The Mentor Selection Tool: Empowering Districts to Make Data-Driven Student Teacher Placements

The existing evidence-based innovation is a web-based portal for managing critical aspects of the student teacher placement process. It was designed by researchers at the Center for Education Data & Research at the University of Washington, including Dr. Goldhaber and Dr. Grout, in collaboration with Spokane Public Schools. A vital component of the innovation is that it uses a performance-based selection process for mentors and facilitates matching student teachers to high-quality mentors based on requirements and needs from teacher education programs. The Mentor Select Tool (MST) will be a new education technology product designed for administrator use. It will integrate key elements from the Spokane portal into an already established product, Torace. Created by The Calsoyas Group, LLC, Torace is an online platform that currently facilitates mentor matching based on self-reported data only. The MST will leverage Torace’s existing, scalable, single-tenent, mentoring logistics platform to create a powerful tool to increase efficiency and improve outcomes of student teaching. Administrators will use the MST to make decisions backed by research including: determining mentor eligibility based on performance and principal assessment of potential mentors and mentor matching based on recommendations grounded in mentor quality and teacher education program requests for placements.