Abstract
This case study of one “no-excuses” charter management organization (CMO) uses teacher surveys and interviews with principals, central office staff, and teachers to examine how a realistic job preview is enacted during the hiring process, and how newly hired teachers perceive their fit with the job and the organization before and after starting the position. Findings show a strong emphasis on honestly and clearly communicating expectations during the hiring process. Consequently, teachers’ perceptions of the job and the organization were initially high at the time of hire. However, these perceptions decreased most significantly in views of student discipline, a key contextual feature of the no-excuses model.
Keywords
Introduction
The United States spends billions of dollars replacing departing teachers each year, and much of this cost can be attributed to hiring, placing, and training teachers to work in their new schools (Synar & Maiden, 2012). Problems related to teacher supply and turnover are disproportionately severe in low-income schools serving minoritized students, including charter schools (Engel, 2013; Stuit & Smith, 2012; Torres, 2016a). Studies find that the hiring process is critical to teacher satisfaction and retention and often point to the importance of teachers and organizations finding a mutual fit through an information-rich hiring process and two-way exchange of information (e.g., Liu & Johnson, 2006). To accurately determine fit, the hiring process should include a realistic job preview, defined as conveying reliable information about what to expect from the job through the hiring process (Liu & Johnson, 2006). An information-rich process that includes a realistic job preview of organizational working conditions is expected to produce higher levels of teacher commitment and fit (Ellis, Skidmore, & Combs, 2017).
Unfortunately, much of the work on teacher hiring describes how various resource, knowledge, and policy inefficiencies in “urban intensive” and “urban emergent” locales (Milner, 2012) make it difficult to enact this idealized process (Simon, Johnson, & Reinhorn, 2015). Although most research on teacher selection focuses on how hiring happens in urban districts, a variety of cities across the country including New York, Camden, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles have recently adopted new school governance structures called portfolio management models (PMMs) that provide a mix of traditional schools alongside a heavy market share of independent charter schools and national charter networks (McEachin, Welsh, & Brewer, 2016). PMMs rely on systems of choice and give schools, especially charter schools, greater autonomy to recruit, select, and fire teachers (Bulkley, Henig, & Levin, 2010). It is critical to understand how charter organizations, and schools operating under increasingly autonomous conditions (Engel, Cannata, & Curran, 2018), navigate teacher recruitment, selection, and retention, given the growth of these governance structures, which primarily serve low-income students of color.
New studies are beginning to look at high-functioning schools and districts with strong teacher selection methods (Grissom et al., 2017; Simon et al., 2015), including charter schools and charter management organizations (CMOs), defined as central offices that help manage and support networks of three or more charter schools (Farrell, Wohlstetter, & Smith, 2012). These studies look at charter principals’ preferred teacher qualities (Jabbar, 2017), the use of various forms of teacher effectiveness data in making hiring decisions (Cannata et al., 2017; Grissom et al., 2017), and describe how principals or central offices select teachers that fit the school and organizational culture in high-performing districts or CMOs (DeArmond, Gross, Bowen, Demeritt, & Lake, 2012; Simon et al., 2015). Although the process of determining fit and giving candidates a realistic job preview should lead to better commitment (Ellis et al., 2017), little is understood about how this happens, or the specific reasons teachers grow dissatisfied and leave despite comprehensive selection practices designed to provide them with ample information about what to expect from the job.
This study addresses these issues and builds on prior research in three ways. First, using a mixed-methods approach to analyze surveys of newly hired teachers, screening tools, and in-depth interviews with principals, recruiters, and teachers, it links perceptions about fit and realistic job preview before starting teaching at a CMO and compares it with teachers’ actual experience on the job. This approach gives insight into how and why changes in perceived fit did or did not occur, and triangulates multiple perspectives on the hiring process. Second, it goes beyond looking at the relationships between organizational fit and job satisfaction or retention, and examines the specific aspects of fit that may matter most depending on the organizational context. Third, it sheds light on the process of giving a realistic job preview and the kinds of benefits and challenges that leaders and teachers experience when determining fit.
I find that recruiters and principals placed a strong emphasis on giving a job preview that clearly communicated expectations through the hiring process, even “downselling” the organization to ensure candidates’ expectations were realistic. Consequently, in surveys and interview data collected before they started the job, teachers initially rated their perceived fit and clarity of the hiring process as high or very high. Midyear surveys showed a significant drop in perceptions of fit in a number of areas. The sharpest changes were in areas of person–organization fit, specifically, input in school-wide decision-making and views of student discipline. In teacher interviews, strong leadership and a positive staff culture were cited as the most important reasons for high satisfaction, and changes in leadership (which brought changes in expectations) alongside unanticipated issues with school-wide student disciplinary methods were key reasons why some teachers’ expectations before starting their position did not match with their experience once on the job.
Background Literature
District hiring is often described as a highly centralized, standardized process with little input from school principals and staffing policies that gives priority in job placement to senior teachers with tenure (DeArmond et al., 2012; Johnson & the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 2004; Levin, Mulhern, & Schunck, 2005; Levin & Quinn, 2003; Liu & Johnson, 2006). The process is further criticized as yielding rushed, late hiring that is “information poor” (Liu & Johnson, 2006), “forced” placements (Levin et al., 2005), and a lack of consensus about ideal teacher qualities and selection tools (Rutledge, Harris, Thompson, & Ingle, 2008). Various studies describe some of these problems as symptoms of a dysfunctional and bureaucratic policy context: Issues such as teacher vacancy notification and transfer requirements, budgeting timelines, and other administrative inefficiencies can make the selection process especially difficult (Johnson & the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 2004; Levin & Quinn, 2003; Liu & Johnson, 2006; Rutledge et al., 2008). Over time, however, studies show that districts have become increasingly decentralized: Principals are experiencing greater autonomy in deciding who is hired (Engel et al., 2018), and some districts are experiencing autonomy around staffing policies similar to that of charter schools and CMOs (Jabbar, 2017; Johnson, Marietta, Higgins, Mapp, & Grossman, 2015).
