Local Practices Linked to Strategic Management of Human Capital: Practices to Recruit and Retain High-Quality Faculty and Measuring Teachers' Instructional Practice

One big challenge facing high-poverty schools in urban districts is recruiting, developing, and retaining faculty with the talent to respond to the student achievement challenges these schools can present.

Several districts have attacked the recruitment problem by opening up new pipelines to feed top talent to these schools. But less progress has been made in developing ways to develop and retain this talent. Districts need better tools to measure instructional practice and to develop and retain top performers. Allan Odden and Tony Milanowski are developing these tools.

One project explores the human capital management practices that help schools attract, develop, and retain an effective teaching staff. The study will identify what school human capital management practices (e.g., selection, induction, and performance management) are associated with teacher retention and school performance.

The second project focuses on the related issue of measuring the level of teachers’ instructional practice. Many promising methods of measuring instructional practices for different purposes and at different stages of a teacher’s career are being used. But they have not yet been integrated into an approach that a district could use as the foundation for all teacher human capital management activities. This study will provide a foundation for integrating these tools through a systematic review of the most promising ideas and the development of a “specification” for a state-of-the-art performance assessment system to be used for district human capital management functions.