Portland Public Schools' Staffing Problems Probed
Analysis by The New Teacher Project Shows District Staffing Rules Prevent Portland From Attracting the Best New Teachers and Building Strongest Possible Instructional Teams
PORTLAND, OR – Today, The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a national non-profit organization that assists public schools in improving teacher quality, released an analysis of the teacher hiring and school staffing rules and processes in Oregon’s Portland Public Schools (PPS). TNTP’s research suggests that Portland operates under staffing rules that hamper the district and teachers union’s attempts to build, support, and retain a high quality teaching force, and that cause widespread dissatisfaction among teachers and school principals.
TNTP CEO Ariela Rozman said the organization’s goal was to provide Portland with hard data about the effects of the school district’s staffing rules. “The kinds of problems we see in Portland are not uncommon for urban school systems. Many of these challenges have their roots in well-intentioned policies whose repercussions have never been fully understood. Our objective was not to cast blame, but to illuminate the real impact these policies have on teachers, schools and students so that Portlanders can make informed decisions about improvements,” said Rozman.
The New Teacher Project’s work in Portland is part of a larger, multi-district research project the organization has undertaken following the publication of its 2005 Unintended Consequences report, which documented how the staffing rules of urban districts affect the ability of schools to hire teachers effectively. Most of the cost of the analysis in Portland was covered by funding from the The New Teacher Project as part of its national program on effective school staffing; PPS also contributed a portion, as is typical for TNTP’s research programs and initiatives.
The organization’s analysis in Portland involved an in-depth examination of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) contract with PPS; surveys of 40 percent of the nearly 500 teachers who changed schools in the last two years and approximately 250 teacher applicants; interviews with school principals and district administrators; and surveys of 70 percent of PPS principals. The analysis shows that:
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A lengthy internal hiring process causes hiring delays that result in the loss of large numbers of external teacher candidates to surrounding districts that hire earlier. In fact, these delays appear to be the primary reason that PPS failed to hire at least 75 percent of its own student teachers who applied to the district from 2004-2006.
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The majority of teachers who transfer schools in Portland are slotted into positions they do not choose. In slotting situations, teachers typically do not even have an opportunity to interview with a school before being assigned. Likewise, principals are often required to hire teachers whom they have not met and who may not be a good fit for their schools. Only 20 percent of Portland principals believe the current transfer system allows them to build the best possible instructional teams.
District staffing rules treat teachers new to the district as expendable, no matter how effective they are in the classroom. With low seniority, they have limited control over where they teach and are prone to being “unassigned” from their jobs. Other new teachers are designated as “temporary” – despite being certified and fully qualified – and do not retain the right to return to their own positions at the end of a school year. These policies contribute to a very high new teacher attrition rate. Of the new teachers hired in 2004, 37 percent left the district by the fall of 2006.
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The Human Resources department of PPS contributes to the frustrations of teacher applicants and transferring teachers by not communicating effectively and not taking advantage of available technology to facilitate the staffing process. In particular, new teacher applicants are not well informed about the structural causes of late hiring and typically attribute delays to district disinterest or disorganization.
The New Teacher Project offered its analysis for the benefit of Portland’s Hiring, Assignment and Transfer committee, which is scheduled to begin discussions about policy reforms this September. The organization encouraged the committee to act quickly in bringing forward innovative solutions to the district’s pressing problems.
Timothy Daly, President of The New Teacher Project, emphasized the urgent need for change and appealed for collaboration between Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers. “Teachers are too important to lose because of flawed staffing policies that serve no one well. The data vividly illustrate that Portland’s current staffing system is broadly ineffective for both schools and teachers, and that it leads to almost universal frustration,” said Daly. “Portland can do better. In completing this analysis, we were impressed by the quality and dedication of the Portland teaching force. We want to see the district doing everything it can to maintain and develop its educators. Meaningful reforms to the current rules and processes should result in improved teacher satisfaction with the hiring system, improved school-level morale, and greater collaboration between teachers and administrators.”
The New Teacher Project’s full analysis and an executive summary are available on the organization’s website, at http://www.tntp.org/publications/other_publications.html#Portland.
