Access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students in 29 school districts

Recent federal initiatives emphasize measuring teacher effectiveness and ensuring that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teachers.

This study substantially broadens the existing evidence on access to effective teaching by examining access in 29 geographically dispersed school districts over the 2008-2009 to 2010-2011 school years. The report describes disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching in grades 4 through 8 in English/language arts (ELA) and math, using value-added analysis to measure effective teaching.

On average, disadvantaged students had less access to effective teaching in these districts.

Providing equal access to effective teaching for FRL and non-FRL students would reduce the student achievement gap from 28 percentile points to 26 percentile points in ELA and from 26 percentile points to 24 percentile points in math in a given year.

The main findings:

• On average, disadvantaged students had less access to effective teaching in the 29 study districts in grades 4 through 8. The magnitude of differences in effective teaching for disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged students in a given year was equivalent to a shift of two percentile points in the student achievement gap. Students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) experienced less effective teaching than non-FRL students on average within districts, with statistically significant differences of 0.034 standard deviations of student test scores in English/language arts (ELA) and 0.024 standard deviations in math. Providing equal access to effective teaching for FRL and non-FRL students would reduce the student achievement gap from 28 percentile points to 26 percentile points in ELA and from 26 percentile points to 24 percentile points in math in a given year. In one alternative model specification, however, access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students and nondisadvantaged students was not statistically different.

• Access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students did not change over time in the study districts. Average differences in effective teaching between FRL and non-FRL students did not differ over the three study years for either ELA or math.

• Disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching varied across school districts. Access to effective teaching varied across study districts, ranging from districts with equal access to districts with differences in effective teaching for FRL and non-FRL students as large as 0.106 standard deviations of student test scores in ELA and 0.081 standard deviations of student test scores in math. Disadvantaged students did not have greater access to effective teaching in any school district in the sample.

• 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 average between-school measure of access to effective teaching was significantly greater than the average within-school measure in both the upper elementary and middle school grades. Differences in effective teaching between schools for FRL and non-FRL students were larger than differences within schools by 0.020 standard deviations of student test scores in ELA and by 0.008 standard deviations in math. In other words, unequal access to effective teaching depended more on FRL students attending schools with less effective teaching than on FRL students being assigned to classrooms (within schools) with less effective teaching.