Teacher Evaluation, the Prequel

Imagine being able to evaluate a teacher before she is even hired!  Too good to be true, you say?  Read on.

Imagine the ability to hire a teacher that you know in advance will be able to produce those test scores necessary to 1) help your school system stay head and shoulders above your neighbors, 2) help your poorest schools avoid turnaround and charter takeover, or 2) help your charter company gain more contracts in the ESSA era of "no excuses" expansion.  

Imagine being able to avoid the mistake of hiring those touchy-feely humanist losers who don't have the "growth mindset" necessary to initiate total compliance neural re-channeling and brain-bathing that has made Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck the new heroines of 21st Century eugenics.

And imagine being able to take out the messy guesswork of school administrators making subjective decisions about hiring new teachers.  None of that squishy intuition or personal connection business between principal and applicant.  

What if we had a tool to select new teachers who bring the psychological and demographic characteristics that have been shown to generate high test scores in low-performing schools. 

Welcome to TeacherMatch!

TeacherMatch CEO and co-founder Don Fraynd . . . .say[s] that more data-focused hiring practices can both help districts attract and secure top-notch candidates and more accurately predict whether a teacher will be effective in the classroom.

In Deefield, IL, the HR office says gut instinct is a thing of the past: "We're not even allowed to mention it during the hiring process. . .":

Using proprietary screening tools from AppliTrack and HumaneX Ventures, the [Deerfield, IL school] district first looks for themes in candidates' application materials and screening interviews that indicate a commitment to growth, both professionally and with students. Initial high scorers participate in a series of structured interviews, and based on those scores, get invited to a site-based interview. The district then spends the first two years evaluating whether each new hire's performance matches expectations.

Using information pulled from a variety of assessments, including the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measure of Academic Progress, the Deerfield district has preliminary data that 85 percent of the people it hired for 2014-15 had a positive impact on students.

"We're to the point now where we have such faith in our hiring protocols that résumés and letters of recommendation take a backseat to the online application," Fisher said. . . .