. RECOMMENDATION 5 : MEANINGFULREWARDS FOREXPERIENCE AND SERVICE SUMMARY  Develop new ways to reward senior teachers for effective service All effective organizations understand the value of their experienced staff members sincetypically they are among their best employees. Therefore, every urban district stands tobenefit significantly from conscientious efforts to leverage the skills and perspectives oftheir experienced teachers. Toward this end, urban districts must engage far moreseriously in efforts to craft meaningful rewards that recognize teachers for effectiveservice. In addition to meaningful transfer opportunities based on mutual consent, sig-nificant attention must be paid to advantaging talented senior teachers in new ways,such as rewarding them with a career ladder that offers different roles other than thosethat lead to an administrative position; increased responsibility; improved status; and 39 / recommendations 2) Human resource reform Missed Opportunities discussed at length the need for urban districts to revamp their departments and create more efficient systems for receiving, processing, tracking,Therefore, some might argue that should Òfix its ownhouseÓ before a district demands contractual reform. Reforming departments, however, depends, in part, on reforming the transfer andexcess rules. First, as primary enforcers of the contract, urban departments have littletime to play the roles principals and schools need them to play: supporting their effortsto recruit and select high-quality teachers. Moreover, by playing enforcer, depart-ments inevitably alienate the very customers they are supposed to be serving: principalsand schools. Finally, the current contractual rules will undermine any attempt to giveschools a greater hiring role because will need to continue to control hiring to ensurethe proper placement of all incumbent teachers in the priority order required by the 3) Reforms of budget timelines and overall planning processes In Missed Opportunities , we also described how the late budget timelines, and inadequatebudget and enrollment forecasting contribute to urban hiring delays.District policy-making and planning often compound the problem as plans to create or eliminateprograms and reconstitute schools are typically announced in the summer, in a vacuumfrom hiring considerations.As serious, late budgets, bad planning, and poor enrollment forecasting often delay theidentification and placement of many excessed teachers until the summer. Moreover, ina practice that devastates instruction, a sizable number of teachers often are excessed inthe fall and moved to a different school if actual student/staffing ratios do not meetprojections and union requirements.To ensure early hiring and the timely identification of excessed teachers, districts mustimprove their budgeting and forecasting processes, and announce school improvementefforts far earlier. However, we believe that improving urban budgeting and forecastingprocesses also will depend on the transfer and excess reforms described earlier. As longas every schoolÕs staffing depends on every other schoolÕs, a large and complex schoolsystem will never produce sufficient budget and enrollment certainty across every schoolto enable any of its schools to hire earlier and more effectively. 41 rules for placing APPENDIXA district accords exte no choiceat all over who transfers in.They must accept the most senior tranapplicat, without anterview or right ofrefsal. Other specially designated schoolshave restricted choice Ñthey ca reject the process. Ea VOLUNTARY TRANSFERSEXCESSED TEACHERS Volterview. reject the majority of vol or coThe Wester district impleme a posted positioior, if oe or two apply. district impleme ma process. seiority order. apply to fill excessed teachermmer, HR a tried to schools osfer process or at fair, as well as those the fall. Western RULES FOR PLACING... HOW THE FIVE DISTRICTS PLACE VOLUNTARYTRANSFERS AND EXCESSED TEACHERS 43 / primer (continued on next page) timeline: Does the contract require thedelay of new teacher hirinuntil the voluntarytrasfer period is completed? Until all excessedteachers have a job? If not, is hiring delayed, inuntil these processes are complete?What are the results of these hiring delays? excessed te more se ide Re-postin them? If so, which positio Bumpin: excessed teachers b La iority, is it  y, whose  mpedfrom  rates of excessed  # of new hires  each a school  draw from hiri TotTre CATEGORYYOUR CONTRACT AND CONDUCTINGINTERVIEWS KEY DATA  school? With o 45 / methodology METHODOLOGY The data for this report come from five geographically diverse large urban