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Teacher Quality Tracking
The SearchSoft Teacher Quality Tracking System (HQ System) provides school districts with a highly efficient data collection, skill analysis, and reporting solution. The HQ System collects pertinent information from a district’s current employees. The system then compares each employee’s approved skills, experience, and credentials to the Highly Qualified standards established by each state. Finally, the system allows the district’s personnel office to query the database for teachers who are or are not Highly Qualified in the subject they are teaching.

How does it help districts? The HQ system saves time. The system was designed to efficiently collect the relevant data from all of a district’s teachers and paraprofessionals. The system’s logic tools automatically screen the candidate/teacher data for elements essential to the state’s governing HQ rubric. The system even offers functionality that allows the district to utilize HOUSSE standards to evaluate the more experienced employees (See HOUSSE section below for more detail on this topic).
The system can also help a district hire Highly Qualified teachers. The HQ features can be integrated with SearchSoft’s Applicant Tracking System. Now a district can take advantage of SearchSoft’s unequaled hiring workflow solution while ensuring that each new hire is Highly Qualified. This automation can reduce the time a district spends pre-screening applications by 50% or more and can significantly decrease the time required for future HQ reporting.

What is HOUSSE? Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the "Highly Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation" (HOUSSE) is a key component to the highly qualified teacher definition. Essentially, it can be used to assess an existing teacher's subject-matter competency as an alternative to an examination, major, major equivalency, graduate degree or advanced certification in the core content area taught. The law has given each state the latitude to create an evaluation process of subject-matter competency, as long as it meets defined criteria. The SearchSoft HQ solution automates the collection and analysis of all HOUSSE data.

Why not manage this information manually? SearchSoft has developed this web-based evaluation utility to minimize the effort and improve the accuracy of the data. With an electronic system, the information can all be submitted by the employee, thus evenly distributing the workload to the entire teaching staff at the district. This equal distribution allows for maximum output without creating a significant process burden on any one individual or department. This system also offers a convenient reporting interface designed to simplify any investigative processes that may prove necessary in future years.

System Benefits
Easy Reporting- For school district personnel departments using a paper-based system, reporting is a significant time burden that is typically performed only once a year. SearchSoft’s system lessens that burden by providing a single mechanism to help the districts meet and often exceed NCLB Accountability Standards. The program compiles a complete portfolio of records regarding every teacher and paraprofessional. The report includes: assessments, attendance records, certifications, degrees, endorsements, etc.

ATS Integration - Hiring Highly Qualified teachers typically requires countless hours of screening applications to match candidates with the state’s HQ rubric requirements. By integrating the HQ features with the Applicant Tracking System, the solution automatically identifies the Highly Qualified candidate/teachers for each posted vacancy or by any specified job type.

Immediate Data Verification - The system enables both the principals and the personnel department to rapidly identify the qualifications of each teacher and paraprofessional. With the at-a-glance document management information (electronic document images) and electronic information from multiple sources, principals can efficiently verify the teachers' input.

Completely Tailored - Every school district has different data collection and reporting needs. The SearchSoft solution offers reports that are tailored for Highly Qualified Teacher compliance with NCLB and Department of Education for every state. Once the information is entered into the database, the program will analyze the information and immediately specify whether or not a teacher’s credentials meet HQ requirements.

Simplicity of Use - Teachers can fill out the simple form at their convenience. This facilitates the data collection process, simplifies the verification process, and establishes portfolio integrity and accountability.

Legal Compliance - The program also includes data audit tools for legality and oversight.