Making Sense of School Leadership Hiring: Three Essays on School Leadership Supply, Hiring, and Placement

Abstract

While a robust literature has developed around teacher hiring practices, leadership hiring remains a black box. This dissertation examines the supply of school leaders and the complex process through which school leaders are hired and placed. The first chapter explores data from the statewide Tennessee Educator Survey to document the proportion of license-holders who are pursuing an administrative role and why some license-holders are not planning on occupying those roles. We find that the demands of school leadership may push license-holders away from pursuing the position. The second and third chapters provide an investigation of application and administrative data from a large metropolitan school district in the Southeastern United States. I find that vacancies emerge in lower-performing schools that enroll more economically disadvantaged and Black students and that the district relies on candidate’s prior experience to make placement decisions. Because vacancies occur schools similar to where Black candidates work—and where fewer Hispanic/Latino candidates work—Black candidates are overrepresented among those hired compared to those who apply and Hispanic/Latino candidates are underrepresented. The findings suggest future work on leadership hiring should account for how vacancies and district hiring preferences drive disproportionate hiring outcomes.