Strategic and Targeted Solutions to School Staffing Problems

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

A core challenge in education is that the supply of school staff, and perhaps most importantly teachers, varies substantially across positions and settings. This complicates policy and practice because that variation is difficult to characterize and necessitates targeted solutions. Failing that, variation in teacher supply and quality will translate into inefficiencies or inequities in educational opportunity. 

This session combines four papers that address teacher supply challenges and provide actionable solutions in K-12 settings. Though they explore distinct – and often unique – data sources they all provide novel evidence about either the specific staffing challenges schools face or specific policies that can be put in place to solve them.

The first paper lays groundwork for the session, providing novel evidence about the level and variation of the teacher supply from teacher job applications data in 40 public school systems. The authors provide some of the most detailed evidence to date about how the teacher labor markets faced by school administrators vary across school systems and position types.

The second paper focuses on a common but understudied strategy for hiring staff: the formation of school site hiring committees to evaluate and select applicants. The authors provide some of the first evidence about the internal workings of those committees and point to potential future work making these common teacher selection systems more effective.

The third paper transitions the panel to supply shocks and their solutions, with a study of the effects of federal mandates on teacher turnover in the United States. The author considers how Department of Education regulations impact voluntary turnover. The author then identifies how tenure and salary, among other teacher characteristics, buffer these effects.

Finally, the fourth paper addresses a very similar set of issues in a different national context: Malawi. The authors evaluate the success of a collection of policies intended to improve the supply of teachers to high-need schools. Besides quantifying the effects of these policies, the authors highlight policy-relevant heterogeneity in the policies’ impacts and estimate the impacts of improvements in staffing on student outcomes.

Collectively these papers extend our understanding of school staffing problems and the impact of strategic school staffing policies and practices. They also highlight important ways that education policies affect large numbers of students, both in terms of the equitable distribution of teachers and impacts on student outcomes.

Our discussants are experts in these and related issues in school policy and administration, and so are well-positioned to synthesize the papers and presentations and can frame the subsequent discussion between the audience and the presenters in terms of implications for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. 

Aligned with the conference theme of “forging collaborations for transformative and resilient policy solutions”, this session includes participants from diverse contexts, representing seven institutions ranging from universities to the World Bank; non-presenting co-authors extend this diversity further. Participants will discuss studies of a wide range of districts and states in two countries. This diversity will facilitate discussion of solutions to teacher supply problems that are relevant and credible across contexts.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Lindsey Kaler, Brown University

Discussants

• Constance A. Lindsay, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Shaun M Dougherty, Boston College

Organizer

• Paul Bruno, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• Exploring the Landscape of Teacher Applications - Presenting Author: Dan Goldhaber, American Institutes for Research

• The Operations and Effectiveness of School Hiring Committees - Presenting Author: Haeryun Kim, University of Illinois; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Paul Bruno, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• The Cost of Compliance: Federal Mandates and the Public Education Labor Force - Presenting Author: Daniel Rudy, University of Georgia

• Can Targeted Allocation of Teachers Improve Student Learning Outcomes? Evidence from Malawi - Presenting Author: Salman Asim, The World Bank; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Ravinder Casley Gera, World Bank