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Tuesday, February 04, 2003

By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer

Just a year ago, Shaler Area school officials faced a mountainous challenge.

	In a rare instance for Western Pennsylvania, the Shaler Area School District last year had the chance to hire 50 new teachers. Superintendent Donald Lee, right, meets here recently with some of the teachers he hired through a process designed to avoid any hint of favoritism. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) Related Story: Do schools hire the best teachers? Probably not

Fifty veteran teachers were going to retire, meaning roughly 12 percent of the teaching staff had to be replaced by the beginning of the school year.

In some states, like California, these kinds of major hiring initiatives are routine.

In most Western Pennsylvania school districts, where population has declined and teacher turnover is lower, such opportunities are rare.

Superintendent Donald Lee and human resources director Craig von Behren had a system in mind for how the district could wade through hundreds of applications to find the best candidates for the positions.

And even though the plan called for several administrators to pitch in on research and interviews, Lee had the responsibility of interviewing all 150 or so finalists by himself.

Only time will tell if he and his colleagues made the best choices. But the superintendent said that so far, based on feedback from principals and parents during the first four months of the school year, "the [teacher] class of 2002-03 appears to be a good one."

The hirings also had the immediate effect of lowering the average age among Shaler's 418 teachers from 46 to 42. That average would have dropped even lower except that in Shaler, as in many other regional districts, more than 40 percent of the teachers are in their 50s.

But just bringing in younger employees isn't a panacea. Lee and fellow administrators still faced the challenge of balancing test scores with experience, and academic ability with a passion for the job.

And they were handicapped because with so many openings, there wouldn't be time to observe finalists teaching a demonstration class.

Here is the process they used:

The district started with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit's Internet teacher employment service, Pa-Educator.Net, which provided access to hundreds of applications.

To start sorting through the resumes, the Shaler officials set some basic criteria. Candidates had to have grade point averages of 3.0 or better and had to be interested in working in Allegheny County. Even with such restrictions, Pa-Educator.Net generated hundreds of names, Lee said.

Winnowing the list

Almost each Shaler Area administrator was then given the job of reading about 200 applications online.

School officials then narrowed possible candidates to about 475. Those applicants were invited to come to the district and answer a series of online interview questions that were part of the Gallup Organization's Teacher Insight program.

The polling organization's open-ended and multiple-choice questions are designed to determine whether teaching applicants have such qualities as a sense of mission, empathy, innovation, focus and the ability to develop good rapport with students.

To test an applicant's sense of mission, for example, one Teacher Insight question is: "Why did you want to become a teacher?"

To explore an applicant's empathy, the program includes situations like this one:

"After school, you come across a student whom you know who is crying. He's 16 years old. You ask him what is the matter, and he says he was caught cheating. What would you do?"

The district paid the $17.25 per-person fee for each applicant to take the Teacher Insight questions.

Gallup hasn't yet been able to show a correlation between Teacher Insight scores and student performance. But the organization's research has found that candidates who rank high on Teacher Insight often receive top principal and student ratings after they have been hired.

Lee liked Teacher Insight because it helped the district avoid any suspicion that some of the hires would be due to favoritism, especially since the results are immediately scored by computer.

"We believe it's an apolitical process," he said. "We know there's a perception that people get jobs because they know somebody. I can look you in the eye and say that's not the way it happens in Shaler. If you didn't make the cut-off point, I don't care if you're the governor's daughter, you're not going to advance to the next round. "

All applicants who scored in the 45th percentile or higher on the test were asked to come back for meetings with school officials.

The only group given a slight edge was regular substitutes. School officials allowed any substitutes who had worked for 40 days or more in the district to receive an in-person interview, regardless of Teacher Insight score.

Adding up the scores

Teams of administrators that included principals and academic specialists met with every candidate and assigned each an interview score.

Another score was developed for candidates based on their college grades, previous experience, community service, leadership activities and other application information.

When those scores were added to the Teacher Insight results, the combined tally gave Lee his 150 finalists.

Lee interviewed the finalists over a period of two months, devoting nearly 100 hours to the process.

During the meetings, he looked for certain qualities -- a love of children, for example -- that he believed were fundamental for good teaching.

"If I can't get a warm and fuzzy feeling from you that you like kids, you're going to have a hard time in my interview," he said. One question he asked the applicants: "If I'm a kid who is continually picked on, why would I be glad to be in your class?"

Lee asked other questions to learn if the applicants were comfortable with technology; whether they could develop thorough, creative and varied lessons that weren't always based on lectures; and how well they would be able to interact with parents as well as children to understand the youngsters' needs.

And because youngsters with special needs are also in regular district classrooms, Lee tried to determine how well regular education teachers understood how to modify lessons for special education youngsters, and how special education teachers would work with their regular education colleagues to help special needs children.

When Lee completed his interviews, he gave his own score to each candidate, which was averaged in with the other scores. That way, the individuals with the best overall scores -- not just those Lee ranked the highest -- were submitted to the board for approval.

"I didn't want anyone, including the superintendent, to have such a strong vote," Lee explained.

He sent groups of names to the school board over the summer, and by the end of August, 50 teachers had been hired.

Even though school officials didn't get a chance to watch the applicants teach before they were hired, Lee said he believes the Teacher Insight questions helped identify people who were good at working with children and ruled out those who weren't.

"You've got to feel comfortable about what works for you. I just tried to make it fair for everyone."

Carmen Lee can be reached at clee@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1884.