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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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 by Frontline Education April 6, 2016April 13, 2021Posted inSpecial EducationTags:Student Support

5 Steps to Choosing an Applicant Screening Tool

Why Use an Applicant Screening Tool?

Every person in every district’s HR department wants the same thing: to find the best candidate for each job. And there’s a way to increase the chances of this happening: having an objective, research-based hiring process can do a world of good in finding those high performers.

Luckily for us, researchers have studied both hiring processes and high-performing teachers for a very long time. In fact, the employment interview has been studied for nearly a hundred years, and tells us that the most effective way to choose the right person is through a structured hiring process — especially a structured interview. But although interviews are the most common way of choosing a candidate, they can also be one of the least reliable predictors of performance if left open to interpretation — or if they aren’t consistent between candidates.

A high-quality selection tool takes all of this research into account and uses it to help you bring in the best talent possible. It should springboard off of existing research and offer a way to structure the hiring process, especially when it comes to interviews. In K-12 education in particular, it’s crucial that screening assessments and selection criteria reflect what you expect great teachers to do every day.

How Do You Pick the Right Tool for Your District?

That sounds tempting: the idea that a screening tool could help you find the best possible candidate. Let’s take a look at what every district should take into account when considering an applicant screening tool, and the steps that will lead to finding the right one.

Step 1: Develop a Rationale

This seems like a simple step (“we want the tool to help us find better candidates”), but really needs to be a deliberate conversation across leaders, departments and buildings. There must be an understanding of how people are currently brought into the district, and how a screening tool will fit into that process and provide interpretable data.

Step 2: Do Your Research

We do this with every facet of the work we do in education, and HR is no different. Take the time to really research what you’re looking into. Look up everything you can about the research behind teacher selection and screening assessments. This includes asking every vendor you contact if you can see the research that has gone into developing their product. If they say no, run away.

Your research should understanding legal requirements, such as those enforced by the EEOC. For example, consider following excerpt from the 1978 Uniform Guidelines:

“Under no circumstances will the general reputation of a test or other selection procedures, its author or its publisher, or casual reports of its validity be accepted in lieu of evidence of validity.”

This means that you, as an employer, must be sure that the tool you choose is truly valid and driven by research — you can’t just rely on the product or vendor’s reputation. In other words, you can’t responsibly use a product if you can’t personally vouch for the research that’s been done on it.

Step 3: Consider the Law

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous step, but bears repeating. You must be fully compliant with the EEOC. If your screening tool scores applicants of a protected class as lower than other individuals, you can be held liable for discrimination. Again, ask to see evidence that the screening tool you’re considering is fully EEOC-compliant.

Step 4: Analyze the Costs

You can’t put a price on having great employees, but you don’t have unlimited funding, either. Make sure you know exactly what you will be paying for. Are there start-up costs involved, or a licensing fee? Find out what training is involved and what technical support is available, and know how much it costs before you put pen to paper.

Step 5: Plan Out the Screening Tool’s Role

The last step in this process is to have a plan of how you will use your new selection criteria. Do you plan to use it as part of a holistic hiring process where it’s used alongside other predictive elements to create a mosaic of each candidate? Or will you use it as a way to weed out low-performing candidates, and only consider applicants above a certain score?

Regardless of how you plan to use your screening tool, you need to have a plan in place and discuss this with other leaders in your district. An interview tool or prescreening assessments can help provide a new dimension to your hiring process and help you bring the best possible candidates into your district, as long as its role is clearly defined.

Welcoming Substitutes Into Your School’s Community

Have you ever been far from home and met someone who grew up in your hometown? You know that sense of connection you get when you walk into a room and see someone else wearing a shirt with your college’s name on it? Ever sat in a stadium with 70,000 strangers and felt at one with them as you cheered for the same team?

Emblems, colors, mascots, cities, flags — these things have a way of drawing us together, of connecting us to something bigger than ourselves. They can be used for good or ill, to draw lines of demarcation, to pull people in or push them out.

Let’s use them to pull people in.

Each school is a community, with mascots and colors, history and lore, quirks and triumphs. These things connect students and employees to that community, and this lends rhythm and familiarity. It gives a sense of belonging.

But for substitute teachers, it can be difficult to connect to this community. The typical substitute teacher faces her First Day at a New Job, every day. It can be daunting (“Where do I go?”), awkward (“Is this the right classroom?”) and lonely (“I don’t know anybody here”). Bringing them into your school’s community will not only help attract more quality substitutes as they see you come alongside them, it naturally empowers them to be more effective educators, more engaged in and committed to their work.

Five ways to bring substitutes into your community

Communicate key information to your substitutes.

If something matters to your school, it probably matters to the substitutes who will be working there that day. Don’t let them be the only people who aren’t dressed for School Spirit Day because they didn’t know about it. Letters from the principal in your substitute management system can be a great way to communicate this kind of information.

Communicate with your other staff.

Could you imagine showing up at a school to substitute teach, only to be refused entry by a custodian who was never told you’d be coming? Enlist teachers, secretaries, custodians, cafeteria staff — everyone — into welcoming substitutes.

Make substitutes visibly part of the team.

Asking them to wear big yellow VISITOR badges and treating them like strangers in your building is not too far from putting a sign on them saying, “I don’t belong.” Give them badges that look like the rest of your employees’. Make sure they have access to keys, lesson plans and anything else they may need. Make them part of the team, and make sure your team sees it.

Raise students’ view of substitutes.

