Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Whether principals hire teachers who are most likely to be effective is a crucial question given the contribution of teachers to student learning, and the inequitable distribution of teachers across schools. While there is a growing body of research investigates principal preferences for hiring teachers, the vast majority of this work is qualitative, relying on principal reports of what characteristics they seek when hiring new teachers. There is little evidence as to whether whether their stated preferences align with their revealed preferences in the labor market. Research indicates that principals say they look for a mixture of skills, behaviors, and personal and professional characteristics as they hire, that their hiring decisions are position-specific, and there is variation in principal preferences between high and low achieving schools (Engel, 2013; Harris et al., 2010). In particular, principals’ own educational backgrounds influence their hiring decisions and tend to hire teachers from similar institutions to their own (Baker & Cooper, 2005). Teacher preparation programs may focus on developing these skills and behaviors principals seek as well. To address the role of teacher preparation in teacher hiring, we ask:

1. Do particular teacher preparation programs (TPPs) provide candidates a labor market advantage? If so, does this vary by school achievement or poverty levels?
2. Do TPP characteristics explain these differences?

 We use a database of applications to open teaching positions in 317 of Wisconsin’s 425 school districts from January to October, 2014. These data include vacancy descriptions, date of vacancy posting, date of application, applicants’ work history, personal statements, and education credentials. This application database is combined with a longitudinal state-level administrative dataset that contains hiring information for these vacancies and employee demographic, work address, and salary information for all Wisconsin teachers. Additionally, we use data collected from TPPs themselves, including syllabi, programs of study, and graduation requirements to document TPP characteristics.

Restricting our sample to vacancies that have hired teachers with 3 or fewer years of experience, we use logistic regression with a series of binary TPP indicators to predict whether any TPPs have a competitive advantage in the labor market. Vacancy fixed-effects ensure that the variance is restricted to the set of candidates within each applicant pool. To address our second question, we use the same logistic regression model, but replace TPP indicators with TPP characteristics such as faculty characteristics, required coursework, and field experiences.

Findings will provide a foundation for understanding whether social capital gained from attending a particular TPP is more important on the labor market than skills and behaviors related to human capital gained in TPPs.