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Applicant Screening Assessments: Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions about our Screening Assessments (formerly known as AppliTrack Fit), you’re in the right place! We’ve put together the questions we most frequently hear from school districts who are researching our screening tool.

What is it?

We know each position requires something different from candidates, and applicant screening tests aren’t “one size fits all.” The Screening Assessments (formerly AppliTrack Fit) within Frontline Recruiting & Hiring include specific tests to help you find the right candidate for every job type.

  • TeacherFit: Identify outstanding teachers
  • TeacherFit SE: Identify qualified special education teachers
  • TeacherFit Urban: Identify great teachers for urban schools
  • JobFit: Identify the best candidates for your support staff
  • AdminFit: Identify winning administrators

How do the assessments work?

Our prescreening assessments are based on research conducted by John Arnold, Ph.D. of Wayne State University and Neal Schmitt, Ph.D. of Michigan State University. The assessments work within Frontline Absence & Time to give you additional insight into each applicant’s suitability, weed out poor candidates and highlight top performers with the most potential to succeed in your district.

In addition, you can validate the assessments’ results by gauging teacher success with post-hire evaluation forms to assess employees after six and twelve months. These forms enable you or your administrators to gauge how well employees are meeting the criteria scored in their initial assessment, and allows you to track each employee’s pre- and post-hire performance.

Do applicants have to pay to take the assessments?

No. Some other vendors require applicants to pay in order to see the results of their assessment. But with our prescreening assessments, applicants are never asked to purchase anything or make any payment after completing the test.

Why isn’t it called AppliTrack Fit anymore?

After acquiring Aspex Solutions, we kept the name “AppliTrack.” But as we began to move toward a more holistic set of solutions instead of individual products to support improved collaboration in our customers’ organizations, we found that our old product names no longer supported our goal of offering a single integrated platform. So, we retired the AppliTrack name and replaced it with a more functional descriptor — now, AppliTrack Fit is simply Screening Assessments within Frontline Recruiting & Hiring.

What are some of the benefits of using our prescreening assessments?

Our applicant screening assessments take the guesswork out of selecting applicants, with research-based tools that gauge your applicants’ characteristics and compare them to known statistics of high-performing employees. You’ll gain confidence in your hiring decisions and more easily identify the candidates most likely to succeed in your district.

You can also support a fair selection and hiring process in your district. Our prescreening assessments are EEOC-compliant and pass the EEOC 4/5ths rule.

Does Frontline’s screening tool support compliant hiring practices?

Our assessments have been shown to treat all populations fairly. The TeacherFit assessment has been in use since 2008 and has been completed by hundreds of thousands of candidates across the country. As part of Frontline’s regular monitoring and continuous improvement activities, adverse impact reviews are conducted periodically to ensure our prescreening assessments pass the EEOC 4/5ths rule. If you’d like a detailed summary of adverse impact and how it relates to our assessments, just ask to see our Adverse Impact Review.

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Can I see the research behind Frontline’s prescreening assessments?

Yes, the research that went into developing these assessments is available upon request.

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How much do the assessments cost?

Our end goal is the same as yours — getting the best educators in the classrooms. Doctorate-level research and continuous software development are an investment. We know districts have to make a case for each tool they bring in, so we try to be sensitive to district budgets. While some companies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same type of product, Frontline offers a significant return on investment and an affordable, scalable pricing system based on the size of your district.

What makes Frontline’s solution different?

Our tool was designed with K-12 school districts in mind, offering a simple-to-use product that’s just what you need, without being bogged down with unnecessary features you can’t use. Our prescreening assessments are driven by university-backed research and were made specifically to help you identify the best employees for your schools.

Our assessments leverage “machine learning,” which means that the longer you use it, the better it will understand which applicants are likely to succeed in your district. Our tool analyzes the data brought in by your applicants and “re-norms” itself based on those scores, so the more high-scoring applications you receive, the higher the bar will be raised for excellent scores on your assessment.

New Kids on the Block: Onboarding New Hires Step by Step

A lot of work goes into getting students ready for their first day of class — making sure they have a great teacher to support them, planning what they’ll learn over the course of the year and giving them goals to focus on. But students aren’t the only ones adjusting to a new school or classroom.

For recent hires, beginning a new job can be nerve-wracking. There’s a lot to learn, whether they’re a veteran educator from another district, a brand-new college graduate or a facilities technician. The good news is that comprehensive onboarding can help your employees succeed in their new roles, and help you improve retention. And that has long-lasting effects on student achievement and your district’s budget.

Let’s take a look at the long-term effects of a comprehensive onboarding program, and how you can make your own district’s onboarding more effective.

Onboarding’s Effect on Retention

Effective onboarding is based around each individual employee, but ultimately, it’s the district that reaps the rewards. The onboarding and induction process is an opportunity to improve job performance, increase retention rates, foster a sense of belonging and share the district’s values, culture and goals.

The benefit of higher retention can’t be overstated. After all, finding the best employees won’t do you much good if they don’t stick around.

