Resources

A first draft of this workbook was codeveloped by National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center) staff and an outside researcher (Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., University of Washington). TQ Center staff then substantially updated the workbook for its wider dissemination to participants at a national workshop. Regional center staff may find this workbook useful in supporting in-depth conversations with state education agency personnel.  

This national webcast, which was facilitated by Candace Crawford, a senior policy associate at The Education Trust, brought together experts and practitioners to discuss existing research and strategies that promote equitable access to excellent teachers. The presenters included Judy Wurtzel, advisor to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education; Cortney Rowland, a senior policy associate at the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center); and Charles Clotfelter, Ph.D., a professor of public policy, economics, and law at Duke University.

Codeveloped by National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality staff and an outside researcher (Jennifer Imazeki, Ph.D., San Diego State University), this brief summarizes existing literature on issues of equity. It goes beyond describing the problem and offers solutions (including cost-effectiveness) that states might consider adopting.

This PowerPoint presentation by National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality Director Sabrina Laine, Ph.D., for the Georgia Equity Plan Meeting contains research- and expert-based recommendations for achieving equity. Feel free to reproduce the slides for your work with other states.

This study examined population data on teachers and schools in Illinois to determine changes in the level of teacher qualifications across schools from 2001 to 2006. Researchers found that Chicago schools, especially those serving the highest percentages of students from low-income and minority families, experienced improvements in teacher qualifications; however, the results were more mixed in other Illinois districts.

Using a rich data set from North Carolina, the authors found that black seventh graders are far more likely to face a novice teacher in mathematics and English than are their white counterparts (the differences are about 54 percent in mathematics and 38 percent in English for the state as a whole). This inequitable access to experienced teachers occurs within districts, more so than between them.

This report demonstrates steps that districts can take and the challenges they face in assessing teacher effectiveness as a first step toward equitable access to great teachers. The report has three main areas of focus: identifying effective teachers, using information about teacher effectiveness in human resource policies, and using information about teacher effectiveness to ensure equity. Drawing on experiences from five districts, it provides examples for state and district policymakers considering action. 

Under Ohio’s Teacher Equity Plan, Ohio districts are required to collect and publicly report the following types of data:

• The percentage of highly qualified teachers in each content area
• The percentage of highly qualified teachers in schools not meeting adequate yearly progress
• Descriptions of teacher turnover and mobility 

This resource developed by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education illustrates how data from state longitudinal data systems could be combined with data collected by educator preparation programs to provide a rich source of information for program evaluation and improvement and district hiring decisions. 

Education Week reported the following: Although the data available online are on individual schools and districts and are not aggregated by state, the department’s own crunching of the numbers offered a glimpse of the extent of some educational inequities at the national level. Among the findings: “At schools where the majority of students were African-American, teachers were twice as likely to have only one or two years of experience compared with schools within the same district that had a majority-white student body.”