The New Teachers Project - Baltimore Model Schools Initiative

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) was established to improve the professional standards of teachers in traditionally hard-to-staff schools by providing recruiting and training support. Since 1997, TNTP has launched more than 40 such efforts in 20 states, and has trained more than 13,000 new teachers to meet its requirements.

Beginning in 2001 with Abell Foundation funding, TNTP partnered with the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) to revitalize the district’s floundering resident teacher program. With continued Abell support, the Baltimore City Teaching Residency (BCTR) has been expanded from one that was preparing fewer than 90 teachers in the 2004-2005 school year, to more than 200 teachers in 2005-2006.

BCTR programming has provided an opportunity for promising candidates – outstanding individuals, mid-career professionals, recent college graduates with strong content knowledge – to enter the classroom immediately. To date, the program has brought more than 300 highly qualified teachers into Baltimore City public schools.

Evidence shows that a low level of teachers’ professional skills, one of the more important consequences of late and ineffective hiring, is the single biggest determinant of low-level student achievement; it follows that the impact of the flawed hiring practice is greater in the lowest performing schools. Due in part to a $58 million deficit, BCPSS struggled to hire the necessary teachers for the 2004-2005 school year: because principals did not receive school budgets until July and the number of teacher hires projected was underestimated, job offers were made late. As a result, schools opened in fall 2004 with nearly 200 positions unfilled, and despite subsequent hiring, nearly 100 vacancies remained unfilled. Recent studies have demonstrated that low-performing schools in Baltimore City are more likely to be staffed by teachers new to the system.

With a $125,000 grant from The Abell Foundation, TNTP worked in concert with BCPSS to establish a model teacher hiring process in 20 of its lowest-performing schools for the 2005-2006 school year. The process was designed to ensure early staffing and, thus, better access to the most qualified teachers available. The plan, the Baltimore Model Schools Initiative (BMSI), concentrates on creating an earlier hiring process, as well as the need to make changes to the existing hiring process, budget timeline, and union provisions. A significant focus is on training school-based staff, particularly principals, who, by being more circumspect in their interview process and hiring decisions, can take advantage of early hiring opportunities. In addition, BMSI works to redefine a more effective relationship between the BCPSS Department of Human Resources and the schools, working toward providing school leaders more autonomy for hiring decisions.

All of the 20 elementary, middle, and high schools selected for participation were in the final stage of restructuring-implementation under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Activities include:

• Moving up the hiring timeline for 20 of Baltimore’s lowest-performing schools;
  
• Ensuring that school budgets are released early;
  
• Working with school staff to project retirements and resignations earlier than usual;
  
• Providing formal training of principals and other school staff in a more rigorous, school-based teacher selection model and in teacher cultivation strategies;
  
• Working with the Human Resource Department to eliminate barriers to hiring from union contract provisions or internal BCPSS processes;
  
• Holding two additional teacher placement fairs in early May and early June;
  
• Implementing online teacher tracking and other accountability systems; and
  
• Initiating new recruitment activities when the candidate pool begins to dwindle.

In 2005-2006, BMSI placed 172 teachers in these 20 schools, filling all vacancies by one week prior to school opening. In the 2004-2005 school year, only 22 percent of new Baltimore City teachers had received placements by August 1; by that same date in 2005-2006, as many as 80 percent of Model Schools’ new teachers had their placements. Each of the Model Schools’ principals reported that training and technical support for hiring was “high quality” or “very high quality.”

As a result of the success in teacher placement, BCPSS has committed full funding to the expansion of the BMSI to 40 low-performing schools for 2006-2007.