So where does onboarding come into play? One study found that high-quality onboarding programs for new teachers could lead to retention rates of over 93%. That’s incredible — other research has shown that 40-50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Those higher retention rates have a ripple effect of its own: teacher turnover has a negative impact on student achievement. And every year, schools lose between $1 billion and $2.2 billion in attrition costs — it costs over $10,000 to replace a single teacher once the school year starts.

There’s no question about it. Getting your employees off on the right foot should be on everyone’s list of priorities — after all, “onboarding in time saves nine.” But what elements make up an effective onboarding program?

Onboarding Best Practices

Effective onboarding requires a holistic approach starting before the employee’s first day, and lasting well beyond an orientation. Let’s take a look at some of the areas that can be leveraged for better onboarding and retention.

  Recruiting & Hiring

Recruiting isn’t a separate function from onboarding; it should be the first step. Make sure that your recruiting and hiring processes are clear on what is expected of candidates, and what they can expect from you. Having your objectives and expectations clearly documented from the beginning gives structure to a new hire’s responsibilities and clears up a lot of confusion.

And remember: the hiring process should focus on ensuring that they will fit seamlessly into the district and that your organization is the right place for them, too.

  Processing & Orientation

This is your opportunity to make a great first impression. The first step is handling the transactional steps efficiently. Make sure that all administrative forms are ready to be completed and processed so you don’t have to worry about them later.

Then, you’ll want to provide them with the information they need to get started successfully. This includes things that affect employees personally (where to park or how to log into their email), and things that help them as a team member (who to talk to in different situations, or what the department’s priorities are).

This is a great time to make them feel valued as a team member, so look for ways to make them feel accommodated and comfortable with your organization. You might want to put together a welcome package with the supplies they need, and any “extras” that show that you’re excited to have them join the team.

 Training

You and your new hires both want to get started quickly. But there’s a lot to go over, and it can be overwhelming to learn everything at once. Look for ways to reduce the stress of completing mandatory safety training for both of you. For example, mandatory safety trainings can be done online, on the new hire’s own time.

  Coaching

Coaching is one of the best ways you can support your educators — even if they have decades of experience. And for novice teachers, having two or three years of guidance can be immensely helpful. Having a mentor or coach not only helps teachers improve their practice, but also promotes collaboration and assimilation. In addition, a coach can act as a resource for the new employee to learn about your district or school’s culture.

  Feedback

Finally, remember that feedback plays an integral role in employee growth. Setting milestones or concrete goals for new hires gives them something to strive for and ensures that they are on the right track.

This can be a two-way street, as you may also want to ask them for feedback of their own. This can be invaluable in addressing any concerns or improving the onboarding process for future employees.

What Makes an Effective Teacher?

In education, there’s a lot of potential for disagreement — what to include on teacher evaluations, how to handle student assessments, what kind of curriculum to implement. But everyone — every educator, administrator, parent and member of the public — can agree on one thing: having an effective teacher in every classroom is one of the best ways to support student learning.

Of course, it’s easy to say that every student needs an effective teacher, but what does that look like in practice? We reached out to the education community for insights. Here are some of our favorite answers.

Effective Teachers Genuinely Care

Many of the responses we received focused on the caring and nurturing aspect of teaching. It’s true — effective teachers understand the altruistic nature of their roles, and realize that empathy and compassion are key ingredients for helping students succeed.

“Effective teachers are blind to color, gender, age, disability, language, and socioeconomic class. They see all challenges as opportunities, all barriers as stepping stones, and every student as unique, special, and full of potential. They love, they care, and they are committed. They know their job is more about teaching character than teaching content.”

Victor Hernandez, Corpus Christi ISD, Director for Instructional Support

“An effective teacher is not just about test scores. An effective teacher is someone who genuinely cares about students, their families and doing everything they can to make school a safe and engaging place to learn! Their caring and compassion goes beyond the school day, ensuring that families have what they need to support their children.

Cara Wood, Hillsboro School District, Principal

 

Effective Teachers Build Relationships

An effective teacher fosters a lifelong love of learning, but that’s a trait that can’t be taught by any lesson plan. When talking about teachers who made an impact on their lives, people rarely bring up instruction or curriculum. Instead, they remember the teacher who believed in them and understood them as an individual.

“One who strives to personalize learning, build relationships, collaborate with students on personalized paths, incorporates student voice and choice, and pushes themselves to be a lifelong learner alongside their students.”

Karen Ladendorf, Community Consolidated School Dist. 93, Curriculum Integration Specialist

“An effective teacher believes in their students. Someone that communicates well and builds rapport with students and colleagues. Someone that is a “team player.” Someone who remains positive and cares for their students. Someone who remembers that anyone can make a positive difference in anything that they want to accomplish: As Mahatma Ghandi said, ‘We must be the change that we want to see in the world.’”