Do your students see substitute teachers as full team members as well? The more they do, and the more they realize that substitutes are there to teach and not to babysit, the better. Maybe this means a morning announcement: “A special thanks to Miss Jones for the great work she did while Mr. Smith was out this week.” Maybe it means including substitutes in the group of teachers who welcome students at the beginning of the day. Maybe it’s an assembly where substitutes are recognized.

Celebrate the unique culture of substitutes in your school.

When I was the HR Director at the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System in Tennessee, a pair of flip-flops served as our substitute teachers’ unofficial symbol. It was a way for the school to acknowledge the fact that substitutes flip-flop between buildings, working in a new place each day. It may seem like a small thing, but that simple image, whether on stickers, lanyards or something else, connected substitutes to each other and was a nod to that challenging part of their job.

Substitute teaching is often difficult work. To do it well, substitutes need to build near-instant rapport and trust. Making them part of the team doesn’t have to be difficult, time-consuming or expensive. It does require caring and thoughtfulness — but that’s something any school can afford, and the results will be well worth it.

Connecting Your Substitutes to Mission and Vision

Why do you go to work in the morning? What puts the wind in your sails each day?

Your school or district surely has a mission and vision, relayed as both high ideals and manageable goals — from “empowering all students equitably” to “increase the graduation rate to 100% in the following school year.” Good leaders know that staff members need the chance to connect to that mission to strive towards it in their work. Full-time teachers are most often given that chance — but what about substitute teachers?

In your district, have substitute teachers been invited to learn, internalize and buy into the school’s mission?

Share your mission-driven goals with substitutes

If a goal is to “increase graduation rate to 100% in the following school year,” every substitute teacher on staff should know this goal and understand how their work contributes to the school’s success — or failure —towards it. When teachers are absent and substitutes enter the classroom, are they prepared and motivated to work toward that goal? Or does your district simply see them as a way to keep students out of trouble until the teacher returns? On average, a teacher is absent for more than 10 days each year, leaving substitutes to take over for at least two weeks of class time. When you help substitutes connect to the goals that have been set, they’ll be able to more meaningfully contribute.

Communicate your milestones for each goal with substitutes

Some goals might be smaller and more immediate than others. For instance, where “empower students equitably” is a lofty ideal, equitable preparation towards student assessment might be a granular method of reaching that goal. In this example:

How might substitutes be able to help teachers carry out this method?
Do substitutes know to which accountability measures the teachers they’re supporting are held?
Do substitutes understand how the lesson plans they’re carrying out support this method?

When you communicate this information to your substitutes, they can do the work across classrooms, subjects, and grades throughout the year with understanding — and feel good about it.

Offer confidence through high expectations

You might think that expecting substitutes to take ownership of your school’s mission could be asking too much — that it would keep them from wanting to work in your district. But in practice, this isn’t the case.

People respond to a challenge. A job with low expectations may be “easy,” but it’s not fulfilling. Substitutes are educators. They want to come alongside the mission of your school. They want purpose in what they do every day. If you bring them onto the team and help them believe in the vision for your school and its students, they’ll rise to the task.

Solving the Teacher Shortage: Recruiting Is Just One Piece of the Puzzle

The Shortage Stats

District HR departments and school administrators across the country have all been seeing applicant pools shrink. The teacher shortage is a very real problem: 62% of districts surveyed have a problem finding enough applicants for open positions. Some struggle to find qualified candidates only in specific areas — namely special education and secondary math and science. Others have difficulty finding any applicants at all.

“The applicants just don’t exist. We can’t even get applicants for elementary ed positions.”
— Survey Respondent

With such severe shortages, how can districts find enough candidates — let alone the right candidates? Dale Fisher, the Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources at Deerfield Public Schools District 109, shared some of his district’s strategies.

Deerfield’s Strategy: It’s Not Just About Recruiting

Dale is quick to point out that what he has done for Deerfield isn’t a magic bullet — their strategy has worked wonderfully for them, but there is simply no panacea for every district’s shortage. Here’s what has worked for his district.

#1: Expanding their recruitment efforts.

Finding more applicants means looking in more places, whether that’s K12JobSpot or other national job boards or professional networks. They advertise positions in education magazines, as well, to reach a broader audience of educators — especially teachers that engage with the latest news in education.

But just reaching out to applicant pools isn’t enough: Deerfield has to stand head and shoulders above other districts vying for qualified candidates. That’s why their recruiting efforts are centered on what Deerfield can offer its applicants.

#2: Showing off what the district offers.

Like any employee, teachers want to work somewhere they are valued and given room to grow. There’s no way to create new applicants, but there are ways to attract existing applicants. So, Dale has focused on showing how Deerfield is the best place for educators to work.

He makes sure that the district’s extensive mentoring and Deerfield University program are highlighted in all of their recruiting efforts, and embedded throughout the hiring process. The Deerfield Public Schools website was completely overhauled, and the Employment Opportunities page now features videos about each school.

#3: Making the hiring process easy.

Applicant don’t want to wade through a paper-based application process, or an unwieldy online system full of bugs. Deerfield Public Schools makes it easy to apply online with Frontline Recruiting & Hiring — which also helps them hire fantastic candidates quickly. They also began a new induction program for new hires to make them feel welcomed and valued.

What Next?

Deerfield Public Schools is managing the teacher shortage by expanding their strategy to be about more than recruiting: after all, that’s only a small piece of the puzzle, and only a small step in the employee’s tenure.

The causes of the teacher shortage are legion, and there’s more than one way to approach the problem. But it’s important that we all do our part by changing the story of what a career in education is like: we need to show that teaching is a viable (and rewarding) career.

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