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Click on the link to the listing for 鈥淢s. O,鈥� and up pops a video with the 1st grade teacher leading a lesson on units of measurement using yellow strings of yarn: It takes one student in the video six steps to walk to the end of one strand, then eight steps to the end of the second.

Near the end of the class, the students repeat a chant Ms. O has devised: 鈥淲hen you want to measure, you have to remember鈥攊t can be longer, it can be shorter.鈥�

Click on another link and find a high school math teacher, whose geometry lesson draws on the District of Columbia鈥檚 notoriously hard-to-navigate traffic circles.

A third link takes the viewer to a high school history teacher putting students into groups to discuss the causes of the Revolutionary War鈥攁nd analyze alternative courses of action.

All three 30-minute clips are recordings of teacher auditions in District of Columbia schools, a key part of an online database premiering this summer in the D.C. school system that helps principals make determinations about which teacher-candidates to ask in for a formal interview.

The system is part of the 45,000-student district鈥檚 ambitious attempt to overhaul the process for hiring teachers to make it both rigorous and more useful.

鈥淚t signals to candidates that DCPS is a special place to work and takes teaching very seriously,鈥� said Benjamin Lindy, the manager of teacher-selection design. 鈥淎ll of this is designed so that we present useful and distilled information to principals so they can make the final decisions about who teaches in their buildings.鈥�

A handful of urban districts, such as Denver, Pittsburgh, and Tulsa, Okla., are taking similar steps to reorient their central human-resources offices toward what鈥檚 being called 鈥渟trategic hiring.鈥� The efforts consist of collecting a more-robust set of information on candidates, developing stronger relationships with teacher-preparation programs, and tracking new hires to determine their success in the classroom.

Foundations are playing an important role in the efforts, too: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation鈥檚 teacher-quality funding is providing support for the work in Pittsburgh, D.C., and Tulsa, among other places. Denver鈥檚 work includes local funding from the Janus Education Alliance, a public-private partnership, and from national players, such as the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation, among others.

Although research indicates that there is no foolproof way to tell on the front end who will make a stellar teacher, human-resources officers contend that being more deliberative about hiring reinforces a message about the value placed on high-quality teaching.

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 afford to bring just anyone in. Every single hire is important to bring into the workforce individuals with the potential to raise the level of effectiveness,鈥� said Jody Bucheit Spolar, the chief human-resources officer for the 26,000-student Pittsburgh district.

Raising the Bar

For many of the districts, putting an eye on hiring practices also has entailed a fundamental shift toward serving schools鈥� personnel needs and away from transactional work, like processing licensing renewals and determining 鈥渉ighly qualified鈥� teacher status.

鈥淚n the past, the HR mandates came out of the 5th floor of the office, disconnected with what was going on in the schools or what the needs were,鈥� said Shayne Spalten, the chief human-resources officer for the 80,000-student Denver district.

Teacher hiring is an object lesson in that disconnect, a peremptory exercise frequently consisting of a background check and a review of transcripts, licensing test scores, and a resume. Teachers that pass those benchmarks are then placed in the pool of candidates principals can select for interviews.

Such mechanisms generally don鈥檛 take into account a prior record of success鈥攐r for novices, provide an indication that they have the potential to be successful teachers given the right supports, according to Elizabeth Arons, a New York-based human-resources consultant for school districts.

Ms. Arons, who headed New York City鈥檚 human-resources department between 2004 and 2010, said many districts don鈥檛 collect even basic data about hiring patterns鈥攕uch as ratio of applicants-to-open-teaching position鈥攁nd that the data they do have aren鈥檛 directly related to teaching skills. She recalled recently asking one district鈥檚 HR officers what they could say definitely about their hires.

鈥淭hey said, 鈥榃ell, we can say no one has a criminal record,鈥� 鈥� Ms. Arons recounted. 鈥淎nd I said, 鈥楾hat鈥檚 our criteria? Can we up the stakes a bit?鈥欌��

No Silver Bullet

If the idea of strategic hiring makes sense, it鈥檚 complicated by the fact that predicting who will go on to be an excellent teacher is a relatively imprecise science.

Researchers have studied a variety of teacher characteristics for their effects on achievement, but most of those characteristics have fairly weak correlation to student performance.

One 2009 by a team of teacher-quality scholars found that New York City teachers鈥� performance on the Haberman Star Teacher Pre-Screener, a commercial instrument, and on a test of math pedagogical content knowledge, appeared modestly correlated to student outcomes. It also found that teachers with a specific set of cognitive or noncognitive skills appeared to be somewhat more effective, on average, than their peers.

Research has yet to identify any one 鈥渟ilver bullet鈥� feature that strongly predicts which teachers will go on to do well or poorly, noted Jonah Rockoff, an associate professor of business at Columbia University and one of the authors of the 2009 study.

Nevertheless, Mr. Rockoff argues that it makes sense to use the measures that are available, primarily because the tools are a relatively inexpensive way to improve overall quality, compared to mechanisms such as teacher dismissals.