Cindy Taylor, Santa Maria ISD, Principal:

Effective Teachers Meet Students Where They Are

Of course, education isn’t easy, and takes more than compassion and communication alone. An effective teacher is committed to continual improvement and refining his pedagogy. These teachers understand that personalized, differentiated instruction is crucial to student achievement.

“No teacher wakes up and finds himself an effective teacher all of a sudden. It takes time and effort. They challenge students with high-level, analytical, real-life problems and guide them through differentiated solutions. But they also create a safe and relaxing environment for students to grow academically, socially and emotionally — all while helping them become productive citizens.” 

Alpaslan Ozdogan, Thomas Edison Energysmart Charter School, Project Coordinator

“One who teaches children — not curriculum — who understands that each child learns differently. Who uses effective applicable assessments, both subjective and objective, blended with an understanding of the natural development of the age of children they teach while being sensitive to their physical and emotional needs and challenges. An effective teacher understands that they must use multiple modalities and methods including hands-on projects, technology and other techniques.”

Sandy Stewart, Jefferson Academy, Executive Director

Effective Teachers Are Passionate

And finally, effective teachers are passionate about what they do. It’s hard to be a teacher in today’s climate, and teaching is not for the faint of heart. That means that great teachers are full of passion for their job, their students and their subject.

“Effective teachers have a love and passion for teaching. They are calm, fair, compassionate, flexible, and versed in multiple teaching strategies to reach all types of student learning. They incorporate interactive lessons, make learning fun through grade- and age-appropriate games, continue their own learning, participate in school meetings and functions; and encourage all students to reach their full potential.” 

Carrie Harper-Kitzmiller, ESD 113, Public Schools Personnel Cooperative, Program Specialist

“An effective teacher must be passionate about their students and passionate about their subject. Kids know if you care about them individually or not, and they can tell if what you are teaching is important to you. If it is dull and boring, they shut down.”

Diane Davis, Powell County Schools, Professional Growth and Effectiveness Coach

Showing Your Substitutes Where to Park (and Why It Really Matters)

We’ve all had those days when we walked into unfamiliar situations: the first day in a new school, that first middle school dance, a job at a new company. If we were lucky, some caring individual came alongside us to help us get our footing.

Your substitute teachers face similar situations nearly every day — an unfamiliar building, locked doors, technology that they haven’t been trained how to use. Not only are these frustrating and demoralizing for substitutes, but can make it difficult for a professional to be effective.

Share What To Expect With Substitutes

Running an effective substitute program starts by taking concrete steps to show substitutes what to expect and how to be successful. But what might those steps look like? Mostly, they’re common sense — maybe that’s what makes them easy to overlook.

In some combination of in-person training, resources and materials, and on-demand, online courses, consider these best practices:

  1. Help substitutes find their way around. A welcome kit that includes a map of the school, its grounds, where to park, where to enter and exit for the school day, a bell schedule, and an ID badge can help a substitute feel confident about getting started.
  2. Give substitutes confidence to interact with students. Go over the school’s culture and the code of conduct that students are expected to follow. Make sure substitutes understand what actions to take in situations that may arise in the classroom.
  3. Provide well-developed lesson plans. Substitutes want to work with students — they’re educators, after all. Lesson plans prepare them to step in and continue instruction, rather than trying to figure out how to best utilize (or pass) class time.
  4. Train substitutes on classroom tech. Increasingly high-tech classrooms can be powerful aids to learning, but substitutes need to know how to use the technology to run the class. Some districts conduct training for substitutes within a model classroom, so they get hands-on experience with where things are and how to operate the technology.

Gains For Your District

Equipping substitutes with knowledge and skills for success clearly takes a bit of effort — so how does it strengthen your district? Here are three reasons to invest time to do this well.

Prevents lost instruction time

You want substitutes to fill the gap while the teacher is out, ensuring continuous learning. Any time a substitute spends figuring out processes or technology is time not spent working with students.

Supports effective classroom management

What’s the most demanding part of a substitute’s job? The need to build rapport and connect with a classroom of students they don’t know, quickly. If a substitute spends the first five minutes trying to figure out the electronic board or find the lesson plan, classroom management becomes that much harder.

Promotes school safety

Imagine a situation where a substitute needs to act to ensure student safety — do they have adequate knowledge of fire exits, emergency drills and other safety procedures? Do they know if certain doors are locked at certain times of the day? They need to know what procedures to follow to move swiftly.

Training like this helps everyone come out ahead: your substitutes, your students and your district as a whole. And because having this information — or not — can make or break someone’s day, it’ll also make your schools that much more appealing to substitutes as you seek to draw more highly qualified educators into your district. Show substitutes what to expect and how to be successful in your district and you may see your fill rates greatly improve.

What Does Sherlock Holmes Have to Say about Absence Management?

As the school year comes to a close, it’s time to focus on the fall. How can you make sure that classrooms aren’t empty when teachers are absent next year? How can you ensure that employee absences don’t get out of control?

The answer can be found in the story of a certain fictional detective and his dedication to data. Long before the phrase “data-informed decision-making” was ever uttered, Holmes expounded on the importance of using data as a foundation for his conclusions:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Now, you’re probably wondering what on earth that has in common with managing employee absences. Good question.

