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December 1, 2002
Vol. 60
No. 4

Toward a Fair Distribution of Teacher Talent

If we insist on quality teachers for every student, we can dramatically improve the achievement of poor and minority students and substantially narrow the achievement gap.

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My colleagues at the Education Trust and I spend a lot of time in classrooms. During the past 10 years, we have spent thousands of hours working with teachers around the country.
In that work, we sometimes see absolutely wonderful teaching—in all kinds of schools. In fact, even the lowest-performing schools always have at least some terrific teachers. But we often see dreadful teaching—especially in the highest-poverty schools.
National data for the United States bear out what we've observed directly: Our most disadvantaged students often have the worst teachers. Consider the following.
Certification. Poor and minority students are considerably more likely than other students to have uncertified teachers. In high-poverty secondary schools, approximately 30 percent of core academic courses are taught by teachers who lack certification to teach those courses, compared with just 17 percent in low-poverty secondary schools. The same differences hold when looking at schools by race: About 28 percent of core academic teachers in high-minority schools lack appropriate certification, compared with 19 percent in low-minority schools (Ingersoll, 2002).
Experience. Students who attend high-poverty schools are about twice as likely as other students, 20 percent vs. 11 percent, to serve as training fodder for inexperienced teachers (those with three or fewer years of experience). The same disparity shows up when comparing the proportion of inexperienced teachers in high-minority schools (21 percent) with those in other schools (10 percent) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000).
Subject-matter expertise. In every subject, students in high-poverty high schools are more likely to be taught by teachers who don't have a degree in the subject they teach. In low-poverty schools, about 1 in 5 secondary courses in the core academic subjects are taught by teachers with neither a major nor a minor in the field; in high-poverty schools, the ratio is 1 in 3 courses. The same differences hold for race: About 22 percent of the courses in low-minority schools are taught by teachers without a major or minor in the subject, compared with 30 percent of the courses in high-minority schools—including about 35 percent in schools that are more than 90 percent African American (Ingersoll, 2002).
Exam performance. Minority and poor students are also more likely to have teachers who performed poorly on exams of all sorts, including college admissions tests and teacher licensure tests (Kain & Singleton, 1996).
Classroom effectiveness. Data on actual teacher effectiveness in promoting student learning show the same distribution. In Tennessee, for example, African American students are about twice as likely as white students to be assigned to that state's least effective teachers, and considerably less likely than white students to be assigned to the most effective teachers (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).

How Did This Happen?

  • Differences between the resources that high- and low-poverty school districts have to purchase teacher talent (as well as differences in the sophistication of their personnel operations).
  • Differences within school districts that occur as a result of seniority-related transfer policies and practices.
  • Differences within schools that occur when better-educated and more-experienced teachers reward themselves with the students who arguably least need their help.
  • A culture within our profession whereby teachers' status flows not from their own effectiveness, but rather from the elite backgrounds of the students they teach.
Although the causes vary, the effects are consistent. All across the United States, the students who most need excellent teachers are, instead, typically taught by the weakest teachers.

Does It Make Any Difference?

For many years, educators believed that what students learned was largely determined by their family backgrounds. Fueled by such research as the 1966 Coleman report, they felt that no matter what schools did, children from low-income families with low levels of parental education wouldn't learn very much, whereas those from more affluent and better-educated families would excel.
More recent research has turned these understandings upside down. It turns out that what schools do makes a huge difference in whether students learn. And what matters most is good teaching. Indeed, a paper prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research put it this way:The results show large differences among schools in their impact on student achievement. These differences are centered on the differential impact of teachers, rather than on the overall school organization, leadership, or even financial condition. (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 1998, p. 3)
Research by Sanders and Rivers (1996) supports the impact of teachers on students. They found that low-achieving students gained about 14 points each year on the state test when taught by the least effective teachers but gained more than 53 points when taught by the most effective teachers. Teachers made a difference for middle- and high-achieving students, as well.
What's more, these teacher effects appear to be cumulative. For example, Tennessee students who had three highly effective teachers in a row scored more than 50 percentile points above their counterparts who had three ineffective teachers in a row, even when the students initially had similar scores (Sanders & Rivers, 1996). An analysis in Dallas found essentially the same pattern (Jordan, Mendro, & Weerasinghe, 1997). As in the case of annual impact, the cumulative impact of teacher quality is biggest for initially low-achieving students (Rivers, 1999).
In other words, students with comparable initial achievement levels have “vastly different academic outcomes as a result of the sequence of teachers to which they are assigned” (Sanders & Rivers, 1996, p. 9). Differences of this magnitude are stunning. They can represent the difference between placement in the gifted track and a “remedial” label—the difference between entry into a selective college and a lifetime working at McDonald's.
If we acknowledge the unfair distribution of talented teachers and the pivotal role that teacher quality plays in learning, how can we be surprised that poor and minority students continue to lag behind? National measures of student achievement clearly demonstrate the devastating results of inequities in teacher quality.
At the 4th grade level, approximately two-thirds of African American and Latino youngsters perform below the basic level on the National Assessment of Education Progress in reading, compared with only 28 percent of white students. In mathematics, more than 53 percent of Latino students and 62 percent of African American students perform below basic; for white students, the number below basic is about 22 perent.
By 8th grade, most African American and Latino students have mastered those very basic skills, but white students have gone on to master higher-level skills. By the conclusion of high school, African American and Latino students have skills—in both reading and mathematics—that are virtually identical to those of white students at the end of middle school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000).

What Can We Do?

If we had the will to insist on both high standards and quality teachers for all students, the achievement gap that we have long blamed on students and their families could be dramatically reduced. And if we were willing to go even further and assign our strongest teachers where they are most needed, there is every reason to believe that we could eliminate the gap entirely.
  • A requirement that states collect and distribute information on the number and distribution of less-than-fully-qualified teachers and submit to the U.S. Department of Education a plan to ensure that poor and minority children are not taught by a disproportionately large share of such teachers.
  • A “Parent Right to Know” requirement that schools notify parents in writing when their children are taught by unqualified teachers.
  • Provisions that encourage states and districts to use the teacher quality allocations in both Title I and Title II to provide incentives and professional development for teachers in high-poverty schools.
The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have now gone on record as supporting bonuses or salary increases for teachers in hard-to-staff schools (Prince, 2002b). And state- and district-level administrators are now pummeling their associations for advice on how to attack inequitable distribution. Indeed, the American Association of School Administrators has prepared and made available to its members two of the best and most thorough collections of suggestions (Prince, 2002a, 2002b). Here are a few of the action possibilities from which educators can draw in developing a comprehensive plan.
Salary increases or bonuses. Many districts and states provide salary increases or bonuses to fully qualified new teachers and especially talented veterans willing to teach in high-poverty or low-performing schools.
Special financial awards for teachers with board certification or other advanced certificates. Although many states and districts provide bonuses for all teachers with National Board Certification, some make those considerably more generous if the teacher will teach in a hard-to-staff school and mentor other teachers.
Rich and intensive professional development. A big part of our distribution problem would be solved if high-poverty schools just improved—and held on to—the teachers they have. Districts and schools could help immeasurably by shifting professional development resources out of the mind-numbing, “drive-by” workshops they currently offer into more intensive, content-rich professional development—and by putting high-poverty schools at the head of the line instead of always at the end.
Subsidized master's degree programs. The Charlotte, North Carolina, School District is one of several offering subsidized master's programs for teachers who teach in hard-to-staff schools. According to district officials, this is the most powerful of the various incentives they offer.
Housing assistance. Help with securing and paying for housing is an increasingly popular incentive at the district and state level. Mississippi now provides such support to teachers willing to teach in its remote rural schools.
Increased support services for students and reduced student loads for teachers.
Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers leave high-poverty schools not because they don't like their students but because they feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the students' problems. By reducing class size or student load and providing other professionals in the school to help with nonacademic problems, education leaders can help teachers feel more effective and encourage them to stay instead of fleeing to “easier” conditions.
Strong and supportive school leaders. Teachers unions have for years argued that schools in even the poorest communities are rarely hard to staff when they have experienced, consistent, and supportive school leaders at the helm. Indeed, leaders in Charlotte report that their package of incentives has been marvelously effective in recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers in schools with effective principals, but completely ineffective in schools where the district has failed to put such principals in place.
These concrete action possibilities can help address the imbalance in teacher talent that we have allowed to dominate the educational landscape of the United States. I am convinced, however, that all the incentives in the world won't make a difference unless we also take on a more fundamental problem: the need to restore honor to those who are doing our most crucial work.

Restoring Honor

When I think about the role that honor plays in all this, my mind goes back to a conversation I had more than 10 years ago with Sabra Besley, at that time a principal in a high-poverty high school in southern California. We were talking about how Sabra had landed in that particular school. She told me that her decision was made, forever, during her student teaching experience.
Sabra spent her first week teaching her heart out in a wealthy school in Palm Springs. By Friday, the only response that she had prompted from her distracted students was a single question: “Mrs. Besley,” asked one girl, “where'd ya get those shoes?”
The following week, a rather dispirited Sabra was assigned to a school on the far side of the county, where she accompanied the teacher on a series of evening home visits. The first visit was to a Hispanic family that lived in an abandoned boxcar. When the two teachers arrived, the family stopped everything and split their meager dinner into two extra portions, honoring their guests with what little they had. “My decision was made that night,” Sabra said.
What she realized, of course, is what we too often forget: There is honor in the boxcar.
I know, as you do, that the boxcars are now often dangerous tenements, where moms have to shield their kids from ricocheting bullets. And I know, as you do, that simply acknowledging the honor in such work, without backing it up with concrete supports, is wrong.
We must provide those supports. But we must also change the dialogue. There is honor in the boxcar, in the barrio, and in the poorest classroom. Together, leaders in the profession and in the community must never allow anyone to forget that simple fact.
References

Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M., Weinfeld, F. D., & York, R. L. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., & Rivkin, S. G. (1998). Teachers, schools, and academic achievement. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ingersoll, R. M. (2002). Special analysis of SASS data prepared for the Education Trust.

Jordan, H. R., Mendro, R. L., & Weerasinghee, D. (1997). Teacher effects on longitudinal student achievement. Dallas, TX: Dallas Independent School District.

Kain, J. F., & Singleton, K. (1996, May/June). Equality of educational opportunity revisited. New England Economic Review, 111–114.

National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). National Assessment of Educational Progress: The nation's report card [Online]. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard

National Center for Education Statistics. (2000). Monitoring quality: An indicators report. Washington, DC: Author.

Prince, C. (2002a). The challenge of attracting good teachers and principals to struggling schools. Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators.

Prince, C. (2002b). Higher pay in hard-to-staff schools: The case for financial incentives. Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators.

Rivers, J. (1999). The impact of teacher effect on student math competency achievement. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee.

Sanders, W. L., & Rivers, J. C. (1996). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee. Available: www.mdk12.org/practices/ensure/tva/tva_2.html

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