The relationship of teacher education variables, screening, and hiring practices in predicting first-year elementary teacher proficiency

Every year, thousands of pre-service teachers graduate from teacher education programs and seek employment in the teaching profession. Hiring a person who is likely to become a good teacher is one of the most important decisions school board administrators must make.;Therefore, this study examined a group of 20 highly proficient first-year elementary teachers and a group of 20 least proficient first-year elementary teachers. It was believed that by examining these two divergent groups, on the continuum of teacher proficiency, differences would most likely be observed.;Historical data, contained in the personnel files of the participants being studied, were provided to the researcher. The data included university transcripts, student-teaching evaluations, and district screening and hiring information. From these data, 32 common pre-service variables were examined to determine their relationship to first-year teacher proficiency.;To evaluate the relationship of each independent variable with first-year teacher proficiency, Pearson Correlation Coefficients were generated to determine the magnitude and statistical significance of relationship between variables. Of the 32 independent variables studied, 11 showed a significant relationship to first-year teacher proficiency. These 11 variables were selected for inclusion in a Discriminant Function Analysis. The Discriminant Function Analysis was used to develop an equation to classify and predict membership into either the highly proficient first-year teacher group or the least proficient first-year teacher group. The results of the discriminant score calculation predicted first-year teacher proficiency 92.9% of the time.;There is little consensuses about which pre-service variables are most reliable in predicting first-year teaching proficiency. From a screening and hiring perspective this presents challenges. School boards are usually unable to observe a first-year candidate in a teaching context prior to offering an initial teaching contract. In most instances, school boards can only rely on specific pre-service variables commonly used for recruitment, screening, and hiring of new teachers.;The results of this research study represent important findings to school boards in that teacher personnel selection decisions can be enhanced through the use of the predictive statistical model developed in this study. In addition, knowledge of which pre-service variables are related to first-year teacher proficiency has implications for the further development of teacher education programs.