Teacher quality is a crucial factor in students’ educational success, especially for those from traditionally underserved communities. But a lack of access to high-quality teachers contributes to the persistent racial and socioeconomic inequities that plague our schools.
Understanding what factors into teacher quality is vital to closing achievement gaps. Here are some of the most important considerations:
Smaller Class Sizes
You’ve probably heard of schools boasting that they offer small class sizes or a low student-teacher ratio. It’s widely assumed that such programs lead to higher test scores, college attendance rates and other outcomes for students. But what does the research actually show? The Hechinger Report has been investigating class size claims for years and the evidence is mixed.
Many parents and educators have long been pushing for smaller classes, arguing that the ability to provide more individualized attention to students is critical to their learning. But while there is some evidence that smaller classes can help boost performance, there are other factors at play that determine whether a class size policy is effective.
First, a well-designed class size program requires schools to recruit and hire more teachers, which is not always easy in New York City’s tight labor market. This is especially true for high-poverty schools where many teachers are not certified and often come from the ranks of laid-off or resigned teachers. And a poorly designed or implemented program may not make any difference, especially when it relies on throwing inexperienced teachers into the mix to make up for a staffing shortage.
New York City’s plan to reduce class sizes will require it to start with schools that have the highest concentrations of poverty and gradually work its way across the city. The education department says it will seek feedback from schools and community groups to ensure the plan is based on what works best. But some school leaders and parents say the department is ignoring their concerns by inviting them to join a study group but not committing to implement any changes.
A key question for city officials is how to pay for the additional teachers and classroom space needed to meet state requirements. With the city facing a shortage of licensed teachers and a job market where salaries for new educators are at record highs, some argue it’s not realistic to expect schools to bear that burden alone.
On Thursday, Schools Chancellor David Banks told reporters that the city would work with the city teachers’ union and state lawmakers to develop a plan that can be funded. He also pointed to a sharp drop in enrollment during the pandemic as helping bring class sizes down and said that schools should focus on recruiting more experienced teachers rather than inexperienced ones.
Experienced Teachers
As a founding teacher at The Equity Project Charter School (Teach for America alumnus, New York ’97), Casey Ash has seen firsthand how student outcomes depend on the quality of teachers. “Teachers are the most important school-based factor influencing students’ academic achievement,” he says. “We need the best and the brightest.” And that means paying teachers a competitive salary.
The NEA’s Teacher Quality team works on local, state, and national educator-related policies to support our teachers and improve students’ educational opportunities. The work ranges from developing educator micro-credentials and programs that support professional learning to advocating for policies that encourage teacher recruitment, preparation, licensure, induction, and leadership.
Teachers must be given the time and space to grow their skills and learn from one another. This can be done by making schools collaborative environments where they are able to share teaching strategies and work together on student-related issues. It also can be done by ensuring that the classrooms are large enough to allow for collaboration among teachers working with different age groups and subject areas.
In addition, the need for experienced teachers must be addressed by increasing starting salaries to match what college graduates are earning in other professions. Likewise, policies that rely heavily on standardized test scores to determine teacher and principal effectiveness should be reexamined, as they may be deterring talented people from entering the profession.
The problem is not limited to the city, either: It’s a nationwide issue resulting from the poor quality of teacher preparation at higher education institutions and the lack of oversight by state departments of education. Teachers like Sarah Dela Cruz—who joined TEP in 2021 after completing TFA’s corps program—are not being prepared for their jobs by the institutions they are graduating from, and the state agencies that oversee these institutions have been complicit in allowing this to happen.
A lack of experienced teachers is especially problematic in disadvantaged communities. Research suggests that teacher quality is the largest single determinant of student achievement, while school structure and resources play a much smaller role. Specifically, the research of Rivkin and Hanushek finds that student performance is most closely related to teacher quality than any other factor analyzed—and that student achievement gaps are greatest in schools with low-quality teachers.
Diverse Student Populations
Last week, nearly a million students poured into the classrooms of schools across New York City. They are a diverse group, with no single racial majority and three-quarters of them coming from low-income families. Yet only a tiny proportion of NYC schools meet the Department of Education’s standards for racially representative schools, and even fewer are socioeconomically balanced.
The problem starts long before the first bell rings, when teacher selection decisions are made. Students who are assigned to poor-quality teachers early in their careers can experience persistent underachievement, as studies have shown that teaching quality is far more important than student demographics in determining achievement. Those students are also more likely to be assigned to the same teachers over time, compounding the effects of inequitable distributions of high-quality teachers.
Research suggests that a range of factors contribute to this uneven distribution of teacher quality, including poor working conditions, inadequate training, and unreimbursed expenses. But there is evidence that a key factor is the underrepresentation of teachers of color in schools with high concentrations of low-income and minority students. Specifically, national data show that African American and Latino teachers are less likely to teach in schools with high numbers of low-income and minority students, and they are more likely to leave the profession after five years.
In addition, many aspiring teachers of color struggle to pass state certification exams that disproportionately exclude them from the field despite little evidence that these tests accurately predict their effectiveness in the classroom. These hurdles, combined with barriers like low pay and lengthy pre-service preparation, keep teachers of color from entering the field and discourage them from staying in it.
Addressing these challenges will require innovative solutions. These include expanding opportunities for alternative routes into the profession, such as accredited, online competency-based education pioneered at Western Governors University that measures skills and subject knowledge instead of rote memorization and hours spent in the classroom. It can mitigate the high costs and long duration of traditional educator preparation programs, as well as the time and location barriers that make it difficult for people with work or family responsibilities to participate.
Accountability
The recent flap over New York City releasing teacher evaluation scores based on student test results highlights a major issue facing education reform: the lack of accountability for teachers. Teachers are responsible for student learning, yet the public often doesn’t know who is a good teacher and who is not, despite many efforts to increase transparency. A growing number of states and cities are using value-added models to evaluate teachers, a process that uses student test scores to isolate the teachers’ contribution to academic outcomes while controlling for factors such as family income, parent education level, intact family, and language, among others. But such models have big margins of error and, according to researchers at Mathematica Policy Research, can lead to inaccurate ratings—particularly for teachers whose jobs are tied to their performance.
Increasingly, districts and states are using value-added evaluations to decide on teacher tenure, dismissal, and compensation decisions. But in most cases, the systems are designed to measure only a fraction of teachers—teachers whose students take standardized tests in math and English in grades three through eight. In some cases, the results are published and can influence hiring, firing, and reassignment decisions. This can lead to teacher resentment, as well as a bidding war for the best teachers in high-need schools.
As a result, educators who work in the highest-need schools are more likely to be subjected to high levels of stress and lower salaries. These teachers are also more likely to leave the field, creating further gaps in educator quality for students in the most disadvantaged schools.
The state has been largely silent about these inequities, intimidated and bullied by the powerful higher education lobby. But there is one authority in a position to change this: the Education Department, which sets the conditions that colleges of education must meet in order for graduates to qualify for a teaching license in New York state. But the department rarely wields this power, fearing that such action would spark a political firestorm.
It’s time for the Education Department to reclaim its power and make sure that teachers working in the most disadvantaged schools receive the support they need. In doing so, they can help children from a wide variety of backgrounds overcome the myriad barriers that keep them from getting a great education.
