STATES FALL SHORT IN PLANS TO ADDRESS MAJOR INEQUALITIES FOR VULNERABLE STUDENTS

Today, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) completed its analyses of what all 50 states intend to do to provide a more equitable education to all students in the state, as they were required to do under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). These analyses highlight strengths and opportunities, ultimately demonstrating that most states are not planning to do enough to prevent low-income students and students of color from being disproportionately taught by ineffective, out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers.

This research presents new analyses for 34 states to supplement the analyses of 17 ESSA state plans released in June 2017. NCTQ developed these analyses, along with an ESSA Educator Equity Best Practices Guide, to support state efforts to provide all students with strong teachers.

“States’ failure to address the ESSA’s educator equity requirement in a meaningful way goes beyond shameful,” said Elizabeth Ross, Managing Director of State Policy at NCTQ. “States had months to develop these plans, and this problem has been going on for decades, so these plans should have done a far better job ensuring that states, districts, and schools do not discriminate against low-income students and students of color in the quality of their teachers.”

These analyses examine four key areas of educator equity under the ESSA -- definitions, data, timelines and interim targets, and strategies.  These elements are critical to help ensure that states are adequately identifying the teachers that are most likely to contribute to student academic achievement and establishing rigorous and transparent systems to help ensure that where such teachers are less likely to teach low-income students and students of color, the state is taking action to ensure that these inequities do not persist.

Across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, more than half of the plans fail to publicly report data regarding the rates at which low-income students and students of color are taught by ineffective teachers as compared to their higher-income, non-minority peers.

Additionally, only seven states included information regarding the timeline under and the rates at which they anticipated eliminating identified educator equity gaps.  Including timelines and interim targets is critically important to help ensure that states and stakeholders are able to hold themselves accountable for monitoring, assessing, and -- ultimately -- eliminating any existing educator equity gaps over time.

Also available is a Best Practices Guide with examples of strong state practices to achieve greater equity in teacher assignment in several key areas. This Guide is designed to support all states in developing and implementing strong plans to meet ESSA’s educator equity requirements.

Below are several promising practices from states plans that are highlighted in the Guide:
 

• Kentucky and New York each calculate and report additional data on student characteristics, including English learners and students with disabilities. 
• Utah gives bonuses to teachers who are considered effective in the highest poverty schools 
• Florida has state legislation that requires districts to assure that students are not assigned to an ineffective teacher for two consecutive years. 
• South Carolina and Ohio calculate and report educator equity gaps using, among other data, student-level data to show equity gaps that exist within schools.  

While these strong practices are worth applauding, the plans as a whole do not adequately address an important issue for traditionally-underrepresented students.

“The opportunities for improvement are, in many cases, significant, and we hope that states will carefully review and consider these analyses, which provide opportunities that states can use to not only strengthen their plans, but also provide greater equity in how teachers are assigned, regardless of students’ socioeconomic status, race, or ethnicity within their state,” said Ross.

These analyses are available here.