If you want to ensure that you have qualified substitutes filling in, you need to manage employee absences strategically. And to do that, you need data. In the words of our erstwhile detective: “‘Data! Data! Data!’ he cried impatiently. ‘I can’t make bricks without clay.'” Point being: You can’t make solid decisions without data, the same way you can’t build solid bricks without clay.

You’re in luck, because we — like a certain fictional detective — have a penchant for gathering and analyzing data. And we’re uniquely positioned to collect authentic data from the thousands of school districts using our absence and substitute management system across the country. In fact, our data comes from over 4,800 educational organizations and has been determined to be representative of all districts nationwide by the Johns Hopkins Center for Research and Reform in Education. We put that data to work with the Frontline Research and Learning Institute, and identified several valuable trends over the past several months.

Let’s take a look at what we learned over the past few months, and how you can use our findings to shape decisions for your own district.

What We Learned This Year

Absence Lead Times Impact Fill Rates

The further in advance your employee enters an absence, the more likely it is that you’ll find a substitute. As Holmes would say, “It is more than possible; it is probable.” Absences entered with one day of lead time or less saw fill rates at 74% of lower. But those submitted more than three days in advance saw fill rates over 90%.

Average absences chart

Absence Rates Rise in the Spring

As temperatures rose, so did employee absences. From January to April, absences per employee rose from an average of 1.58 to 1.64.

absences per employee bar chart

High Employee-Sub Ratios Mean Lower Fill Rates

In April, we saw the year’s employee-sub ratio peak at 2.78 employees per substitute.  This isn’t good news, as you can see from the graph below: districts with higher employee-sub ratios tend to struggle with lower fill rates.

Wondering what we mean by “employee-sub ratio”? This refers to the average number of employees requiring a sub, compared to the number of substitutes signed up to work in the district.

average employee-sub ratio bar chart

What You Can Do for Next Year

Strategic absence management can be tough. In fact, it’s just not elementary, my dear. But the summer comes with an opportunity to think about what these findings could mean for your district, and what you can do for the fall. Here are some suggestions to get you started.

Promote Longer Lead Times

It’s inevitable that some absences will have short lead times: employees get sick, or have something unexpected come up. But other absences, like those for professional development or district-sanctioned activities, can be planned out well in advance.

To ensure that you have time to find the best substitute to cover the absence, encourage your employees to submit absence requests as far in advance as possible. That gives you time to find a substitute qualified to continue the classroom teacher’s lesson plan, and gives the substitute time to prepare as well.

Track Your Data

Here’s one last quote from our erstwhile detective. “There is nothing like first-hand evidence.”

That goes for your district, too! The Frontline Research and Learning Institute pulls data from over 4,800 educational organizations, which means that our findings represent national norms. But to truly tailor your absence management strategy to your own district and have the greatest effect, you need to be able to report on your own district’s data.

Having easy access to your own data opens up a world of possibilities. Once you can see when (and why) employees are most likely to be out, you have the insights you need to take steps to reduce unnecessary absences wherever possible.

Want More?

In conclusion: data is great, and you need it to make the best decisions for your district. And if you’re looking for more, we’re happy to share our research with you at no cost. You can get the full April Absence Report from the Frontline Research and Learning Institute by filling out the form below.

Overcoming Unfilled Positions & Last-Minute Hiring: One District’s Story

The end of the school year doesn’t mean the end of recruiting applicants: some districts report having open job opportunities throughout the summer and into the school year. Others manage to fill every vacancy, only to receive late resignations for positions that must be filled by the beginning of the school year.

These last-minute hires can be extremely stressful — and the teacher shortage doesn’t help. But with enough perseverance and the right tools, districts can keep their positions filled all year round.  Take USD 475 Geary County Schools, for example, where the military causes a lot of turnover. Hiring 100 to 130 new teachers throughout the year means that they have gained lot of experience managing last-minute job openings and filling vacancies.

Turnover & Unfilled Positions

Geary County Schools in Kansas has a problem with the teacher shortage: but it’s not just because there aren’t enough candidates. The Executive Director of Human Resources, Bridget Seemann, describes their shortage as “multi-faceted.” Part of the problem is that half of the district’s schools are on an army base, leading to uncontrollably high turnover of both students and staff.

“We tend to have lots of turnover because the military moves staff. We can’t control that. I’m about to start my 5th year and I’ve only had one board meeting where I have not hired a new teacher. I am constantly hiring because they’re constantly taking people away from me. It’s a never-ending cycle.”

She mentions that an elementary teacher on a military base might start the year with 25 students, and only one or two will stay the full year. That teacher might have 50 different children cycle through their classroom during the course of one school year. Teaching and supporting that many students is a tough task for any educator.

The other part of the problem, according to Bridget, is location. And it’s not that Junction City isn’t a nice place to live — it’s a beautiful area where the cost of living is easily affordable. But she points out that they are about two hours away from a major city, and that public education in the state is weathering a political storm.

She explains that the unfavorable political climate in the state has “made it very difficult and scary to be a teacher, and that’s spread through to a lot of young students… we’ve seen a decrease in students graduating from college with an education degree.” At recruiting fairs where students used to line up for the chance at an interview, she’s now lucky to interview any students at all.

“The kids just aren’t interested. They don’t want to do it. There’s no security, and there’s no money. And I don’t think many people go into education to get rich, but you have to support your family.” 

The hardest positions to fill in Geary County should sound familiar: speech language pathologists, math and science teachers, and language arts educators. One year, two elementary teachers were suddenly moved to another military base. Those two elementary positions stayed vacant until filled by December graduates.

Recruiting & Hiring

With the nearby army base, the district usually has a regular influx of new teachers. But to fill in the gaps, Bridget usually posts vacancies online. She also goes to every career fair in the state to find new educators, and relies on the district’s close relationships with Kansas State University students. But because of all the other hats she wears, she says that a lack of time holds her back from doing all of the recruiting she wants to do.

Hiring so many new employees during the entire year places a huge strain on her office, so she is happy to have the applicant tracking tools in Frontline Absence & Time (formerly AppliTrack Recruiting) to help organize the hiring process and quickly bring new employees into the district. Principals can review references before deciding who to interview, which puts candidates on a more equal footing. And references aren’t called multiple times if an applicant applies to five different schools. And because Bridget is always looking for more time in the day, she points out that the solution’s integration features are extremely helpful for both saving time and improving accuracy.

“That’s a single push of a button that makes it so much easier. We don’t have to worry about touching the data. Data entry is solely reliant on the employee getting it right and having the time to do it. When you’re hiring so many people, the number of mistakes can pile up really quickly.”

 

The time savings and accuracy gained from using an applicant tracking solution frees up Bridget’s time for more strategic work — and she can use data from Frontline Absence & Time to make those strategic decisions. The system allows Bridget to track who she is reaching and who she isn’t — or what’s working and what’s not. That information helps her make informed decisions about recruiting strategies, and find which groups of applicants she’s missing.

“I have the data to determine what’s working and what’s not working, so that we can look at trying to make a better recruiting strategy. Who am I getting to? Who am I not getting to? Where are they coming from? What can we do to be more successful? I have the data of applicant’s races, ages and genders. We can see which groups we aren’t hitting.”

 

Now, Bridget doesn’t have to worry about leaving positions empty while waiting on a slow hiring process. The system takes care of all the communication with applicants and helps her find the most qualified candidate for each position: a huge win for the district.

What Does Actionable Feedback Look Like?

Imagine a world without feedback.

No, seriously — try to picture an entire workday when no one receives any information about how things are going. Chefs wouldn’t be able to taste their dishes as they cooked. Pilots wouldn’t receive course corrections from air traffic controllers. You wouldn’t want to get a haircut that day.

Feedback is important in many spheres of life, including — and perhaps especially — in education. But not all feedback is created equal. What does it look like to provide meaningful, actionable feedback that supports educator growth?

Four Qualities of Effective Feedback

It would be nearly impossible to make an exhaustive list of qualities feedback should have, but this is a start. Effective, actionable feedback should have the following qualities:

Be rooted in evidence

“Great job on that lesson.”

A teacher may enjoy hearing that from her principal after an observation, but does it really give her anything useful to be a better educator? What was meant by, “Great job”?

Evidence allows teachers to see the basis for feedback. When teachers are able to examine the data provided and draw the same conclusions as their observers, conversations about improving practice will be more fruitful.

In Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, Grant Wiggins gives this example:

Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive…For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that ‘many students were bored in class.’ That’s a judgment, not observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, ‘I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student.’

Foster the Self-reflection in the Teacher

Simply put, feedback should spark meaningful questions in the mind of the teacher. This might look something like the Socratic method, using questions to guide teachers in seeing issues for themselves and encouraging them to think more deeply.

Post-observation, consider with the teacher what the lesson looked like (using video can be great for this, by the way!) and how students responded. Then ask what went well, what did not go as planned and what strategies could best impact future instructional practice.

Be forward-thinking, not just backward-looking

Summative feedback without formative feedback will tear down the culture of trust you’ve worked so hard to cultivate. In the absence of ongoing feedback, giving a teacher a score — especially if it’s less than stellar — will inevitably carry with it a bag of emotions, none of them positive.

The goal should be to create a continuous loop consisting of summative and formative feedback — never just a one-time event tied to evaluations. As teachers encounter situations, they can make adjustments as they go along, putting into practice what they’ve learned from an observation. Better yet, the next time a similar situation arises, they may even invite another observation, leading to more feedback. This not only means continual refinement, it’s also a way to document growth, demonstrating how feedback impacts practice.