schooldistricts, one each in the Eastern, Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, Southern, and Westernareas of the United States. Fifty-six to 100 percent of the students are economicallydisadvantaged, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education. The districts fill from700 to 12,000 vacancies each year with both new and incumbent teachers. Sources of Quantitative Data Each district provided us with basic teacher and student demographic information,including teacher seniority and student socioeconomic status. The districts also providedus with data from their respective teacher tracking systems, from which we createddatabases of internal teacher movement. For each instance in which an incumbentteacher moved between schools in a district, we were able to identify the sending andreceiving schools, the date of the move, and the seniority of the teacher involved. We werealso able to determine the type of transfer or excess and the mechanism by which theteacher received his or her new placement, as well as, in the Southern district, how oftena novice teacher lost his or her placement as a result.In every district but the Western district, we examined teacher vacancies filled duringthe hiring season (including the fall excessing period). In the Western district, we wereunable to obtain fall excessing data.We also conducted surveys of active school principals in two districts: Eastern andWestern. In the Eastern district, we surveyed 31 percent of all principals (n=434) whocompleted an anonymous paper survey about their experiences in staffing their schoolsfor the 2003Ð04 school year. In the Western district, principals completed ananonymous online survey about their experiences in staffing their schools for the2004Ð05 school year (n=140, a response rate of 79 percent). Sources of Qualitative Data Our report is based on an analysis of the most current version of each districtÕs collec-tive bargaining agreement. To fully understand how each agreement is implemented, weconducted interviews with human resources staff members, legal counsel, labor relationsspecialists, union representatives, school principals, and teachers. APPENDIXC 47 / board of directors THE NEW TEACHER PROJECTBOARD OF DIRECTORS Mr. Michael D. CasserlyExecutive DirectorCouncil of Great City SchoolsMr. Christopher CrossCross and Joftus, LLC Ms. Kati HaycockDirectorThe Education TrustDr. Gerry HousePresident and Chief Executive Officer The Institute for Student AchievementMs. Wendy KoppPresident Teach for AmericaDr. C. Kent McGuireDean of EducationTemple University, College of EducationMr. Frederick M. OÕSuchChair, Program CommitteeApplecore PartnersMr. Steven RouthPartnerHogan and Hartson, L.L.PDr. Clayton WilcoxSuperintendentPinellas County SchoolsMichelle RheeChief Executive OfficerThe New Teacher Project Jessica Levin and Meredith Quinn, Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High-Quality Teachers Out of UrbanClassrooms , (The New Teacher Project, 2003).Linda Darling-Hammond, ÒTeacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of State Policy Evidence,Ó Education Policy Analysis Archives , 8 (1) (2000); Kati Haycock, ÒGood Teaching Matters...A ThinkingKÐ16 , 3 (2), (The Education Trust, 1998), 1Ð5.Some contracts refer to excessed teachers as Òinvoluntary transfersÓ or Òsurplused teachers.ÓFor additional characteristics of the five districts, see Appendix C: Methodology. Although generally not tracked, clearly some teachers are pressured to leave the system before the start orculmination of a formal proceeding. Nevertheless, the number of teacher removals remains negligible.New teacher placement dates were only available for three of the five districts (the Midwestern, Southern, andMid-Atlantic districts), and the Southern district only had placement dates for 66 percent of its new teacherhires.Our prior research found that applicants who withdrew from the hiring process had significantly higherundergraduate GPAs, were 40 percent more likely to have a degree in their teaching field, and weresignificantly more likely to have completed educational coursework than those who were eventually hired.Levin and Quinn, 16Ð17.Human Resources staff often will give at least a subset of new teacher candidates Òopen offersÓÑa generalcommitment to the district without a specific school-level placement.In addition to the transfer and excess rules, other causes of urban hiring delays, described at length in MissedOpportunities , are late or nonexistent vacancy notification policies for retiring and resigning teachers, budgettimetables, and human resources process inefficiencies. Levin and Quinn, 18Ð27.Jack Schierenbeck, ÒClass Struggles: The UFT Story.