Education Week - April 3, 2013 - 6

EDUCATION WEEK

APRIL 3, 2013

www.edweek.org

Gaps Found in Access to Qualified Math Teachers
Struggling students
face longest odds
By Sarah D. Sparks
New Orleans

In many schools in the United
States, students struggling the
most in mathematics at the start
of high school have the worst odds
of getting a qualified teacher in
the subject, new research finds.
Succeeding in freshman-level
mathematics is critical for students to stay on track to high
school graduation, with students
who make poor grades in math in
8th and 9th grades more likely to
leave school entirely.
Yet two new studies presented at
the Association for Education Finance and Policy meeting here last
month suggest that students who
enter high school performing below
average in math have a lower
chance of getting a teacher who is
well-qualified to teach math than
do higher-achieving students. The
problem, the research concludes,
exacerbates gaps in teacher access
between schools with different performance and wealth levels.
In one study, Cara Jackson, a research assistant at the University
of Maryland College Park, analyzed the math coursetaking and
achievement of 12,900 9th graders
at 730 high schools nationwide
who were linked with their high

school math teachers as part of
the federal High School Longitudinal Study of 2009.
Ms. Jackson calculated the odds
of different students’ learning
math in 9th grade from a “qualified” teacher, defined as one who:
had earned at least a bachelor’s
degree, with seven or more different courses taken in mathematics;
was certified by the state to teach
high school math; and had been
teaching at least five years.

Assignment Priorities
Ms. Jackson found big differences in how high- and low-performing schools allocate teachers.
“Within schools, a student’s access
to qualified teachers wasn’t related
to gender or race or socioeconomic
status, or whether the student is an
English-language learner,” she said.
“It is related to whether the student
is enrolled in special education or a
low-level math class.”
Ms. Jackson found that in schools
considered high-performing on the
basis of state math and language
arts test scores, students in special
education and those enrolled in
low-level math classes are slightly
more likely to get a qualified teacher
than students in higher-level math
classes. By contrast, in average and
low-performing schools, it is the
reverse. In low-achieving schools,
special education students and
those in low-level math classes
are a third less likely to have a

qualified math teacher than their
higher-achieving peers.
In 9th grade, Ms. Jackson found,
high-performing math students in
average or low-performing schools
had about 10 percent “higher odds
of getting a qualified math teacher,
even after controlling for the level
of math they are taking,” she said.
“We might be seeing optimal
matching here. If you have limited resources, you might put your
teachers with the strongest content
knowledge with the students in the
highest-level math classes,” Ms.
Jackson said, adding, “or it might
just be a way to reward your best
teachers. But that certainly makes
it harder for low-achieving students
to catch up to their peers.”
The opposite may be true in highachieving schools, with administrators directing their best teachers
to serve the most struggling students, but Ms. Jackson said it isn’t
clear whether that is because those
schools have more qualified math
teachers or simply make assignments differently.
Attending a wealthier or higherperforming school can boost a
freshman’s odds of getting a qualified teacher, too.
In the wealthiest fifth of schools,
according to Ms. Jackson’s analysis, 54 percent of 9th grade students had access to qualified math
teachers, while only 46 percent of
students in the poorest 20 percent
of schools did. For every standard
deviation decrease in a school’s pov-

erty level, its students are nearly
50 percent less likely to get a qualified math teacher.

School Differences
Similarly, in a separate report,
researchers from the American
Institutes of Research’s Center
for Analysis of Longitudinal Data
in Education Research, or calder,
probed the differences in the value,
as measured by assessment results,
that teachers added at high-poverty
and wealthy schools in Florida and
North Carolina from 2000 to 2005.
At schools with more than 70
percent of their students in poverty, the researchers found, teachers were, on average, less effective
than those at schools with less
concentrated poverty. Specifically,
while highly effective teachers performed at about the same level in
both high- and low-poverty schools,
there was a much greater range
of effectiveness among lower-performing teachers in high-poverty
schools than in richer ones. Teachers in high-poverty schools were
also generally less likely to have a
graduate degree, or to be certified
by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
“These differences are apparent
even among new teachers,” said
Philip M. Gleason, a senior fellow
with Mathematica Policy Research
who was not associated with either study. “This isn’t just a story
of high-poverty schools having lots

of turnover so more students have
inexperienced teachers; that isn’t
explaining what they are finding.”
Rather, teachers at low-income
schools did not improve professionally over their years of experience as
much as their colleagues at wealthier schools, according to study coauthor Zeyu Xu, a calder senior research associate. “Why is the bottom
of the teacher distribution lower in
high-poverty schools?” Mr. Xu said.
“It could be teachers are learning
less in high-poverty schools, or that
better teachers are likely to move
out of high-poverty schools.”
At the same time, Ms. Jackson’s
research also found that, among
schools with lower overall student
achievement, those with good student behavior and principals with
high expectations were more likely
to give students of all stripes access
to qualified teachers in math. In
higher-achieving schools, student
behavior was not linked to teacher
availability.
“This idea that there seems to be
a stronger relationship between
working conditions and access
to qualified teachers in schools
where overall academic achievement starts out low is pretty interesting,” Mr. Gleason said.
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link
to “Student Access to
Qualified High School
Mathematics Teachers: A Multilevel
Analysis,” at www.edweek.org/links.

THE COUNCIL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION
PRESENTS

THE NATIONAL STANDARDS
FOR FINANCIAL LITERACY
HELPING YOU BUILD A FRAMEWORK TO TEACH
FINANCIAL LITERACY IN YOUR SCHOOL

The National Standards for Financial Literacy raise the bar for education.
The six areas of knowledge that are fundamental to personal
ﬁnance for students:
-

Earning Income
Buying Goods and Services
Using Credit
Saving
Financial Investing
Protecting and Insuring

Each standard emphasizes decision-making skills. Through the
standards, students learn how their personal situations and
preferences aﬀect their ﬁnancial decision making, while
beginning to understand the trade-oﬀs inherent in every choice
they make.
In the end, more informed choices lead to better choices.

Learn more and download your free copy of the standards at

www.councilforeconed.org/standards

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/links http://www.councilforeconed.org/standards http://www.councilforeconed.org/standards

Education Week - April 3, 2013

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