Radical by Michelle Rhee Page A

teachers. We were so frustrated that we decided to try to document the problem by thoroughly examining how school districts responded to applicants, cataloging the processes and compiling the results in a report.
    At first we couldn’t convince anyone to fund the project, but we thought it was so important that we started the research on our own dime. Jessica Levin, our chief knowledge officer, led the effort, along with Meredith Quinn, whose research and writing skills made the project a success. They asked all our site managers who were embedded in HR offices in districts across the country to begin to track who applied for teaching jobs and when they applied. We also monitored whether they were ultimately hired.
    The results were shocking. They totally smashed the myth that there was a shortage of urban teachers. To the contrary, we found that experts in math and science were banging down the doors to get hired, but the school systems were turning them away. It made me crazy!
    How could schools deny the best candidates? First, school budgets were often not finalized until summer, leaving many principals uncertain of how many staff they would have to hire. Second, the districts often did not make structural decisions—school closures and consolidations or changes to staffing plans—until summer. That combined with the unresponsive and unaccountable nature of the HR departments equaled disaster. Third, even if a school district could usher a new teacher through the process in time for them to show up in the classroom at the start of the school year, the union contract mandated that no new teacher could be hired into the system until all of the current teachers had been placed.
    Potential teachers were essentially stiff-armed before they could get in front of the students.
    Lots of politicians have stories about constituents, relatives, or friends of friends who applied for teaching jobs and became so frustrated by the process and bureaucracy that they decided to do something else. Those, however, were just anecdotes. Our report put numbers behind the anecdotes in a compelling, sixty-three-page document supported by graphs, charts, and case studies of three school districts.
    We named it “Missed Opportunities” and went public in April 2003.
    We were very excited about the report, but we had low expectations. Who would care? We printed a couple of hundred copies. Requests poured in. Within weeks we had to print more. Because it confirmed the suspicions and anecdotes of so many people, “Missed Opportunities” resonated. Requests came from think tanks, institutions of higher education, states, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Investigative journalists devoured it.
    TNTP’s first foray into the policy world was a success, but we didn’t want to be known as one-hit wonders. The report and its reception made us hungry for more. We understood the impact and value of a document that presented live data and broke new ground. Lawmakers began using it to guide new policy, which had been our hoped-for ideal outcome. But we also knew that “Missed Opportunities” barely began to delve into a deeper set of obstacles. We wanted to expose more problems and recommend solutions.
    Jessica Levin and I wrestled with the remaining roadblocks to hiring great teachers. We decided that the first two problems of HR processes and budget timelines could be addressed by good leadership and planning. The third issue, the requirement that school districts hold open spots for all current teachers without assignments, before offering spots to any new teachers—was a much tougher problem. This issue revolved around collective bargaining agreements and so it touched on a series of sensitive, sacred cows in public education.
    â€œThere’s no doubt about it,” said Jessica, “the union issues are the seemingly intractable ones. Those are the ones that would be most interesting to delve