Rather than studying the dysfunctions of urban schools, scholars are beginning to look at coherent, structured hiring systems in urban schools and central offices. Some of these studies describe “information rich” selection tools including extended school visits, meetings with a wide array of stakeholders involved in the selection process, and a teaching demonstration paired with an extensive debrief (Simon et al., 2015), methods that many CMOs use (Gross & DeArmond, 2011; Lake et al., 2012; Tuttle et al., 2013).
Charter Organizations and Person–Organization, Person–Job Fit
CMO central offices and school leaders also devote significant effort to ensure teacher–organization fit before making an offer to teach at a CMO (Tuttle et al., 2013). Despite this and information-rich processes to determine a mutual fit, CMOs struggle to retain teachers. As many as a third of CMO teachers leave each year, citing dissatisfaction with working conditions, difficult relationships with principals coupled with intense working hours, and limited input into decision-making regarding student discipline and socialization as important reasons for leaving (Torres, 2014; Torres, 2016a). This high turnover is interesting given how hard CMOs work to convey what to expect and their narrow standards for making an offer (Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak, & Walters, 2012). If information-rich hiring processes are important to ensuring fit (and thereby reducing turnover), then CMOs represent an interesting context to study the link between hiring processes and changes in perceived fit, especially because their “market share” is growing rapidly in urban areas (Spencer Foundation and Public Agenda, 2015).
Charter schools seek teachers who are well aligned with their unique areas of focus, which makes determining and predicting organizational fit especially critical to teacher satisfaction and the success of the school (Gross & DeArmond, 2011), a condition that extends to other kinds of increasingly autonomous schools in portfolio districts as they develop niche specializations in an effort to compete for students (Jabbar, 2015). Person–organization (P-O) fit is defined as the degree of correspondence between organizational preferences and culture and is operationalized in terms of congruence of values, beliefs, goals, and skills (Chatman, 1989; Ng & Burke, 2005). Person–job (P-J) fit is defined as fit with the tasks performed on the job and aspects of the position itself, such as grade level or expertise (Ellis et al., 2017; Kristof, 1996). Both forms of fit are highly correlated with teacher commitment, and a teacher’s perceived fit (how individual teachers rate their own fit) has a particularly strong correlation with attitudinal outcomes such as satisfaction, commitment, and intent to leave (Bogler & Nir, 2015; Youngs, Pogodzinski, Grogan, & Perrone, 2015). Therefore, this study uses interviews and surveys to understand new teachers’ perceptions of P-O and P-J fit.
Although it is important to recognize that CMOs vary, fit is fundamentally important to the teacher selection process in large, high-profile “no-excuses” CMOs such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), in large part, because their organizational models are highly defined (even “prescriptive”), and shared values/practices are believed to produce student achievement (Furgeson et al., 2011; Lake et al., 2012). CMOs such as KIPP hire teachers based on close alignment to a college preparatory mission, which includes high expectations for students and staff manifested in longer required working hours, intensive feedback and coaching, (DeArmond et al., 2012; Merseth et al., 2009), and an expectation for teachers to do “whatever it takes” for student success (Torres, 2016b; Tough, 2009). Despite the intensity of the job, national CMOs such as KIPP receive hundreds of applications for single positions; yet, leaders find teaching positions very difficult to staff and often refuse to make a job offer if a teacher does not meet their standards for fit (Angrist et al., 2012; Tuttle et al., 2013). Rigid organizational preferences, rather than limited applicants, greatly reduce the supply of potential teachers and make it difficult to replace departing teachers. In sum, CMO leaders often have extremely high but narrow hiring standards and spend significant resources selecting and developing teachers they consider the right fit (DeArmond et al., 2012).
Teach for America (TFA) teachers make up between a third and a half of teachers in some high-performing CMOs, in part, because TFA and CMO leaders see a mutual fit based on the similarity between their organizational cultures and because TFA represents a reliable staffing pipeline to replace departing teachers (Kretchmar, Sondel, & Ferrare, 2014). Jabbar (2017) found that principals in New Orleans (almost exclusively comprising charters and CMOs) defined the best “fit” as those who (a) had some teaching experience, (b) were “receptive to feedback,” (c) were willing to work with “difficult populations,” and (d) had some connection to a like-minded national organization such as TFA. Thinking about fit in terms of values, skills, and beliefs, leaders appear to prioritize alignment in terms of values and beliefs, and they devote substantial time and effort to identify these qualities in prospective teachers.
Realistic Job Preview
Realistic job previews are a critical factor for determining fit. They serve to communicate organizational culture and expectations, and this process can also lead to two-way communication and clarification about working conditions and role expectations (Liu & Johnson, 2006). Surveying 486 teachers across four states, Liu and Johnson (2006) found that only 29% of teachers reported having an accurate preview of what their schools would be like, and that a large number of these teachers were hired late—within a month or even after the school year started. Using surveys with newly hired teachers in Texas, Ellis and colleagues (2017) found that “accurate job previews worked through [or mediated] P-J fit and P-O fit to result in increased teacher satisfaction” (p. 448), and that the mediation model explained the majority of variance in teacher satisfaction. Clearly, a realistic job preview is important to the process of reliably determining fit and to a new hire’s eventual satisfaction.
