Teacher Hiring and Placement at the Elementary School Level: The Challenges of Implementing Strategic Human Resource Management Practices

Decades of research emphasizes the importance of staffing schools with quality teachers, as this will have the largest impact on student achievement (Mason, Schroeder, 2010). With high teacher turnover rates in addition to shrinking qualified candidate pools, the hiring process holds great significance (Tooms, 2004). This case study explored how one school district hires and places elementary school teachers. This study follows a qualitative case study approach using documents and interviews as data collection methods. Recently, Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) has made the transition from business to educational literature. This study explored two concepts, including fit and flexibility from SHRM literature as a theoretical framework to determine strategic actions throughout human resource (HR) practices in the selected school district. The results indicated there is little evidence of strategic human resource practices in the studied school district. These findings add to a small, yet growing, body of literature on SHRM in education as well as on teacher retention and HR literature