Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students: Executive Summary. NCEE 2014-4002
Author: Isenberg, Eric
Date: 2013-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Disadvantaged,Instructional Effectiveness,Access to Education,Teacher Effectiveness,Achievement Gains,School Districts,Outcome Measures,School District Size,Student Experience,Achievement Gap,Teacher Evaluation,Educational Discrimination,Equal Education

This report describes disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching in grades 4 through 8 in 29 diverse school districts, using value-added analysis to measure effective teaching. Recent federal initiatives emphasize measuring teacher effectiveness and ensuring that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teachers. These include Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the flexibility policy for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allows states to waive a number of provisions in exchange for a commitment to key reform principles (U.S. Department of Education 2009, 2012a). A growing body of research uses value-added analysis to measure teacher effectiveness and examine the extent to which disadvantaged students have access to effective teachers.Value added measures a teacher's contribution to student learning, accounting for a student's previous achievement level and background characteristics. Studies consistently find considerable variation in teacher effectiveness based on value-added measures (Nye et al. 2004; Rockoff 2004; Rivkin et al. 2005; Kane et al. 2006; Aaronson et al. 2007; Koedel and Betts 2009). In addition, there is evidence of better long-run outcomes for students taught by more effective teachers as measured by value added, including lower rates of teen pregnancy, increased likelihood of college attendance, and higher wages (Chetty et al. 2011). Given the importance of teachers in improving student achievement and concerns about unequal access to effective teachers (Jerald et al. 2009; Brown and Haycock 2011), more evidence on access to effective teaching is needed. This report focuses on access to effective teaching in 29 school districts over the 2008-2009 to 2010-2011 school years. The main findings are: (1) On average, disadvantaged students had less access to effective teaching in the 29 study districts in grades 4 through 8; (2) Access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students did not change over time in the study districts; (3) Disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching varied across school districts; and (4) Unequal access to effective teaching was most related to the school assignment of teachers and students rather than to the way that teachers were assigned to students within schools. The study's primary research questions are: (1) To what extent do disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teaching within school districts, and how does this change over time?; and (2) Is access to effective teaching related to different patterns of teacher hiring, retention, and mobility for high- and low-poverty schools? This study builds on the current evidence base in three ways. First, it documents access to effective teaching in districts that are diverse in terms of geography and size, with 29 districts in 16 states and all 4 U.S. Census regions. Second, it examines whether access to effective teaching changes over time. The report also measures access to effective teaching over a three-year period, in addition to the extent of inequities between as well as within schools. (Contains 1 table, 8 figures, and 1 footnote.) [This report was prepared for the Institute of Education Sciences under Contract No. ED-IES-10-C-0065.]