HISD policy puts hiring to the test
Grier's tougher standards strain recruiting as fall posts open up
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 20, 2010, 12:17AM
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EmailRecruiters in the Houston Independent School District are scrambling this summer to hire top-notch teachers and principals after cleaning house at several campuses targeted for improvement.
This month - 10 weeks before the new school year starts - the district ousted 162 teachers from nine campuses in Superintendent Terry Grier's "Apollo 20" reform plan. Eighty more teachers left those schools, for one reason or another; most of the principals were forced out.
These holes in staffing come on top of the typical 1,000 teaching vacancies and principal openings that the state's largest school district faces each year.
The hiring frenzy is putting to the test the new recruiting and interview strategies pushed by Grier, who took over HISD in September, and Chief Human Resources Officer Ann Best.
For principals, Grier has encouraged recruiting more from outside the system rather than always promoting from within. For teachers, applicants now must teach a sample lesson - either in person or by video. Elementary and middle school applicants without certification in a specific subject also have to pass a fifth-grade math test.
"Our students struggle in math because a lot of times teachers don't know the math themselves," recruitment leader Carmen Rowan said, adding that about 30 percent of applicants failed the quiz.
HISD also has moved to a new standardized interview process, which has had mixed results in other school systems, and the district plans to rely more next year on novice teachers from Teach for America, a selective program that recruits recent college graduates to commit to two years of work in some of the nation's neediest schools.
Trustees approved on Thursday a $1.7 million deal with TFA for as many as 250 teachers, making Houston TFA's largest market.
The biggest expense is for TFA to recruit and train 50 teachers with strong math and science backgrounds to work in the Apollo 20 schools. That cost is $1 million, or $20,000 for each teacher. That doesn't include their salaries.
School board member Carol Mims Galloway, who abstained from the vote on TFA, has voiced concerns about the