Tenn. recruits teachers online
- By Brian Robinson
- Mar 28, 2002
Faced with increasing pressure to recruit qualified teachers for its schools,
Tennessee has struck a pact with Teachers-Teachers.com, a private Web-based
recruitment service, to provide all of its school systems with access to
the company's national database of resumes from about 46,000 educational
professionals.
Teachers-Teachers.com has made deals with several other states to provide
its service to smaller groups of school districts, but Tennessee is the
first to sign a statewide contract that covers all of its 138 school systems.
The state provides the service to school systems and individual recruiters
at no cost.
The contract with Teachers-Teachers.com is just the latest in Tennessee's
efforts to develop a comprehensive system of personnel development for its
schools, said Cleo Harris, regional coordinator for the Education Department's
Middle Tennessee Regional Resource Center. Other ways to use the Web to
improve teacher recruitment and retention are also being studied, she said.
To use Teachers-Teachers.com, school systems can search the database
for candidates by residency, grade level, education and licensure areas,
screen candidates by listening to recorded interviews and receive email
directly from them.
The company began as a Maryland-based startup in early 2000 and had
just 10,000 resumes in its database by the end of that year. The number
of school systems using the service "has gone up a lot" in the just the
past six months as more effort has gone into actively recruiting schools,
according to Rebecca Clark, Teachers-Teachers.com's director of member services.
About 600 public school districts and another 500 private schools and
other educational agencies currently are signed up for the service, Clark
said.
Separately, Tennessee also recently announced a Web site (www.k-12.state.tn.us/certinf) that the public can access to check the licensure
information of the state's teachers. The Education Department sees the site
as providing a double-barreled service, to parents wanting to know the qualifications
of their children's' teachers, and for the teachers to keep up to date with
their own endorsements and licensing expiration dates.
About the Author
Brian Robinson is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore.