Building a Talent Decision Map: How School Systems Can Promote Strategic Talent Management at Scale

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Talent management—recruiting, selecting, organizing, developing, and retaining excellent teachers—may be the single most important lever school systems have to improve student outcomes. The most successful principals make talent management a part of instructional leadership, but in general principals need more robust, strategic support from the system to be effective in this role. This paper describes how systems can empower all principals to be strategic talent managers—by mapping out the what, who, when, and how of strategic talent management at scale, and organizing data, support, and timelines around the most critical talent decisions that should be made throughout the year. We also introduce a new tool to help.