There is nothing more important to our students’ success than strong teachers.
The No Child Left Behind Act aimed to create accurate measures and definitions of a “highly qualified” teacher” States were required to have a plan for how 100% of teachers would be “highly qualified” by the year 2006—07. California, like many other states, failed to meet this deadline.
Particularly concerning is California’s longstanding practice of assigning our least effective teachers to our neediest students. Often, struggling schools have trouble recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers. As they gain experience, teachers typically transfer to schools with fewer low-income students and students of color, taking their higher salaries and expertise with them. This results manifest in glaring disparities in teacher salaries between high- and low-poverty schools, as revealed in our groundbreaking study, Hidden Spending Gaps.
As a result, far too many of California’s low-income students and students of color are taught by novice, inadequately trained, and/or out-of-field teachers.
Recently, the focus on teacher quality—as defined by years of experience and credentials—has shifted to how effective the teacher is in the classroom. Unfortunately, California’s existing teacher evaluation systems do not allow us to measure teacher effectiveness relative to student learning.
To be sure, the task ahead is challenging. But the teacher quality gap is the single largest contributor to the achievement gap. If we’re to make good on our promise to close the achievement gap, it is essential that we become honest about the teacher distribution problem, confront the challenges head-on, and then go about the business of helping schools and districts provide their teachers—novice and veteran—the supports they need to become more effective.
To read the Education Trust-West’s published work on Teachers, please see below.
