The Education Trust, a nonprofit group working to close the achievement gap, published a study yesterday that reports that 9 years after a federal law was passed to ensure that low-income students were being assigned to strong teachers, students in high-poverty schools are still disproportionately taught by out-of-field and inexperienced teachers. According to the report, Not Prepared for Class, “Staffing schools in a way that ensures that all kids have access to strong teachers requires states and school districts to mount strategies that address multiple problems at once.”
The study’s recommendation’s include:
- Collect data on teacher quality and equality, and get it out in public.
- Adopt a policy prohibiting disproportionate assignment of high-quality or low-quality teachers.
- Use the state’s authority to intervene in low-performing schools.
- Provide big incentives for strong teachers to stay in or move to high-poverty and high-minority schools.
- Measure and hold accountable teacher preparation programs for producing high-quality teachers for high poverty and high-minority schools.
- Develop rigorous evaluation systems to measure teacher effectiveness.
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