鈥淚f you have a set of indicators that are easy to administer, they can give you a small edge about who to put at the front of the line,鈥� Mr. Rockoff said. 鈥淥nce the teacher is in the system, to get them to do anything is costly.鈥�

The basic idea reflects hiring practices used by popular training programs, such as Teach For America. By analyzing student-achievement information from its teachers鈥� classrooms, the New York City-based organization has refined its selection process to identify attributes associated with its most successful teachers. At the top of the list: prior success as leaders and high achievement in previous academic or work experiences.

The New York City-based New Teacher Project, another alternative teacher program, has a similar system, drawing on interviews, writing samples, a short model-teaching segment, and a group discussion.

鈥淲e know we鈥檙e not going to figure it all out through selection, but we continue to focus on how we can increase the odds of the folks we鈥檙e bringing in being highly effective,鈥� said Gregory L. Vincent, the group鈥檚 partner for program support and development.

An emerging body of empirical also suggests that observations of teachers do correlate with student achievement, Mr. Rockoff noted, so auditions that give a sense of a teacher鈥檚 skills, such as those being tested in the District of Columbia, appear to be a promising addition to the mix.

Auditions of that type appear to be comparatively rare in current district practices. Nationally representative data on teacher-selection methods are hard to come by, but what information exists suggests that fewer than a third of new hires are observed teaching during the hiring process, Mr. Rockoff said.

The District of Columbia鈥檚 30-minute taped teaching auditions are the capstone of a four-part hiring process. They are paired with teachers鈥� scores on several other measures, including an 鈥渆rror analysis鈥� exercise meant to highlight pedagogical content knowledge. (See chart.)

A Wider Net

For school districts, the move toward strategic hiring extends beyond collecting better information for principals. It also means ensuring a pool flush with applicants year round鈥攕omething that has required a greater cultivation of talent pipelines.

Leaders in Denver have worked to increase the number of pipelines to teaching, which now include traditional education programs, a district-sponsored teacher 鈥渞esidency鈥� program in which teacher-candidates have a yearlong apprenticeship before entering an urban school, and alternative routes through the Denver Teaching Fellows program and TFA.

鈥淏y broadening our pool, we provided a community of exchange for best practices in teacher preparation, beyond simply providing a pool of talent for schools to draw from,鈥� Ms. Spalten said.

Both Denver and Tulsa have moved up their teacher-hiring timelines earlier in the year to recruit promising applicants early and to reduce the number of positions left unfilled before school starts.

In Tulsa, officials have tried to clear out some of the administrative hurdles facing principals by creating four 鈥淗R partner鈥� positions directly responsible for meeting school administrators鈥� needs, such as an unexpected vacancy.

鈥淚t used to take six to eight weeks to fill a vacancy because it took so long for a principal to articulate the need through the bureaucracy,鈥� said Roberta Cole Ellis, the chief human-capital officer for the 41,000-student Tulsa school system.

Under the new system, replacement candidates are a phone call away, and the partners also attend associate superintendents鈥� meetings so they can anticipate upcoming needs.

The changes in Tulsa have spread beyond the central office. For example, a major supplier of teachers to the district, Oklahoma State University, will begin using the same teacher-disposition instrument as an entry bar to a new urban-teaching program to debut this fall鈥攁 change that will bring it into alignment with the district鈥檚 hiring process.

And in Pittsburgh, officials are casting a wider net by sending 鈥渞ecruitment ambassadors鈥� to education schools at the top of national rankings. The district has had good results with science teachers prepared at a local university, so it plans to increase its recruitment efforts at that campus too, said Jessica M. Brazier, the recruitment coordinator for the district.

Challenges Remain

One of the pieces most districts still hope to improve is making sure that their hiring systems continue to improve over time by using student-achievement data in the mold of TFA to isolate parts of the process that most seem to indicate classroom success.

Many of the districts have plans to connect their hiring systems to their teacher-evaluation systems, but those are largely still under development. Still other districts have adopted pieces such as the prescreening instruments, but are not tracking to see how well the results correlate with outcomes.

鈥淧eople are buying Haberman and Gallup [TeacherInsight] without the capacity to externally validate the measures,鈥� Mr. Rockoff said, referring to those screening instruments.

Finally, he said, the systems are dependent on mutual trust between principals and the central office鈥攏ot always an easy task.

鈥淚t takes leadership on the part of a central administration and buy-in from the principals to respect those choices,鈥� Mr. Rockoff, the Columbia University professor. 鈥淭he principal has to trust the district that they鈥檙e going to send a good pool of candidates based on a bunch of information that鈥檚 reliable.鈥�

Ms. Spalten, in Denver, also highlighted that tension.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really geared at providing information and resources to schools,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e heard back from schools saying, 鈥榃e don鈥檛 want an extremely culled-through list of candidates we鈥檙e allowed to interview; we want to see the complete list.鈥� 鈥�

Mr. Lindy of the District of Columbia schools said that principals provided some of the most important feedback for the development of the new hiring criteria, one possible solution.

Finally, there is the teacher labor market to consider: The ability to be choosy about candidates works only when there is a surfeit of talent looking to enter the profession.

鈥淵ou can be very selective right now in who you鈥檙e picking in some of these urban districts,鈥� concluded Ms. Arons, the consultant, 鈥渂ut that鈥檚 certainly not the case in all areas.鈥