Have a Humble and Respectful Tone

In Actionable Feedback for Teachers: The Missing Element in School Improvement, highly-regarded educator and speaker Dr. Kevin Feldman notes that meaningful, actionable feedback will be given with:

  • Humility — we all have room to grow
  • Curiosity — we’re exploring ways to grow together
  • Kindness — we’re learning and improving together
  • Respect — evaluations are a collaborative process

He ties the idea of evidence-based feedback to guiding self-reflection, and recommends a structure that links the teacher’s actions with student response:

  • It appeared effective when you…
  • I noticed the students were…
  • Avoid the word ‘should’.

The irony within the observation process is that teachers frequently engage in professional learning about giving descriptive feedback to their students, yet all too often they don’t receive it themselves. Investing in teachers through ongoing, continuous feedback may require rethinking how evaluations and observations are conducted. That’s no small task — but it’s one worth undertaking.

 

4 Important Spring Absence & Substitute Trends

There are a few general truths when it comes to the end of the school year. Students get restless, the weather gets warmer and absence rates rise. And we don’t just mean student absences — teachers and other district employees tend to take more time off in the spring, too.

How do we know this? It’s not just intuition — the Frontline Research and Learning Institute develops reports full of data on absences. Let’s take a look at the report’s key findings and what they could mean for your district.

Key Findings

One thing to keep in mind is that this report is based on data from nearly five thousand educational organizations and over 2.7 million employees. With such a comprehensive data set, these numbers are representative of national norms. But averages can hide variations, so it’s still important to have an effective way to track and manage employee absences within your own district. With that in mind, let’s dive in!

1. More Absences per Employee

Trends in absence data from January through March reveal an increase in absences in the spring. In the instance shown below, the average number of absences per employee jumped from 1.58 to 1.63 — mostly for employees that don’t require a substitute, and mostly on Mondays and Fridays. That’s not to say that every district sees their absence rate increase in the spring — there are wide variations among districts of different sizes and locations.
absences per employee chart

 

2. More Vacations, Fewer Sick Days

Data also suggests that reasons for absences change with the seasons. The percentage of absences due to illness tends to fall in the spring while the percentage of absences for vacations tends to rise. That makes sense, as cold and flu season comes to an end and employees are more likely to time off around spring break.
more vacations, fewer sick days chart

 

3. Lower Fill Rates

Here’s some bad news. Even though the same percentage of substitutes tend to take jobs in the spring, the increase in absences means that fill rates tend to fall. In the instance shown below, fill rates fell from 89% in January to 84% in March. Like the average number of absences per employee, this can also vary wildly based on district location and size. In particular, rural schools and small urban schools have shown the highest fill rates — while small suburban and very large urban schools have struggled more in the spring.
lower fill rates chart

 

4. Non-Working Substitutes

The percentage of non-working substitutes tends to remain consistent from winter into spring. In the instance shown below, 61.5% of substitutes did not work in both February and April. As you might expect, districts with more non-working substitutes have lower fill rates.
Feb Mar Apr Breakdown of of Subs Graph

 

Taking Action in Your District

Knowing it’s likely that absences will increase and fill rates will decrease in the spring can help you wind down the school year with readiness and confidence. And comparing your own district’s data against national trends can help you make even more strategic decisions. But these aren’t the only statistics you should keep in mind.

See how Frontline’s Absence & Time can give you the insights you need.

A Tale of Teacher Shortages

Here’s one history lesson you won’t find in your schools’ textbooks. 

Have you noticed the deluge of news articles about the teacher shortage lately? Writers across the country declare that there’s a crisis upon us. Without enough teachers, class sizes are increasing and more schools are relying on long-term substitutes to lead classrooms — to the detriment of student learning.

The reason for vacant teaching positions varies depending on whom you ask: teaching doesn’t pay as well as other careers, too few students graduate with education degrees, licensing requirements are too strict, or the current political climate is unfavorable to educators.

Is this really a new problem for districts?

Let’s take a step back and take a look at the teacher shortage from a historical perspective.

Using Google Trends, we can gain a broader view of the teacher shortage beyond what is reported in the media. Take a look at the news pieces about the teacher shortage: the number of articles skyrocketed in August of 2015 after a slight surge during the earlier part of the year.

Why August? Most likely, districts started noticing difficulty filling openings early in the year, but the start of the school year triggered desperation around unfilled positions.

News Articles Published on the Teacher Shortage

Compare this graph to the one below, which looks at web searches. Although searches have jumped in August as well, we can see that people have been consistently looking for information on the teacher shortage even when no articles were being published.

Web Searches for “Teacher Shortage”

What can we learn from this?

Digging even deeper reveals that today’s shortages have been a long time in the making. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated that districts hire “highly qualified” teachers — a requirement that constricted the number of potential teaching candidates. A few years later, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) mandated that school districts have highly qualified teachers and staff to meet the needs of every special education student. That meant giving students the resources and support they needed, like competent special education teachers and speech language pathologists, but also led to problems finding great candidates with the proper licenses.