Although research describes the steps in the hiring process that organizations take to give a realistic job preview (e.g., DeArmond et al., 2012; Simon et al., 2015), less is known about how teachers and organizational representatives perceive and navigate this process, including what they emphasize and what aspects of the preview matter most. One study looking at CMO teachers’ decisions to leave found that, despite experiencing an information-rich hiring process, a variety of teachers were recruited to their school with the promise of being “founding teachers” and were disappointed and left because they had little input into designing new policies and practices that they felt would positively affect student socialization (Torres, 2014). This suggests that having a realistic job preview and an information-rich hiring process is necessary but insufficient (e.g., some aspects of the job may matter to teachers but be ignored by the hiring process). Therefore, research on job preview should focus on the specific aspects of fit that matter to teachers depending on their preferences and the organizational context. This study seeks to fill these gaps by looking at specific aspects of fit and the process of realistic job preview in the context of a large CMO. Specifically, I use teacher surveys and interviews with central office recruiters, principals, and teachers to focus on the following research questions:
No-Excuses Organizations and Disciplinary Methods
It is important to explain widespread critiques of CMOs given the students they seek to serve, their rapid growth in the last decade, and the schools and teachers they have displaced in metropolitan areas such as New Orleans. Researchers note that no-excuses CMOs represent a growing proportion of schools in urban areas as more money and attention flows toward “academically successful” networks that explicitly seek to serve minoritized, low-income students (Ferrare & Setari, 2018; Quinn, Oelberger, & Meyerson, 2016). At the same time, CMOs may be favored for new school openings in portfolio districts while other kinds of schools are closed for lower performance (McEachin et al., 2016). These trends have raised questions about whether these organizations reflect the needs or voices of community members, particularly historically disenfranchised communities of color, who must increasingly choose these organizations without the empowerment and community control that was reflective of early goals of the charter school movement (Golann & Torres, 2018; Henry & Dixson, 2016).
In particular, critics of no-excuses organizations argue that strict and uncompromising disciplinary expectations represent a form of cultural racism: privileging White, middle-class norms over the cultural strengths of students of color (White, 2015) and using methods to “control” these students (e.g., silent hallways, tracking the teacher) that White parents would never accept for their own children (see Golann & Torres, 2018, for a more thorough review of no-excuses disciplinary methods). Consequently, researchers argue that no-excuses practices may reproduce the same racial and socioeconomic inequities they aim to address (Golann, 2015; Sondel, Kretchmar, & Hadley Dunn, 2019).
Several recent studies look at teacher enactment and sensemaking of these practices. Sondel (2015) finds that teachers struggle to enact their own vision of civic education given the constraints of the disciplinary structure. Analyzing interviews with teachers in no-excuses schools, Kershen, Weiner, and Torres (2019) argue that some become socialized by disciplinary methods to understand “control as care.” Golann (2018) finds that teachers adapt to these methods by becoming conformers, imitators, adaptors, and rejecters, with the latter two working to either adapt or outright reject no-excuses disciplinary systems. These two categories of teachers may be much more likely to leave and not “fit”: Torres (2014, 2016a) finds that teachers who strongly disagreed with disciplinary methods and how students are socialized in no-excuses schools are more likely to leave. Taken together, evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the disciplinary climate in these schools is pervasive and students and teachers alike are often preoccupied with it on a daily basis (Golann, 2015).
Organizational Context for the Study
This study examines a large CMO with 10 schools in a northeastern state at the time of the study (2016-2017), with plans to grow by five to 10 schools in the region over the next several years. The CMO can be classified as a “no-excuses” organization because of its explicit focus on commonly identified features of this charter school model such as high expectations for both academics and behavior, longer school days and school years, frequent observations of teachers to give feedback, intensive tutoring, and student assessment data use to drive instruction (Fryer, 2014; Golann & Torres, 2018). This includes an emphasis on strict and explicit behavioral expectations, such as “tracking” the teacher with one’s eyes or having silent hallways: methods that are believed to help prevent minor misbehaviors from becoming major issues, therefore allowing teachers to focus more time on instruction (Golann, 2015; Woodworth, David, Guha, Wang, & Lopez-Torkos, 2008).
More than 90% of the students in this charter network are African American or Hispanic and qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Their hiring process involved a principal at each school and three recruiters at the central office who are responsible for “cultivating” potential candidates and providing information about the organization, doing an initial screening for fit, and working with three to four principals each to understand their specific needs and preferred teacher qualities. The CMO was purposively selected because organizational representatives identified their hiring process as carefully refined, with open communication and sharing of hiring practices taking place between various stakeholders in the process.
Methodology
This study uses a holistic, single-case study design with the CMO as the primary unit of analysis (Yin, 2009). This study is primarily descriptive and exploratory: I do not seek to generalize across all CMOs or to make causal claims. Rather, I seek to describe the nature of teacher fit and how and why it may change depending on the circumstances of this case and the experiences and perceptions of individuals within it. A case study is appropriate when “how” and “why” questions are being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the investigator has little or no control, and when the study “investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth; relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in a triangulating fashion; and benefits from prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis” (Yin, 2009, p. 18). This study meets two key rationales for the use of single-case designs: the CMO as a critical case and the potential to study the case in a longitudinal manner. The organization meets the critical criteria because “the conditions for testing a theory can confirm, challenge, or extend the theory” (Yin, 2009, p. 47). In this case, the CMO’s enactment of realistic job preview and an information-rich hiring process are expected to maximize the likelihood of organizational fit. Using a case study approach and triangulating multiple perspectives (e.g., teachers, principals, and recruiters) allows the researcher to check on how the efforts of one group might affect the other rather than just accepting at face value one group’s perspective on their own impact.
One goal of this study is to determine how attitudes and perceptions of fit may change, so a single-case design is also appropriate because there is a longitudinal element, and points of comparison within the case are being studied at two or more different points in time (Yin, 2009). Specifically, I used new hire surveys that measured fit and job preview and collected in-depth, semi-structured interviews in summer 2016 aimed at understanding principals’, recruiters’, and teachers’ perspectives before new hires started their jobs. I then conducted follow-up interviews with all teacher and principal participants in summer 2017 after Year 1 and analyzed teacher survey data collected in November to December 2016 measuring fit during the school year, after teachers started their jobs.
Method
Data Collection
Teacher surveys were distributed to all new teacher hires (n = 83) and collected anonymously by organizational representatives; 76 completed it for a response rate of 91%. As part of an applied research process aimed at providing the organization with feedback on hiring processes, I advised central office staff to use survey items validated by past research on teacher hiring and the role of realistic job preview, P-O fit, and P-J fit. 1 In addition, an email was sent out to all new hires asking them to reach out to me if they were interested in participating in an interview about their experiences with the hiring process. Six teachers, each from a different school, reached out to me directly, and I conducted an hour-long semi-structured interview with each of them between June and August 2016 (see Table 3 for teacher characteristics).
An organizational representative also sent an email to school leaders and recruiters informing them of the research and inviting them to contact me. This led to interviews between June and August 2016 with six school leaders (out of 10 schools) responsible for making the final decision on teacher hires, and all three recruiters. Each principal was either in their second or third year and had served as either an assistant principal or participated in the CMO’s year-long leadership development program prior to becoming principal. Finally, I collected four central office screening documents: a resume rubric, video and phone interview questions and a rubric, and a document describing competencies being assessed in these interviews.
The same items on P-O and P-J fit were distributed by the organization in November to December 2016, once new hires had experienced the job firsthand, and this midyear survey had a much lower response rate (31%). To address RQ3, I interviewed the same six principals and six teachers once career decisions were made and the school year concluded (in June to August 2017). An organizational representative also used a unique identifier code allowing them to add administrative data to the survey data, including demographic characteristics and individual decisions to stay or leave their position. Over the course of the year, 31% of respondents to the new hire survey switched to a different school or left the organization, and 69% stayed.
Data Analysis
To answer RQ1 and RQ2 with the survey data, I used SPSS to generate basic descriptive statistics on average ratings of P-O and P-J fit as well as realistic job preview. To answer the third question, I ran a paired t test that linked teachers’ responses in the new hire survey to the midyear survey to see whether there were differences between an individual’s rating of fit before starting the job compared with how they rated fit midyear.
To address the low midyear survey response rate and possible nonresponse bias, I looked for individual schools that had very low response rates (e.g., only one or two teachers responded out of nine to 10). Three schools met the criteria, and I took out all the teachers in these schools (n = 28) from the overall sample. This improved the matched response rate for the paired t test in the seven remaining schools to 48%. As a check for biased results in which respondents to the midyear survey might be disproportionately dissatisfied compared with nonrespondents, I used a t test to compare average fit ratings and looked at proportions of leavers to stayers in both groups. There were no differences and the proportion of leavers was almost identical in the new sample of seven schools compared with the original sample of 10 schools, as well as between midyear survey respondents and nonrespondents, enhancing the validity of the interpretations. Although generalizing results to the larger teacher sample is not possible, the sizable gap between initial rating and midyear ratings of items such as fit with discipline, taken together with interview data and prior research about no-excuses CMOs, supports the face validity of findings.
Interviews were transcribed verbatim. To start, I read through all the interview data and central office screening documents, then wrote analytic memos summarizing information for each interview to develop deep familiarity with the data. These summaries aligned with the research questions. Data from interviews and documents were coded using a closed (or deductive), open, axial, and selective process (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). To begin, I used a deductive coding procedure, creating descriptive codes aligned with research questions, existing literature, and key concepts (e.g., fit and job preview) such as “positive perceptions of fit,” “concerns with fit,” “recruiter job preview,” “decision to stay or leave,” and “demo lesson job preview.” This helped reduce the data in alignment with the focus of the study. I then analyzed these data by creating inductive, open codes such as “alignment of expectations,” “perception of workload,” “orientation towards student discipline,” “quality of debrief conversation,” and “impact on satisfaction.” This second round of coding helped me pay attention to patterns across the data and to develop inferences within and across different participants (Miles & Huberman, 1994). This search for patterns allowed me to engage in axial coding, or the process of grouping codes into categories or findings (Merriam, 2009). Finally, I compared findings with survey results (see “Findings” and “Discussion” sections). This mixed approach enhances trustworthiness and credibility of the different data sources and provides potential explanatory power for the survey results (Creswell & Clark, 2011).
There are important limitations to keep in mind when interpreting results from this study. First, I was only able to interview a relatively small number of teachers using a convenience sample. In contrast to quantitative work, qualitative work does not intend to generalize across all participants, rather it helps provide possible explanations (not all the explanations) for why and how a phenomenon occurs (Merriam, 2009). Satisfaction and fit are central to the analysis, so it is helpful to note that the six teachers were largely representative of the variation in these outcomes compared with the larger sample of new hires: Two of the six teachers left the organization or their position, whereas the remainder were satisfied and stayed.
Second, a lower average satisfaction with fit rating might be expected in the middle of the year compared with their fit ratings before starting the job. However, the utility in this analysis is as much about identifying which aspects of fit experienced the sharpest changes as it is about whether there were differences at all. Third, these data only capture a snapshot of 1 year at one CMO, and CMOs vary in their performance and approach to instruction and culture (Lake et al., 2012). Despite this, research on “no-excuses” CMOs suggests they are quite similar in terms of instruction and culture, and CMO leaders look for common values, beliefs, and skills in teachers, in part, because there is an organizational “model” that works to close the achievement gap—because of this, some leaders, scholars, and policy makers believe no-excuses practices should be replicated within and outside of the charter sector (Cohodes, 2018; Fryer, 2014; Golann, 2018).
Findings
RQ1: How Do Recruiters and School Leaders Perceive and Enact Realistic Job Preview? 2
In general, recruiters and principals described a highly defined and semi-standardized hiring process with room for independent or collaborative decision-making discretion. They uniformly agreed that it was critically important to be as realistic and specific as possible about aspects of the job that were related to fit within the organization and in their schools.
For example, they emphasized the importance of being realistic when it came to working hours and the process and frequency of instructional coaching, as well as the expectation that “your door is always open.” Recruiters emphasized specific characteristics of the school that the candidate would work in, for instance, one recruiter made sure to explain what working in a “turnaround” school meant: I just like to be really, really, really honest and it has been pretty successful for the most part. The school that I was working with incidentally was the turnaround school and so I was there and open about what that meant. So that meant that there’s going to be even longer hours, that meant that there’s going to be a culture shift, and that some people were going to be invested and some people weren’t.
Although recruiters touched on specific aspects of the school, they also stressed the general organizational culture, in particular, the extended working and professional development hours. A different recruiter explained, We’re asking people to come into work at seven twenty and not leave until four thirty. Five days a week. That’s not including the stuff that they have to do at home. If that’s a flag, if that’s something that you don’t like, if that’s something that’s not a good fit, then I’d rather not waste their time and our kid’s time if that’s not what you want to do. At the end of every interview, I make sure that I say [this] . . . I’ve had people be like, “You know what? I really appreciate your candidness and honesty, and I thought about it, I won’t be able to do it.”
This straightforward approach to communicating organizational expectations allowed candidates an opportunity to assess their fit at an early stage.
All principals also strongly believed in benefits of giving a highly realistic job preview and took the information sharing a step further, preferring to give close approximations of what the job would feel like. For example, one explained, Principal: [During the demonstration lesson] I always just try and live coach them in front of students and [teachers] that are there. It’s important for me to see their reaction on the spot. Author: They don’t know this is going to happen, right? Principal: No. Exactly. That’s usually a telling moment. From then on in, are they making the change? For instance, if I ask them to ask the students a particular question, do I notice that, following that moment, is their questioning improving? Then, in the interview, I’m giving them more feedback on their lesson—You can usually see a person’s reaction to all of this feedback, even in the interview. Hopefully telling them how they would react to it in the real school environment.
This leader noted both how the teacher reacts to the feedback and whether they implemented the suggestions. Another principal took this a step further, describing how she would have them practice the feedback and role-play the suggestions during the interview, and how this was consistent with the coaching culture of the school.
Finally, principals felt it was critical to be extremely specific not just about what was expected instructionally but also about the perceived happiness of staff, the intensity of working hours, and student discipline. For example, when candidates seemed pleased with how “well-behaved” students were, principals made sure to address this, as one noted: “[I tell them] it took a lot of work to get there. You’re not going to walk into that.” When asked whether they ever shied away from sharing information about the intensity of the job for fear of scaring away candidates, one noted: “The opposite. If I’m sensing hesitation, then I’ll really go hard on all the different things that are expected of you.” Others also frequently did this, and one described the strategy as “downselling.”
In general, recruiters and school leaders tried to be as clear and specific as possible about what would be expected as teachers in each school, going out of their way to give and measure reactions to realistic job preview and allowing candidates to get a clear sense of whether the school and organization was right for them.
RQ2: How Did Teachers Perceive Organizational Fit and Realistic Job Preview?
Teachers rated their initial fit as very high across the P-O and P-J fit survey measures, and they gave similarly high ratings with respect to the clarity of the hiring process. Interviews confirmed that teachers generally felt the organization and school (particularly school leaders) were a good fit, with some expressing reservations about the school culture in terms of workload and expectations for student discipline. They also reported having open and honest conversations and experiences of what to expect particularly during the interview, demo lesson, and debrief.
Ratings of realistic job preview and P-O/P-J fit were uniformly high, averaging between 5.11 and 6.53 on a scale of 7 (see Table 1).
Perceived Fit with Job, Organization, and Realistic Job Preview.
Items were measured on a 1 to 7 Likert-type scale, with 1 representing strongly disagree and a 7 representing strongly agree.
This suggests that, on average, teachers who accepted the position had high perceived fit and a sense of clarity about the job after the interview process.
Interestingly, the areas that were rated lower (and had substantial variation) in this study were around job preview of specific aspects of the job that may not have been adequately covered during the interview process, such as the curriculum they would teach (M = 5.11, SD = 1.43), duties related to their specific teaching assignment (M = 5.68, SD = 1.40), or whether teachers would have input on school-wide decision-making (M = 5.46, SD = 1.50). Indeed, recruiters and leaders did not emphasize these when explaining how they gave a realistic sense of what the job would be like. Instead, they typically described being up front about expectations related to school culture (e.g., instructional coaching, working hours, collaboration, PD).
When asked whether and why the school and organization were a good fit, interviewed teachers generally agreed and expressed excitement about the prospect of being coached instructionally, being led by an inspirational principal who valued teachers, a culture of “high expectations,” and the collegiality of teachers. For example, several teachers commented about the process of feedback given during the debrief. As Joseph, a brand new teacher, explained, I thought [the role playing] was great. It shows you that they not only cared about me but also cared about me getting in right for the students . . . and not just saying “Okay this is the stuff you can improve on.” It was like “No, let’s see how you respond to feedback.” I thought that was very important.
Others felt excited about the group of colleagues they would work with and tied this to their ability to learn, as Allen explained: “There’s a lot of folks around me who can push me in a direction that I think would be a good thing for me long term. In terms of professional growth.” He also explained how he had learned so much already from numerous conversations with his principal about how he would structure his brand new teaching assignment in a new start-up school. Like Allen, other teachers were excited by the prospect of working for an inspirational principal. Iris described a moment when her principal came into the cafeteria and the kids “gravitated to her energy.” She added, “She’s awesome. She had such a presence about her. It was just so organized, the way the kids lined up, walked the stairs. I couldn’t believe it.” In this case, part of the admiration stemmed from the orderly atmosphere, something Iris described as “just the way I like to run my own classroom.”
Teachers felt that principals and recruiters were very up front with them in conversations about what to expect. Often, as in the example above with Joseph, this occurred during the interview and the debrief conversation with principals. Sometimes, it took place during walkthroughs, tours, or even open houses, where Julie explained, “a lot of teachers were there and talking [to them], it seemed like communication and consistency [from leadership] were there. Everyone knew what was expected of them.”
However, some also shared feelings of apprehension after making sense of what was expected. Jennifer and Iris were older and more experienced, and both were worried about the expected changes in their workload. Jennifer explained, “I was working really hard in my [previous school], but the expectations were really low . . . I’m ready for a new challenge but at the same time, I’m scared about it.”
The other reservation involved student discipline. After a conversation with his principal about starting the new school, Allen said, “I don’t think teachers are going to get a lot of leeway in terms of what classrooms should look like.” He elaborated, I think the culture system is intense . . . it’s very regimented from top to bottom, from beginning to end. I know the plan for the school is to do silent hallways, at least for the first year or two. Then slowly move away from it seventh and eighth grade, which I think is good developmentally. Eighth graders shouldn’t be silent in the hallway. I think that’s oppressive.
Although Allen had reservations about the “regimented” discipline, he expected them to move away from it eventually, and trusted his principal due to their repeated conversations.
RQ3: Why and in Which Areas Did Perceptions of Fit Change After Teachers Started the Job?
Principals and recruiters worked to communicate expectations for the job in a realistic manner, and Year 2 interviews showed that satisfaction with the job decision did not change for four of the six teachers, who rated their satisfaction similarly before starting the job and at the end of their first year at the CMO (see Table 2).
Teacher Interview Participant Demographics and Satisfaction Ratings.
Note. TFA = Teach for America; CMO = charter management organization.
In the Year 2 interview, teachers were asked to rate their perceived satisfaction at the time they were hired and to rate their current satisfaction with their job after that first-year teaching. Ratings are out of a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being most satisfied.
Survey results gave broader insight into patterns of change, especially regarding the areas with the largest changes. Using a paired samples t test to look at changes in individual ratings, respondents rated perceived fit lower, on average, in the midyear survey compared with their responses on the new hire survey (see Table 3).
Paired Sample t Test Comparing Perceived Fit.
Note. n = 26. Standard deviations appear in parentheses below means.
p ≤ .05.
In terms of teachers’ subject matter expertise, interests, and talents, there was a small and statistically insignificant drop in their sense of fit. There were much larger, statistically significant decreases in P-J fit in the area of student composition and in several areas of P-O fit: autonomy, input into decision-making, level of collaboration, and organizational philosophy. These differences were largest for teachers’ views on student discipline (the largest average decrease from 6.05 to 4.00), classroom autonomy, and school-wide input.
An additional t test of differences in average fit and preview ratings between stayers and leavers in the new hire survey found no significant differences between these two groups (differences in means only ranged from 0.05 to 0.40). This suggests that those who left the organization appeared as satisfied initially about the job compared with stayers.
To see whether leavers were more dissatisfied than stayers in particular areas, I calculated the average decrease from an individual’s response in the new hire survey compared with that individual’s response in the midyear survey. I then used a t test to see whether differences between these decreases were significant (see Table 4). The largest and most significant difference between stayers compared with leavers was around the match with student discipline, with leavers rating this three scales lower on average (e.g., if they rated a 6 out of 7, they would rate that item a 3) than they had at the beginning of the year, and nearly two scales lower compared with those who stayed. Interestingly, the other significant difference was around perceived match in talent, suggesting that stayers felt more efficacious than leavers. Despite the lower response rate in the midyear survey, the proportion of leavers in respondents to the midyear survey (27%) was similar to the proportion of leavers in the overall sample (31%). This provides some evidence that these average decreases were not largely driven by disproportionately dissatisfied teachers responding to the midyear survey.
t Test for Changes in Fit by Retention.
The mean is the difference between the individual’s rating before starting the job and their rating of the same item in the midyear survey.
Satterthwaite approximation employed due to unequal group variances for these variables.
p ≤ .05.
Interviewees who stayed expressed being satisfied with their positions and most, like Candice, said “I don’t think so” when asked whether their job did not go as they had expected. When asked what they were most satisfied with, those planning to stay in their role consistently cited leadership and staff culture. For example, Candice explained, I don’t know if I will find another staff culture like the one at our school right now. I didn’t imagine how good it could be. I think going in, I felt like it was strong. I just walked around the school before I was even hired. It just felt so warm. Both my managers and anyone that came to my classroom, was just very comforting but also set the bar really high. It’s just second nature that every time you go into a classroom, you’re giving feedback whether it’s positive or negative.
Her feelings about the staff culture, shared by Joseph and Allen, were particularly positive when it came to a culture of trust around instruction and professional growth. Stayers also reported being very inspired and supported by their leaders. As Candice noted, “She’s just so comfortable to talk to . . . she has a ton she should be doing, but I never felt like it was a burden to her. And just always supportive.” Joseph also felt inspired by his principal, particularly the way she got kids and staff invested: She’s definitely got us going in the right direction. As far as thinking about what’s best for our kids, I think that the approach in terms of making sure that kids are earning just about everything, it helps kids invest in this school and seeing that investment. I see a lot of our kids are more invested in school than I really was, just in terms of wanting to do well for the sake of doing well, which when I was in school, I probably just did it because I didn’t want to get yelled at.
Having a principal and colleagues they could rely on and trust, in the context of feeling successful, kept these teachers most satisfied and committed.
By contrast, Jennifer and Iris left their roles and cited a variety of changes from what they were initially expecting. Both experienced surprises related to leadership that were influential to their decisions to leave or switch. Jennifer started working with a different principal than the one who had hired her. This change in leadership shifted what Jennifer expected in the area of behavioral expectations for students because this principal had a different and much stricter vision for managing student behavior across the school. Jennifer explained, She wanted things done her way. They implemented this merit and demerit system . . . we were directed by the administration, by her, and not just by her, but by the administration, to assign a reasoning for the merit to pair the behavior with the merit. They wanted things to be unified throughout every classroom. Suddenly I had to halt the way I was disciplining students by telling them . . . Instead of saying to a student, “I know you’re so good at poetry, and I need you to pay attention right now, because I know you’re going to love this line” It was like, “you love this line, that’s a good merit.”
When asked whether she needed to follow this system, she explained that merits and demerits were tracked and that they had individual and group conversations with the principal about the use of the system. She added, “I didn’t know that we were implementing this discipline plan with the merits.” Jennifer felt she had little choice but to use these methods. Therefore, this shift in expectations for teachers managing student behavior also relates to the survey category of “input into decision making” and helps explain how the two categories might be related.
Jennifer, who viewed herself as a successful teacher with 8 years of experience in an urban setting, continually contrasted her preferred “caring and empathetic” style of classroom management with the new system. She described feeling increasingly unsuccessful as students became more and more resistant. Jennifer’s experience gives one possible explanation for why “match with student discipline,” “input,” “philosophy” (e.g., around socializing students), and “match with talent” (e.g., her feelings of efficacy) may have larger differences when comparing stayer and leaver fit ratings.
Indeed, school leaders uniformly cited classroom management as a primary reason why teachers did not succeed at their school or pointed this out as their dominant area of concern when making an assessment of fit during the hiring process. As one example, Author: What are some things you think are going to be a challenge in terms of fit [for this new group of hires]? Principal: About half of the people on this list [of new hires], I am thinking about management as a growth area for. Author: Is it stuff that you saw? What’s an example of things that you saw that led you to that conclusion? Principal: Not stopping the lesson and asking for 100% of students to be sat still with eyes on you, for instance, towards the end of a lesson. Perhaps not really demanding that 100% of the students have their eyes on you at any given point in the lesson or that 100% of the students complete the work you are asking them to do. Again, that really keen awareness of what it means to demand the best from every kid in the class.
Looking at this principal’s explanation suggests a potentially significant disconnect between their expectations for teachers and students and the expectations or beliefs that teachers have regarding effective classroom management. If determining fit and giving a realistic job preview are affected by alignment and mutual understanding of expectations, then student discipline is a particularly challenging area. This is because expectations at the CMO may be drastically different from those held by experienced teachers coming from different schools or organizations, who may have different ideas of what constitutes success in this area.
Iris switched to a different school within the CMO network and described her first year as “nothing like I expected at all.” She explained, when I first got hired there I was promised that I would get a lot of coaching, like in-class coaching, and I was placed at one of the highest performing elementary schools. It just, to me, it didn’t live up to the hype.
When asked why, she said it was because the inspirational principal she had admired during the interview process was getting prepared to lead a different school in the network. Iris clarified, She was spending a lot of time off campus [preparing for that]. She was also a part of [a CMO coaching team] which meant that she had to go to other schools weekly and observe other teachers. Initially, for the first month or two, she was in my class once a week, but she was only in there for about 10 to 15 minutes at a time. She wasn’t seeing a full lesson and sometimes I was really confused with the feedback that I was getting from her.
She explained that the school tried to address this issue by adding two new assistant principals. However, this did little to solve the issue: “Everybody is hopeful, like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll get more in-class support.’ And then, [the APs] are pulled to all these weekly meetings, for new principal meetings, new assistant principal fellowship meetings. So they’re never onsite.”
For both Jennifer and Iris, leadership change or instability 3 was the primary factor that brought changes in what they were expecting in terms of key areas of fit for the CMO: instructional coaching and management of student behavior.
Discussion
This study found that principals, teachers, and recruiters alike felt that the job preview was clear and realistic, though more so in some areas (e.g., workload, receiving feedback/coaching) than others (e.g., curriculum). Principals and recruiters went out of their way to be explicit and specific in explaining what it would be like to work at the organization, which included expectations for managing student behavior (e.g., during the demo lesson and debrief), with principals even going so far as “downselling” the job. Although principals described trying to be realistic about disciplinary expectations, there was a clear disconnect for some in both the survey and interview data in terms of feeling that these expectations fit for them as teachers.
Perhaps, as a result, recently hired CMO teachers initially rated their perceptions of fit as high or very high across a range of P-O and P-J fit measures. However, certain conditions showed the biggest and statistically significant drop in ratings such as match with one’s educational philosophy, desired autonomy, input in decision-making, and approach to discipline. These findings are consistent with prior literature on the influence of no-excuses school climates on teacher satisfaction and turnover. For example, recent qualitative studies find that although teachers certainly “conform” and adopt disciplinary methods (Golann, 2018; Kershen, Weiner, & Torres, 2019), a number of teachers resist or attempt to push back and adapt no-excuses disciplinary methods to fit their own vision of good teaching and the perceived needs of students (Golann, 2018; Sondel, 2015). When “resisters” become disillusioned and are unable to have input to change organizational practices or autonomy to enact their own methods, they question their fit with no-excuses schools and leave (Torres, 2014). Moreover, in a study using teacher survey data from a large no-excuses CMO in the northeast, Torres (2016a) found that perceptions of the CMO’s discipline systems had a large degree of variation across teachers/schools and were the only significant predictor of turnover even after controlling for teacher characteristics such as years of teaching experience and perceptions of workload, leadership, and professional growth.
Still, if teachers know what to expect about student discipline and their organization before they are hired, what explains the mismatch between expectations and reality? Findings suggest that expectations for student discipline may be difficult for teachers to fully understand and difficult for principals to preview. This is likely due to a mismatch between what the principal believes is great classroom management and what the candidate believes due to their training or prior experience in the field, making it difficult for teachers to determine fit. Effective two-way communication may be difficult to engage in when certain previewed working conditions are far outside of the experience or knowledge of prospective teachers. CMO teachers may be willing to learn the organizational approach at first but disagree with the philosophy or method when put in action. In terms of the literature on realistic job preview in districts and CMOs, findings suggest that job preview may be more difficult to enact depending on what is being “previewed” and how, as well as the prior knowledge and values of each individual.
Other studies illustrate that teachers’ professional identity is strongly informed by the workplace organizational culture, which may lead to philosophical differences in how those socialized outside of no-excuses schools view teaching, learning, and views of optimal student socialization (Flores & Day, 2006; Thomas & Mockler, 2018; Weiner & Torres, 2016). Jennifer had developed a professional identity as a strong disciplinarian in her previous urban setting and subsequently disagreed with and struggled with the newly mandated behavioral system.
A second potential factor influencing the change in perceived fit is leadership instability, which often brings changes in working conditions and expectations. Charter schools and CMOs have higher than average leadership turnover and some of this is influenced by principals being asked to switch positions due to the growth of the CMO—specifically, adding new schools to the network (Sun & Ni, 2016; Torres, 2018). As Iris explained, this created a disconnect between what was expected and what she experienced because her principal was too busy with new responsibilities to maintain her prior ones. In addition, leadership changes brought about a new school vision for Jennifer, particularly around expectations for discipline.
Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice
Despite investing much time in the hiring process, it is very difficult and costly for CMOs to find, develop, and retain teachers and school leaders (Tuttle et al., 2013). This study provides important considerations for studies on fit and realistic job preview. More research should focus on not just whether realistic job preview and fit affect outcomes of interest, but how and why they do. Realistic job preview may be easier to do in contexts with highly defined or “tightly coupled” organizations such as CMOs, when role expectations and organizational structures are clear. More research should look into how realistic job preview plays out in settings where situations are more fluid or where it is difficult to communicate what will be expected. In what ways do stakeholders communicate what to expect in these situations, and how does it affect satisfaction and career decisions? More research should compare different organizational contexts, the ways in which they enact realistic job preview, and how and why this affects teacher commitment and retention.
Additional research should look at a longer period of time to see how changes in fit are perceived as teachers grow in their personal expertise. Studies can also look at variation within the CMO sector, which is important because the effectiveness, mission, and approaches that CMOs take vary state by state, and schools may vary even within large national networks such as KIPP. In addition, this study focuses on teachers who accepted positions, not those who were offered the position and turned it down, or those who made it through the process but were not offered the position. Although outside the scope of this study, research like this would shed light on the supply and demand sides of the CMO teacher labor market. Finally, results for this exploratory study should be interpreted with caution, given the lower response rate to the midyear survey and limited number of teacher interviews. Future studies could test hypotheses from this study using larger samples of teachers and CMOs.
In terms of determining fit, more research should examine the process of two-way communication in the hiring process. Effective two-way communication assumes that teachers are able to gain the right kind of information to determine fit. For example, brand-new teachers may not know the right questions to ask or understand what is being previewed because they have insufficient background knowledge. If effective two-way communication plays an important role in determining fit (Liu & Johnson, 2006), more studies should examine this process and the conditions that challenge or enable it.
There are several considerations for educational practice suggested by this study. First, principals and central office staff can work to identify areas that are most problematic in terms of job preview, fit, and turnover. Building and using a data system for the hiring process would allow practitioners to have productive conversations on where and how to best adapt their approach. For example, a study like this suggests that the organization could have conversations about whether certain disciplinary systems and expectations are communicated well enough in the hiring process. Second, when planning a leadership transition, communicating honestly and openly with teachers and being aware of what teachers desired and were expecting under the previous leadership and moving slowly to new expectations could foster trust and reduce the likelihood of turnover (Tschannen-Moran, 2014).
Leaders could also adopt more positive approaches to discipline. CMO leaders should discuss whether current disciplinary systems are positive and working, and whether they are worth preserving in light of the potential human capital costs. Recognizing some of the limitations of their disciplinary models, several prominent CMOs across the country are turning toward more positive approaches to discipline such as positive behavioral intervention systems (PBIS) and restorative justice (Golann & Torres, 2018).
Finally, in terms of teacher selection, this study provides an example of how even information-rich hiring processes can benefit from measuring and refining their approach to communicating expectations and determining fit—looking specifically at where their processes or models can be improved and extending the philosophy around the formative use of data from the classroom to the central office.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
