Focus on Equity • Communicate, Implement and Monitor Recruitment and Retention Focus

and integrate with the Equity Plan

• Focused Goals to Enhance and Improve Academic Outcomes for ALL to

Close the Opportunity Gap.

The Benefits of Diversity in the Teaching Workforce

Student Benefits

● Teachers of color boost the academic performance of students of color, including improved reading and math test scores, improved graduation rates, and increases in aspirations to attend college.

● Students of color and White students report having positive perceptions of their teachers of color, including feeling cared for and academically challenged.

● Having one black teacher in elementary school makes children more likely to graduate high school &

significantly increases odds of enrollment in college.

● Black students who’d had just one black teacher by third grade were 13 percent more likely to enroll

in college – and those who’d had two were 32 percent more likely.

● Every 20 percent increase in a teacher’s expectations raised the actual chance of finishing college for

white students by about 6 percent and 10 percent for black students

The Benefits of Diversity in the Teaching Workforce

● Teachers of color are resources for students in hard-to-staff schools. Many teachers of color report feeling called to teach in low-income communities of color where positions are often difficult to fill. Indeed, three in four teachers of color work in the quartile of schools serving the most students of color nationally.

● Greater diversity of teachers may mitigate feelings of isolation, frustration, and fatigue that can contribute to individual teachers of color leaving the profession when they feel they are alone.

● Diverse organizations embrace a greater number of perspectives, exhibit more creative problem-solving, and have the ability to engage a broader audience. A mix of different viewpoints allows your team to tackle a problem from different angles and come up with the best solution.

Student Achievement GAP Student population Staff population

Barriers to Recruiting and Retaining Teachers of Color

● Inadequate teacher preparation when teachers enter through alternative routes and try to teach while they are in training, along with lack of ongoing support for new teachers, which drive high teacher turnover rates.

● Teacher licensure exams that disproportionately exclude teacher candidates of color despite little evidence that these exams predict teacher effectiveness.

● Poor working conditions and low salaries that discourage teachers from staying in their schools and in the profession.

● Displacement from the high-need schools they teach in, where accountability strategies have often resulted in staff reconstitution or closing schools rather than investing in improvements.

Increase Recruitment and Hiring Teachers of Color

Strategy 1 Action Step: REVIEW AND REVISION OF HIRING PROCESS: a team principals and human resources, and equity experts will revise the screening and interviewing process to align selection criteria to the core values and equity work throughout the hiring process.

● Schools will work together with intentional commitment to improve their hiring practices for teachers of color and remove biases from their recruitment and onboarding processes.

● Provide connected professional learning on removing bias from interview process. Implement ongoing training for hiring committees annually.

● Intentionally diversifying the hiring committees to include diverse perspectives and hires.

● Implement a screening and recruitment tool to shorten hiring timeline and streamline candidates based on selection criteria.

Increase Recruitment and Hiring Teachers of Color

Strategy 2 Action Step: Integrate digital interview platform SPARK HIRE:substitute pilot, build out training roll out plan for this recruitment season

● Broaden and diversify candidates and create understanding of the District’s equity focus.

● Create a Nomination pool with High Potential Candidates aligned with selection criteria to capture prior to posting to allow for candidates to be accessed when official postings go live.

● Create a targeted pool based on WECAN postings to shorten the screening process to aligned selection criteria and the ability to leverage the talent pools earlier in the hiring season.

Digital Interviewing Platform

Increase Recruitment and Hiring Teachers of Color

Strategy 3Action Step:RECRUITMENT COMMITTEE – a team of cross sector Human Resources, and Communications staff and Equity Team will form to develop marketing and social media strategies aligned selection criteria to the core values and equity work.

● Review & analyze Equity Plan recruitment measures. Make suggestions on implementation and generate new ideas. ● Create recruitment materials focused on Equity and programming to draw teachers of color. ● Build out networks of color for postings and presence at highly attended conferences and get them in our talent pools ● Further the implementation of Teacher Ambassadors. Development of a more targeted goals and plans for outreach and

nomination. ● Implement strategy for all employees to nominate using targeted approach and enter in WSD talent pool system.

Increase Recruitment and Hiring Teachers of Color

Strategy 4Action Step:Create a Pipeline of Teachers of Color Increase teacher of color teacher Pipeline

● Future Teacher Pathway 2020 Pipeline development. ● Pipeline development to leverage High School to college to increase the talent pool

--focus on teachers of color. ● Personal invites for those of color in our District to serve as mentors or field placement.

Work through the LAUNCH program leaders and the equity teams. ● Build out an intentional and focused Pipeline development with Student teachers, field

placements, Wisconsin Intern Programs (WIP interns) Colleges UW-Milwaukee, Concordia, Alverno etc. Alternative programs, MTEC, CESA1 Pathways.

● Maximize our educational assistants, internal employees that aspire to be teachers in the future and develop pipelines to teacher pathways.

● Work with DPI, Universities and alternative certification pathway programs to create solutions with pipeline development to reduce Identified barriers.

Increase Retention of Highly Qualified Staff with a focus with teacher of color

Strategy 5Action Step:EMPLOYEE RETENTION COMMITTEE – a team of principals, teachers and Human Resources and communications will form to gain insight of current effective practices and explore additional opportunities.

● New teacher and development of surveys to better analyze of onboarding, recruitment and retention strategies.

● HR director will be in the buildings once a week to increase visibility and understand culture and community among staff in buildings to collaborate and support a culture of inclusive practices.

● Support buildings to develop Retention plans for Irreplaceables ● Monthly HR and Superintendent building feedback time to support

feedback opportunities to continually improve working conditions ● 30 60 90 check-in’s with new staff along-side with the principals● February District Mid-year check dinner with new staff and mentors

to reflect and support.● Coordinate efforts and communicate Work/ Life Balance and

self-care opportunities district-wide.

Increase Retention of Highly Qualified Staff with a Focus on Teachers of Color

Strategy 6TEACHER OF COLOR ADVISORY GROUP- will serve as a sounding board and creative force to provide ideas and collective feedback to the participating schools aimed at improving recruitment and retention of teachers of color.

● Maximize the Affinity group of color and other forms of feedback opportunities ● Specific and varied ways to get feedback focused on teachers of color● Share feedback and offer suggestions to school leaders based on student, teacher and parent

feedback on building culture in regards to inclusive practice, feeling of belonging and welcoming environment.

● In school leaders professional development incorporate “real life scenarios” based on the feedback on how to leverage high yield strategies and how to address concerns.

● Feature and celebrate focused Equity programs throughout the district, and more intentionally feature teachers of color, on Website on Weekly roundups, to highlight focus on divesity.

Increase Recruitment and Retention of Highly Qualified Staff with a focus with teachers of color

Strategy 7TALENT TASK FORCE – a team of principals and involved teachers and leaders will form to develop a 5-year plan and advocate for and champion the plan of High Quality Recruitment and Retention.

● Network with local and national educational Professional Learning Networks (PLN) that are focused on increasing teachers of color: such as, City Forward Collective ( Formerly known as: School That Can Milwaukee), Uncommon Schools, TNTP research etc.

● Network and collaborate with other industries that are focused on Increasing diversity and employees of color. Manpower, Baird, GE etc.

● Bring in local non-profits for feedback, suggestions, and support , Tosa Together, Nurturing Diversity partners ect.

Retention Rate of High Performing Staff– the turnover of each employee category will be measured annually with the goal of improvement in each group and for the District with a focus on teachers of color. Trends will be sought when examining reason for resignation, length of tenure, job assignment, and demographics of high performers.

The gauge of success of recruitment and retention plan will be the examination of key metrics. These include:

● Employee Engagement Scores – annual employee engagement tools will continue to be utilized, including the Employee Engagement survey, exit interviews, new hire check-ins, and stay interviews. These will be examined to identify themes, trends and improvements in areas currently identified as critical concerns, and feedback through stakeholder listening groups will be sought.

● Effectiveness of Hiring process – this metric measures the length of time from initial vacancy posting to accepted offer will be monitored to ensure talent is hired in a timely manner to avoid losing a disengaged applicant. It will also evaluate candidate experience and hiring managers experience in implementing a consistent hiring process throughout the district to produce highly qualified candidates.

● Talent Evaluation – Using the Quality of Hire Report Card, new employees will be assessed to determine if each employee is a cultural fit within the District. In totality, this will help inform the success of enhanced talent acquisition strategies.