Principals’ Hiring Of Teachers In Philadelphia Schools: A Research Report On Improving Teacher Quality

The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) and SDP agreed to a set of innovative approaches in their 2004 contract. That contract included new policies for school-based selection of teachers and the provision of incentives for teachers who seek employment in selected "incentive schools," in selected subjects, and to teachers new to the district's schools. Although similar hiring and/or incentive policies have been used elsewhere, little is known about the role that districts and principals play in implementing these policies and how they affect teacher recruitment and overall teacher quality. The Urban Education Collaborative (UEC) at Temple University's Institute for Schools and Society conducted a study of SDP's effort to implement these new policies during 2005-06. This study reports, in particular, on how SDP's principals responded to the district's newly created district hiring and incentive policies