1

CCSD New Teacher On Boarding Needs Assessment

Ryan Guzman
CUR/528
25 January 2016
Professor Armer

Needs Assessment

2
Over the last few decades, the Las Vegas metropolitan area has grown exponentially. In
fact, the Las Vegas metro area has been one of the fastest growing metro areas in the last 40 years
in the United States. In 1970, the population of the Las Vegas metro area was a mere 273,288.
However, by the year 2014 (44 years later) the population of the same metro area was an
astounding 2,102,238! (www.lvcva.com).
While this type of growth is good for the economy and quality of life offerings, it creates a
problem for many municipal organizations. One such organization this growth has created a
growth problem for is our school district; the Clark County School District (CCSD). From 1970
to 2014, CCSD has opened 357 schools, which is the number of schools the district sits at now
(www.ccsd.net). The growth problem over the last five years, is the fact that our district has had
difficulty maintaining the number of teachers necessary to fully staff every single classroom. This
has forced us to be creative and aggressive with our teacher recruitment nationally. However, our
new teacher on-boarding is now in need of revision, seeing as how we are hiring hundreds of new
teachers annually.
CCSD New Teacher On-Boarding Needs Assessment
After much review, the training department of the Clark County School District has
noticed that our new teachers to the district are struggling in the classroom. Our principals are
reporting incidents with new teachers daily. These incidents have to do with poor classroom
management and poor academic management. In addition, our numbers of teacher retention have
severely declined. Informal conversations with a few new teachers have netted that these new
teachers do not feel properly equipped to enter the classroom. Therefore, we have decided to
move forward with a resolution for our new teacher training and on-boarding.
Identify a course, training, or program for the needs assessment.
At the Clark County School District, we require every new teacher to the

3
profession/district, to attend a new teacher on-boarding. The new teacher on-boarding lasts for
three weeks and students have to attend one night a week for three hours. During this course, the
objectives are for students to become familiar with the district, the community and culture of Las
Vegas and issues dealing with teaching. This training has been a part of CCSD since the early
1980s (1982 to be exact). Since 1982, the training has not changed much. Why this training has
been allowed to remain nearly unchanged since 1982 is one of the questions that led us to realize
that this training, in its current iteration, cannot continue.
As a team, we have decided to conduct an extensive needs assessment to understand how
we can change this training in order to support our new teachers and help increase our level of
teacher retention. We believe that this is the first, very necessary step in improving new teacher
training and on-boarding.
Identify the purpose, level of assessment, stakeholders, budget and available resources, and
time allotted for the assessment.
The purpose of the needs assessment for the new teacher on-boarding program, is to
obtain information on what teachers who have completed on-boarding believe they should have
received. We would like to know what these teachers feel they needed (that they didnt get) in
order to be successful in their first two years in the classroom. In addition, another purpose of our
needs assessment is to identify reasons why new teachers did not stay in the profession/district
and what new teacher on-boarding could do to prevent this departure of new teachers in the
future.
There are several stakeholders that will be consulted and affected during this needs
assessment cycle for CCSD. The first, and largest, stakeholders will be new recruits to the
teaching profession and to CCSD. This population of individuals is the reason we are revamping
the way we think about new teacher training and on-boarding. Another large population of

4
stakeholders that will be affected is our school administrators. Unfortunately, over the last several
years, our administrators have been put in tough situations. With the enormous need for teachers,
we have placed several undertrained teachers in their school classrooms. Because of this, many
negative incidents with behavior and academic issues with new teachers have occurred. In
addition, administrators have had to constantly refill vacated positions because of the departure of
many new teachers. For all of these reasons, administrators are a stakeholder population that will
be very invested in the outcome of the needs assessment. Among other stakeholders are:
1. Students we owe it to our large student population to give them access to a world-class
education. This begins with placing highly qualified and trained teachers in their
classrooms.
2. Parents we also owe it to our parents to not have to worry about the level of education
the teachers they trust their kids to have.
3. Veteran Teachers a final stakeholder class is veteran teachers. With the undertrained
teachers being put into classrooms, many problems lie on the hands of the veteran teachers
that surround them. During informal conversations, many veteran teachers expressed the
need for more effective new teacher training.
As far as our budget goes, we presented our case for a comprehensive new teacher onboarding to the CCSD board of trustees and have been given the green light to use Title 1
Victory grant funds to conduct our needs assessment. The Victory grant was given to our district
specifically for the purpose of teacher training. While we will use some funds for training all of
our teachers, we will use the majority of it for the on-boarding needs assessment and then the
actual on-boarding itself. The Victory grant awarded our district fifteen million dollars towards
teacher training. After a vote, our board of trusteess awarded seven million of that towards work
with new teachers. We will take the needs assessment money out of this seven million. In addition

5
to allocated money, we also have several resources at our disposal. Our district has just completed
a multi-site expansion of our internet server capabilities. This means that a major portion of our
assessment can take place online without any technical hiccups. In addition, we can have several
hundred survey responders online at one time without sacrificing internet capability. Aside from
the internet capability, we have several other resources available:
1. Teacher Trainers we already have several teachers who signed up to help us conduct
the needs assessment all over the entire Las Vegas metro area.
2. Administrator Trainers we also have several school based administrators signed up to
assist with the needs assessment as well.
3. Building Space several administrators have volunteered their school buildings to
have as base sites for our assessment.
4. Technology in addition to the building space, several administrators have also
allocated their technological resources for our use in our needs assessment.
We also have set a timetable for getting this assessment done. We will begin this
assessment on September 1st, 2016 and complete the assessment on December 1st, 2016. This
will allow us time to assess the results, create a plan for how to move forward and be able to
implement that plan in time for the start of the 2016-17 academic school year.

Identify the specific information you need to measure using the needs
assessment/Determine whether information already exists or if information must be
obtained from resources
1. What could be improved for new teacher training and on-boarding
2. Why the current model is not effective.
3. How many vacancies are expected in the 2016-17 school year
4. How many new teachers are expected to be hired for the 16-17 school year.

6
5. What do new teachers need to be successful in the classroom
6. Problems that new teachers have had in the classroom
7. Reasons why new teachers have left the profession/district
We will have to work closely with the recruiting and hiring department to obtain some of the
information we need such as the estiamte of vacancies and the estimate of hirings. However, most
of the information does not exist yet. We are essentially treading uncharted waters as we move
forward with our needs assessment.

References
Royse, D. (2011). Program Evaluation: An Introduction (5th ed.). : Cengage Learning.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. (2014). Retrieved from
http://www.lvcva.com/includes/content/images/MEDIA/docs/Population-2014.pdf
Clark County School District. (2015). Retrieved from
http://ccsd.net/district/news/publications/pdf/Fast-Facts-color-Feb2015.pdf