A Dry Pipeline: CMO (Charter Management Organization) Teacher Hiring in an Uncertain Labor Market

• In Event: Strategic Staffing and Incentives

Abstract

Hiring effective teachers who meet community needs and provide students with authentic learning opportunities is imperative for student and school success (e.g., Mason & Schroeder, 2010). While the extant literature has explored constraints within local teacher labor markets (TLM), e.g., district financial resources (DeArmond et al., 2010), district hiring processes (Cannata et al., 2017), and teacher geographic preferences (e.g., Boyd et al., 2005; Engel & Cannata, 2015), continued scholarship must avoid assuming the “best possible environment” for hiring (Braun et al., 2011; Castro, 2022). The current TLM is far from a “best possible environment” as evidenced from increasing teacher turnover rates in the wake of COVID-19 (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2023; Castro, 2023, Zamarro et al., 2021).

Such TLM challenges may prove particularly challenging for Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), where pre-pandemic literature reports higher turnover rates (e.g., Stuit & Smith, 2010, 2012). Despite outsized levels of teacher turnover, research on CMO hiring indicates that CMOs historically have been flush with applicants (Golann, 2021; Gross & DeArmond, 2011). Yet, research on CMO hiring practices/preferences (e.g., Cannata & Peñaloza, 2012; Torres, 2019) is comparatively limited and pre-dates the uncertainty manifest of COVID-19 and recent TLM shortages. Furthermore, despite the robust literature base on teacher hiring (Perrone & Meyers, 2021), there is a dearth of scholarship grounded in existing human resources/industrial-organizational theories (Ingle, Choi, & Munoz, 2021; Perrone & Meyers, 2021) and scholarship addressing the impact of market conditions on principal ability to hire effectively (Castro, 2022). This study addresses these gaps through a grounding in Uncertainty Reduction Theory and Realistic Job Preview and through specific attention to TLM conditions.
Research questions:

RQ1: How have current TLM conditions impacted CMO principal hiring preferences?
RQ2: How have current TLM conditions impacted CMO principal hiring practices?

Through analysis of in-depth interviews with principals and departed teachers and focus groups with new and veteran teachers across two high schools within the same CMO, this study uses a case study design with the CMO as the primary unit of analysis (Yin, 2009).

Findings reveal that, while once “flush with applicants” (Gross & DeArmond, 2011, p. 3), CMOs too are facing teacher hiring challenges in the current TLM, and, consequently, principals are less able to reduce uncertainty. In efforts to reduce increased uncertainty, CMO principals are expanding teacher recruitment beyond what extant literature points to as CMO preferences and are actively prioritizing more traditional teacher backgrounds. Such a shift in preferences may present increasing uncertainty for traditional public schools and strain on the TLM, particularly in urban centers where CMOs are most present, as CMOs expand hiring to candidates traditionally recruited and hired by traditional public schools. Last, while the extant literature suggests that CMOs enact realistic job previews, even engaging in “downselling,” to ensure strong candidate fit (DeArmond et al., 2012; Torres, 2019), this study found that “upselling” or even “seduction” (Baur et al., 2014, p. 201) may be taking place. Such a tactic, even unintentionally, may be an uncertainty reducing tactic amidst a dry TLM pipeline.

Author

• Matthew S. McCluskey, University of Vermont