We can see that the teacher shortage is not unfamiliar to districts: severe shortages have plagued districts in the past as new regulations are passed, but gave way to an overabundance of candidates during the Great Recession. And although the economy bounced back, district budgets didn’t recover as quickly, or as well. So teacher salaries remain low, and students still don’t see education as a viable career.

What can we do about the shortages?

In the long-term, we have to change the story about working in education. Teachers in the United States have long suffered from public misconceptions about what teaching truly entails, and face immense pressure and demands on their time. Few students are graduating with education degrees — fewer still even enter the profession. It doesn’t have to be like this. In other countries, like Finland, Singapore and South Korea, teaching is a prestigious, well-compensated career. Students from these countries aspire to be a teacher, because educators are widely viewed as respected professionals.

Let’s change the narrative and show that teaching is an incredibly rewarding (and viable!) career. That won’t happen overnight, but it’s not impossible to achieve.

Why You Should Revisit Your Teacher Evaluations

Many evaluation processes provide opportunities for evaluators and teachers to meet about observation results. But, few go so far as to co-construct evaluations.

What are co-constructed evaluations?

Co-constructed evaluations require significant, ongoing input from teachers. How this manifests varies according to the evaluation process, but such evaluations aren’t complete without significant involvement of both teacher and evaluator.

“Part of the job of being a teacher is to be on a career-long quest to improve practice [while] a critically important role of any evaluation system is to promote learning.”
– Charlotte Danielson

Why are they important?

“Part of the job of being a teacher,” affirms Charlotte Danielson, “is to be on a career-long quest to improve practice, [while] a critically important role of any evaluation system is to promote learning.” Without a process that sees teachers actively participating in their evaluations, the process may come across as one-sided and compliance-driven. Co-constructed evaluations, on the other hand, invite teachers into the process.

What do co-constructed evaluations look like?

Evaluations that promote professional learning share some common elements:

  • All involved need to trust the evaluation instrument as well as the evaluator’s ability to observe practice accurately and fairly.
  • Teachers should have the opportunity to assess their own practice.
  • Any evaluation process must provide ample opportunity to reflect on practice as well as the process itself.
  • Ongoing professional conversations help teachers and evaluators work together to identify strengths in practice, address growth areas and plan.
  • Evaluation processes should involve communities of practice in authentic ways.
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Teacher Evaluation: WHY It Matters and HOW We Can Do Better

School systems don’t need to overhaul evaluation processes to incorporate these elements. Simply incorporating a few practices can pave the way for evaluators and teachers to co-construct evaluations.

After collecting evidence for an observation, for example, an evaluator might share that evidence with the teacher to make sure nothing important is missing from the teacher’s point of view. Then, after tagging the evidence to components of a rubric, the observer can invite the teacher to do the same before having a conversation about the lesson.

“The hope with this approach,” says Danielson, “is that [evaluators and teachers] can together co-construct the observation.”

Co-constructed evaluations and school culture

Students and educators alike function better in schools where trust and collaboration are valued and actively cultivated. Co-constructed evaluations are an important part of such a culture, but there are many other ways in which school and district leaders can work to establish trust and transparency. Leading to greater growth and trust, these efforts can bolster efforts to promote evaluations that lead to educator growth.

Are schools and districts causing employee absences?

Teachers and other educational employees often have to be absent — for illness, jury duty or any number of personal reasons. But do you know how often employees are pulled out of their work for absences driven by your school or district?

These “professionally-related absences” are often overlooked in discussions around employee absences, and yet they are significant and unique for several reasons:

  • They impact multiple departments at the district and school level
  • They can usually be planned in advance (but often are not communicated in advance!)
  • They’re costly, accounting for nearly 1 in 5 of all absences

So how often are employees pulled out of the classroom or other work for professional reasons? Are these absences usually filled with a qualified substitute? Are teams working together to minimize the impact on instructional time?

To get the answers to these questions and more, we looked at a recent report by the Frontline Research and Learning Institute, representing data from more than 8,500 educational organizations.

Here are a few of the key findings.

Absence Causes: Why Are Employees Out?

We looked at employee absences from July 2012 through June 2015. Here are the top reasons why employees were absent:

teacher absence reasons over a three-year period graph

Not surprisingly, illness is at the top of the list, accounting for nearly half of all absences, followed by personal time off. But don’t miss the next two — both are professionally-related absences.

If you total all of the professionally-related absences, they account for 19% — nearly 1 in 5 — of all absences. Of those, more than half are specifically for professional development.
one in 5 absenses
Those professional absences – more than 16 million over the last three years – are also much more likely to be taken by employees in positions requiring a substitute to cover their absences.

Fill Rates: Are Absences Getting Filled?

The report showed that over a three-year period, fill rates (the ability to find a substitute) have steadily declined for all types of absences.

average fill rate by absence type graph

Many districts attribute this decline to a substitute shortage. But another important factor in fill rates is absence lead time — how far in advance the absence is entered before the start time.

Surprisingly, nearly a third of professional absences are reported within four days of the absence. More than half are reported less than 10 days in advance.

lead time absences

The data shows that shorter notice (and less time to find a substitute for the absence) directly correlates to lower fill rates.