Ó http://www.uft.org/about/history/uft_story_part1.(Posted 2005).Susan Moore Johnson and Susan M. Kardos, ÒReform Bargaining and School Improvement,Ó in Missions: Teachers Unions and Educational Reform , ed. Tom Loveless, (Washington, D.C.: The BrookingsInstitution, 2000), 8.Joe A. Stone, ÒCollective Bargaining and Public Schools,Ó in Conflicting Missions , ed. Tom Loveless, 49Ð51.Moore Johnson and Kardos, 17. Our data for each district are from the most recent year for which representative data are available (2004 inthe Eastern and Southern districts; 2003 in the Midwestern and Western districts; and 2003 and 2004 in theMid-Atlantic district). In every district but the Western district, we examined teacher vacancies filled duringthe hiring season, including the fall excessing period (there is typically a round of excessing prior to the startof the new school year and another round in the fall to adjust for actual school-level enrollment numbers). Inthe Western district, we were unable to obtain fall excessing data. ENDNOTES 48 / endnotes Levin and Quinn, 10Ð17.We were unable to obtain data on teacher placement dates after the start of school in the Eastern and Westernstaff in the Western district estimated that nearly 20 percent of hiring occurred afterschool starts.Ellen Guiney and Maria McCarthy, Building a Professional Teaching Corps in Boston: Baseline Study of NewTeachers in BostonÕs Public Schools , (Boston Plan for Excellence, 2004), 20Ð21.According to one recent review of the literature: ÒWhile research indicates that there is a relationship betweenstudent achievement and teacher experience, at the elementary level of education it appears that therelationship is most evident in the first several years of teaching, with some evidence of vintage effects for veryexperienced teachers. Estimates of the effect of teacher experience on high school student achievement suggestthat experience has a more sustained effect that continues later into teachersÕ careers.Ó J.K. Rice, TeacherQuality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes , (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute,2003), 19. According to one recent study, Ò[T]here is significant learning about the craft of teaching in thefirst few years of teaching. The largest impact is in the first year of experience, and experience effects disappearquickly after the first year.Ó Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain, D. OÕBrien, and Steven G. Rivkin, ÒThe Marketfor Teacher Quality,Ó NBER Working Paper No. 11154 The Eastern district does not track the number of novice teachers whose positions are re-posted for transfersor those subsequently bumped. Significantly, these re-posting requirements do not just impact first-yearteachers. The positions of 879 Òadministrative transfersÓÑthe Eastern districtÕs truly voluntary transfers onthe part of the teacher and the receiving schoolÑwere also re-posted because they were not formally postedfor the seniority-based voluntary transfers the prior year.Principals in the Mid-Atlantic district can also consider ÒexperienceÓ and Òcurricular needsÓ in identifyingexcesses.Even when controlling for GPA, feelings of overall support, connection to staff at their schools, and theirschoolÕs academic status, teachers who were assigned to their positions were still significantly less likely to planon staying in their schools and in their districts than teachers who were not assigned to their position.Collective bargaining rules also limit the ultimate effectiveness of these initiatives by often exemptingparticipating schools from the standard transfer and excess provisions for only a few years.Hanushek, et al., 2005; Rob Greenwood, Larry V. Hedges, and Richard D. Laine, ÒThe Effect of SchoolResources on Student Achievement,Ó Review of Educational Research , 16 (3) (1996), 361Ð396; John Kain andKraig Singleton, ÒEquality of Educational Opportunity Revisited,Ó New England Economic Review , May/JuneJune C. Rivers and William L. Sanders, ÒTeacher Quality and Equity in Educational Opportunity: Findingsand Policy Implications,Ó in Teacher Quality , ed. Lance T. Izumi and Williamson M. Evers, (Palo Alto, CA:Hoover Institution Press, 2002). Poverty data for sending and receiving schools were available for roughly 85 percent of the voluntary transfersin each district. Seventy-five percent of these teachers moved to a less impoverished school. 50 / endnotes 304 Park Avenue South, 11 New York, NY 10010212-590-2484 , ext. 1031212-590-2485 e-mail: info@tntp.orgFor more information, please visit ourwebsiteatwww.tntp.org.