Philly Is Hiring Teachers

From the Inquirer.

Phila. district lags in filling teacher vacancies
By Kristen A. Graham Posted on Tue, Oct. 14, 2008
Inquirer Staff Writer

New York City, Chicago and Boston all opened school this fall with no teacher vacancies.

But a month into the new school year, Philadelphia's public schools had 144 unfilled teaching jobs - down from a seven-year high a few weeks ago - and officials warn that about 70 positions will go unfilled all year, with those classrooms staffed by substitute teachers.

Officials say the current spike in vacancies is due to turnover in district brass and a resulting slowdown in this year's hiring process. They also blame national shortages in some subjects.

But teacher-recruitment experts point to other, systemic problems, saying Philadelphia's hiring process is outdated and overly complex.

The 144 vacancies represent a little more than 1 percent of the district's 10,000 teaching jobs. But the impact is significant, said Sheila Simmons, education director for Public Citizens for Children and Youth, a nonprofit advocacy group.

"One percent may not look bad at an administrative level, but if you're a parent or a child and the vacancy is at your school, it's huge," Simmons said. "I think 1 percent is still too much."

The 70 permanent vacancies would mean that at a minimum, 2,300 students would spend the year without a permanent teacher.

That other districts have fixed the problem and Philadelphia has not is particularly frustrating, advocates say.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is not pleased, either, but she said the problem was not entirely district-made.

"We're handicapped in our ability to hire teachers," Ackerman said. The current teacher contract, she said, sets up a system where some teaching candidates cannot be interviewed until two weeks before school starts.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, rejected the notion that the contract hurts hiring.

"After all these years, the district should be able to project the number of teachers they're going to need," Jordan said. "There's no reason they can't pre-hire teachers. I don't see the contract as prohibiting them from hiring."

Michael Masch, the district's chief business officer and temporary head of human resources, and Dina Hollingsworth, the new head of recruitment and retention, said the district was improving its hiring practices.

Officials have begun a campaign to recruit more aggressively, including internationally; hire earlier; and reach out to more partners.

Historically, the number of city classrooms without a permanent teacher in September has fluctuated, from a low of 62 two years ago to 169 a month ago, the highest in seven years. The vacancies are concentrated in hard-to-staff subjects like math, science and vocal music, and at the city's neighborhood high schools.

Cecilia Cummings, a district spokeswoman, said that the 70 unfilled jobs were typical for the district and that she could not say when they would be filled.

"In a workforce so large, you're always going to have vacancies," Cummings said. "In most cases, we have qualified, long-term subs who are certified to teach the courses."

Substitute teachers are not all state-certified, though 37 percent of Philadelphia's do have state credentials, officials say. In many cases, though, their areas of certification do not match those needed for open jobs.

The teacher shortage really hits home for Candace Carter and Isiah Enoch, both 17.

Carter and Enoch, seniors at Sayre High in West Philadelphia, spent the first three weeks of school without a permanent English teacher. Last week, their third teacher arrived.

Initially, "we weren't doing anything," Carter said. "We were just sitting there, doing nothing."

Work was assigned and ignored. Students were confused and acted up.

"We're really behind," Enoch said. "It's a shame."

Success elsewhere
Unlike suburban districts around the region, where earlier hiring timetables, higher salaries, and fewer classroom challenges mean a smoother hiring process, big-city schools have long wrestled with vacancies.

But in the last five years, other urban districts have ramped up their efforts, said Allan Odden, a University of Wisconsin professor and codirector of Strategic Management of Human Capital, a nonprofit that works with the nation's largest districts.

"Unless a district mounts and maintains a comprehensive hiring strategy, they're going to open with vacancies," Odden said. "But if New York, Chicago and Boston can do it, anybody can do it."

In the past, city districts in general did little recruiting, and rarely looked at applications before August, when most of the top talent had already been snapped up by suburban districts.

Now, successful districts have revamped and automated cumbersome hiring processes, Odden said. They have begun recruiting at better universities, partnered with "talent organizations" such as Teach for America, negotiated changes in seniority with powerful teachers unions, and moved up hiring schedules with the goal of filling every vacancy by the beginning of summer.

Philadelphia has taken some of those steps, but has been hampered by uncertainty in a contract year, the teachers union says - its current pact expires at the end of this month. Researchers also point to a hiring process that's "mind-numbingly complex and slow," according to a 2007 report by Research for Action.

Elizabeth Useem, a researcher who has studied Philadelphia teacher recruitment and retention for years and coauthor of several reports on the subject, said that recruitment and retention must be a top priority for the district's new superintendent and her human-resources team.

"HR needs to be leading reform," said Useem, senior research consultant for Research for Action. "It's a crucial issue, and I don't know why it's slipped."

A multi-level system
Philadelphia made some progress in streamlining and decentralizing hiring in the Paul Vallas era, but still grapples with a teacher contract that sets up a multi-level system of hiring.

Some jobs are filled by "site selection," in which members of a school community pick the teachers themselves. Others are staffed by seniority. In some cases, hiring begins the May before a new school year. In others, it doesn't happen until August or later.

The process makes it tough to hire top candidates in a timely way, critics said.

Ackerman has said moving up the timeline was a priority for a new teacher contract.

Officials said the district was tackling the problem by attending more recruiting events, advertising more nationally and internationally, cold-calling universities to identify job-hunting graduates, and using online recruiting tools - clearinghouse sites such as Pa-Educator.net.

The district is also looking into programs such as Math Immersion, which trains college graduates with good math aptitude to teach arithmetic.

And Masch said the district must automate its hiring.

"My first day on the job, I filled out my name and Social Security number on 20 different pieces of paper," said Masch, who started in July. "I am determined that in the future, no hire should have to do that."

Ackerman has other proposals to pay teacher specialists - such as those who work in hard-to-staff jobs or schools - more money, and to require teachers to give more notice when they retire or resign.

In September alone, more than 50 teachers departed the district, some with little warning.