So why aren’t these absences – most of which are probably known well in advance – reported earlier? Are district teams aware of the issues that short notice can cause, and are they working together to prevent it?

Our survey results said: not so much.

 

A Difference in Perception

In our survey of nearly 700 districts, we asked district leaders to estimate the percentage of total absences that were for professional reasons. They weren’t far off in their estimates, but what was interesting was how different roles responded.

Curriculum & Instruction and Superintendents: estimated professionally-related absences to be relatively infrequent

Human Resources and Business/Finance: estimated professionally-related absences to be relatively frequent

estimated incidence of professionally related absences graph

Their suggested approaches for dealing with these absences were different, too:

Curriculum & Instruction and Superintendents: thought current professional absence levels should be maintained or increased

Human Resources and Business/Finance: thought current professional absence levels should be decreased

A Lack of Collaboration

Clearly, there is a disconnect in perception. Unfortunately, there is also a disconnect when it comes to collaboration on managing professionally-related absences.

In fact, 40% of respondents said collaboration is rare or non-existent between the Human Resources and Curriculum & Instruction teams around this important employee issue.

Collaboration Between Human Resources and Instructional Departments

extent of collaboration versus percent of survey responses graph

In keeping with the other results, Human Resources personnel perceived even less collaboration than their counterparts in Curriculum & Instruction.

Strategies for Increasing Collaboration

It seems that the two departments most involved in managing professional absences are not talking to each other. When that disconnect happens, what are the impacts?

  • Pressure on principals to fill last-minute absences
  • Frustration for employees not driving their own professional development activities
  • Lost instructional time for students when the teacher is absent

But there is hope! Here are some specific ways both teams can work together to minimize the impact of professional absences.

Encourage Employees to Enter Absences in Advance
Encourage employees to request an absence as soon as they’ve enrolled in an event, increasing the likelihood of finding a substitute and reducing last-minute planning for principals.

Review Absence Trend Data
Working closely together, both teams can review absence trends and plan high-attendance events for days known to have lower absences and better fill rates.

Collaboratively Plan Professional Development
The Curriculum & Instruction team can partner with HR by sharing plans for professionally-related events prior to enrollment. Awareness of events in other locations will also allow for more effective substitute coverage.

Centris and Frontline Education: Frequently Asked Questions

Questions about the Centris Group becoming a part of Frontline Education? You’ve come to the right place!

Here are a few of the most frequent questions we hear from school districts who are wondering what the move means for them. Don’t see your question here? Don’t hesitate to contact us!

Why have the product names changed? 

Since becoming a part of Frontline Education, Centris’ products have been rebranded as Frontline Special Education Management. The name change helps align Centris’ products with the rest of the K-12 software solutions Frontline Education offers.

How is Frontline Special Education Management different from IEP Direct and other Centris products?

Despite the name change, the software hasn’t changed in terms of functionality. However, our team is working constantly to improve Frontline Special Education Management’s integration with the rest of Frontline’s solutions to provide your district with even better tools.

How does Frontline Special Education Management help to streamline special education management? 

Frontline Special Education Management will recapture staff time and help your school district contribute toward improved outcomes for children with special learning needs by:

  • Reducing paperwork
  • Saving time in drafting IEPs, scheduling meetings, producing reports and overall administration
  • Eliminating redundant data entry
  • Minimizing hands-on administrative tasks
  • Improving collaboration in the development of IEPs
  • Enhancing tracking of timelines and tasks
  • Increasing district visibility for data-driven decision-making
  • Boosting staff efficiency and morale by reducing the time spent on paperwork and meetings
  • Ensuring accountability through built-in compliance checks and reviews

Does it integrate with my other software systems? 

Frontline Special Education Management will integrate seamlessly with your Student Information System and its parent portal to save time and improve accuracy and access to demographic data, special education data and IEPs.

How does the system help to manage programs for other special student populations (RTI, ELL, Gifted programs, 504)? 

The full Frontline Special Education Management solution allows staff to quickly document, access and monitor each 504 student’s information for both compliance and instructional purposes, and provides powerful reporting tools for administrators and supervisors. This functionality is provided to Connecticut school districts that use Frontline Special Education Management at no cost.

Our RTI Program Management application is a full-lifecycle management and tracking system, which saves time, reduces paperwork, enables data-driven decision making, improves collaboration and communication and enhances the quality of intervention plans throughout the entire RTI process.  This system is an RTI data and program management system for tracking, monitoring, and managing all aspects of RTI.  The system is seamlessly compatible with all assessments, CBMs and interventions, and supports both academic and behavioral models.

How does using an integrated IEP/Medicaid reimbursement tool save my district time and money?

 The full Frontline Special Education Management solution contains integrated Medicaid billing software that drives optimized reimbursement and enhances compliance management.

We understand that Medicaid claiming and Special Education go hand in hand, and Frontline has developed its Posted byFrontline EducationPosted inSpecial EducationTags: