Toolkit: The Talent Decision Planner

A school leader's Perspective

It’s 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday in January, and Principal Sarah Salazar is working on next year’s staffing plan. She knows that one of the best 3rd grade teachers, Ms. Nye, is leaving at the end of this year. She accesses her talent management materials, provided by the district, which lists five important decisions for this month. She looks over the decisions about Hiring, and then reads in her Guiding Questions materials about the importance of carefully targeting new hires to fill skill gaps. She looks at the teacher effectiveness data provided by the district. She knows that Ms. Nye was a great team leader, but she notices in the data that one of her particular skills is challenging all learners to achieve at a high level. Principal Salazar now looks at the 4th grade team, and is reminded that Mr. George and Ms. Robbins are also strong in that skill. Principal Salazar knows that Mr. George has been a great team leader and that Ms. Robbins has been looking for opportunities to lead. She makes a note to ask Mr. George if he would be willing to move to the 3rd grade to replace Ms. Nye, and to ask Ms. Robbins to become team leader for the 4th grade. Principal Salazar now plans to look for a new 4th grade teacher who can integrate into an already strong team. She jots down some questions to discuss with her supervisor later that day. It’s 11:00 a.m., and she sails out the door to meet with a parent—feeling confident in having done productive work that morning.

WHAT IS THE TALENT DECISION PLANNER?

Teaching effectiveness is the single most important in-school factor in improving a student’s academic performance. Thus, the decisions about how to attract, retain, develop, and organize excellent teachers are the most important decisions that school system leaders make in the course of a year. ERS’ Talent Decision Planner (TDP) is a new tool to ensure support for talent managers to know what decisions they need to make, and to make those decisions as strategically as possible. The TDP supports those decisions in two key ways:

1. Empower decision-makers by clarifying decision-making roles: The TDP provides districts with a carefully vetted and organized list of the crucial teacher-related decisions school and system leaders should make over the course of the year. It does not take decisions out of the hands of decision-makers; rather, it empowers them by clarifying decision-making roles (the who, what, and when), and giving support on the “how.” The TDP takes the district step-bystep through a process of customizing the content in the tool (the decisions, guiding questions, etc.), which then feeds into calendars and other output views to distribute to school leaders.
   
   
2. Indicate what data inform key decisions: Districts increasingly gather more and better data on teaching effectiveness, but many are still developing systems to support principals and principal supervisors with how to use these data to inform specific decisions. Wherever a district may be in its evolution of data-informed decision-making, the TDP helps it create the plan for how to further evolve its data reporting and data collection systems. After the district has aligned in part 1 on the decisions that matter most, and the questions that should be answered to inform those decisions, the TDP shows which specific metrics should be considered to answer those questions and thus inform those key decisions. This gives districts clarity on what data to distribute to school leaders and when, and it makes that data far more actionable for decision-makers, since it is explicitly tied to the questions and decisions they need to engage with to do their job. It also supports districts in identifying what new data they may need to create the data views that will inform the most important decisions.

THE STRATEGIC SYSTEM

Talent management should be designed as part of a holistic strategy for system-wide change. This means connecting it to other elements like:

• Teaching: New teachers thrive in schools with effective teacher teams, clear roles for teacher leaders, a culture of feedback, and access to rigorous curriculum. 
  Read more:
  >> Connected Professional Learning
  >> Teacher Leadership checklist

• Strategic School Design: School leaders need to learn how to organize people, time, and money to support new teachers, school culture, and student outcomes. We call this Strategic School Design - and school systems must support it.
  Read more: 
  >> Designing Schools that Work
  >> Finding Time for Collaborative Planning

• Funding & Portfolio: If school leaders are to innovate with new models, school systems need to allocate funds equitably, transparently and flexibly. Student-based budgeting helps systems achieve that. 
  Read more:
  >> Transforming School Funding for Equity, Transparency, and Flexibility: An Introduction to Student-based Budgeting