Incorporating Access to More Effective Teachers into Assessments of Educational Resource Equity

To address gaps in achievement between more- and less-affluent students, states and districts need to ensure that high-poverty students and schools have equitable access to educational resources. Traditionally, assessments of resource equity have focused on per-pupil expenditures and more proximal inputs, such as teacher credentials and class size, despite the inconsistent and/or weak relationships between these measures and student performance.

Given the sizable and direct effects of teachers on student achievement, this study explores whether teachers’ value-added scores should be incorporated into assessments of resource equity.

To illustrate how this would work, this study incorporates teacher value added into a case study of resource allocation in the public high schools of Wayne County, North Carolina, which have been the target of a complaint by the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.