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Addressing pandemic staffing cuts: A strategic approach

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The post-pandemic education landscape is in a state of flux, demanding that North Carolina’s school systems break free from the status quo. With the $3.6 billion in federal ESSER III funding set to expire this fall, the need for lasting, structural changes is pressing.

In this critical moment, strategic staffing emerges as a beacon of opportunity for school leaders to optimize human capital, enhancing both organizational efficiency and efficacy.

Strategic staffing pushes organizations to go beyond the typical recruitment, hiring, and dismissal practices found in the education sector. It advocates for a holistic approach to human capital management that aligns workforce strategies with overarching goals, navigates demographic shifts, optimizes resources, leverages data-informed insights, and fosters adaptability for the future. This enables organizations to identify optimal staff configurations, benchmark these configurations against sector standards, and tailor staffing to meet the evolving needs of students.

Now is the time for school, district, and state leaders to embrace strategic staffing practices. Early estimates suggest that more than $1 billion of the $2.5 billion already expended in ESSER III funding in North Carolina has been spent on personnel and compensation, nearly 80 percent of which is tied to personnel with a direct impact on academics.1 While a recent report to the North Carolina General Assembly shows noteworthy progress toward learning recovery,2 how schools and school systems respond to unavoidable staffing cuts will have a profound impact on these trajectories. 

Strategic staffing practices have served as a catalyst for targeted interventions within K-12 education, from addressing the inequitable distribution and access to high-performing teachers to reconsidering conventional teaching paradigms.3 Promising approaches, such as North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles Program, Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture, and innovative models led by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, integrate and take advantage of strategic staffing practices by expanding teacher leadership, refining resource allocation, and enriching student learning opportunities. These and similar programs across the country, such as efforts to rethink professional educator preparation pathways and standards, show that this multiplicity of strategic staffing approaches will help advance the educational landscape, make education a more fulfilling and sustainable profession,4 and ensure all students receive a sound, high-quality education.

Strategic staffing approaches are also rapidly evolving beyond traditional teaching models, giving way to an innovative era to rethink resource allocation while leveraging advances in data science. As an example, Basis Policy Research is developing an evidence-based classroom rostering solution that aims to improve the process by which students are assigned to teachers in core subjects in elementary school grades. The project is motivated by the reality that students from traditionally marginalized groups are less likely to be placed in classrooms staffed by highly effective teachers than their more advantaged peers.5

However, the road to implementing and scaling strategic staffing solutions in education is not without its challenges, as a recent report by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation has shown.6 Strategic staffing depends on visionary leadership, sustained engagement, and policy alignment. Navigating policy restrictions, addressing resource constraints, and enhancing technical support are key steps toward realizing the full potential of strategic staffing in education.

To this end, Basis Policy Research partnered with the Friday Institute to conduct a comprehensive study on selecting and evaluating advanced teachers, developing potential measures for evaluating the performance of educators in non-tested grades and subjects, and bringing together practitioners, state leaders, and researchers to advance current practices in the selection and evaluation of educators serving in advanced teaching roles.

Strategic staffing practices not only provide a path through the fiscal complexities but also foster innovation and cultivate a culture of excellence. By adopting a strategic approach to workforce management, North Carolina’s school systems can unlock new horizons, drive sustainable change, and, most importantly, empower students to thrive in an ever-evolving educational landscape.

Show 6 footnotes
  1. Springer, M.G., Powers, P., Brooks, C., Hutt, E.A. et al. (2024). Staffing Str-ESSER and the Federal Funding Cliff. Presentation prepared for the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy at the Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University.
  2. North Carolina State Board of Education Department of Public Instruction (2023). Report to the North Carolina General Assembly: 2023 Statewide Year-Over-Year Trends in Achievement: Before, During, and After the Pandemic. Raleigh, North Carolina.
  3. Education First led a recent scan documenting the current breadth and shape of strategic staffing across the country. They identify several key pillars, including reimagining traditional classroom structures, emphasis on team-based teaching approaches, access to wider and less traditional talent pools, and integration of new technology and approaches to enhance learning. Tennessee SCORE also released a recent report on how the adoption of strategic staffing practices can provide an opportunity to improve education.
  4. For more on these points, see report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education on mechanisms for attracting and retaining teachers, educator perspectives on new staffing roles, and what it takes to lead and scale these efforts.
  5. See, for example, Rodrguez, L.A., Nguyen, T.D., and Springer, M.G. (2023). Revisiting Teaching Quality Gaps: Urbanicity and Disparities in Access to High-Quality Teachers Across Tennessee. Urban Education. Springer, M.G., Halpin, P., Springer, J.A. et al, (2022). Disproportional Assignment: The Need for Strategic Equity-Forward Student-Teacher Classroom Rostering. In T. Downes and K. Killen (Eds.), Recent Advancements in Education Finance and Policy. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Goldhaber, D., Theobald, R., and Quince, V. (2019). Teacher Quality Gaps in U.S. Public Schools: Trends, Sources, and Implications. Kappan, April 29.
  6. See Center on Reinventing Public Education’s “So Hard, But So Rewarding” report and Education First’s Strategic Staffing Solutions overview.
Matthew Springer

Dr. Matthew Springer is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Basis Policy Research.