More than a decade ago, Congress ordered states to figure out a way to distribute qualified teachers fairly, so low-income and minority children weren’t so often stuck with inexperienced and unlicensed educators.
As it turns out, they’ve done a lousy job.
New data out from the Education Department find sizable — and in some states, huge — disparities in children’s access to fully qualified and experienced teachers.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, more than 20 percent of teachers are unlicensed in the schools with the largest concentration of minority students. In largely white schools, just 0.2 percent of teachers lack a license, the data show.
Or consider Louisiana: Nearly 20 percent of classes in the most impoverished schools are taught by teachers who don’t meet the federal definition of “highly qualified” — which generally means they lack a bachelor’s degree, are unlicensed or don’t have a strong academic background in the subject they’re teaching. In the wealthier schools, fewer than 8 percent of classes are led by a teacher who’s not highly qualified.
In New York, students in high-poverty schools are nearly three times more likely to have a rookie teacher and 22 times more likely to have an unlicensed teacher than their peers in more affluent schools.
“The inequitable distribution of teachers teaching low-income students is staggering, sobering and getting worse,” said Arnold Fege, president of Public Advocacy for Kids, an education policy group.
President Barack Obama has sought to push the issue; earlier this year, he proposed $300 million in competitive grants to spur states to develop new strategies for getting high-quality teachers in front of needy kids.
But Congress scrapped the program in the recent budget agreement. And Republicans have warned that they’ll fight any “heavy-handed approach to federal enforcement” that subverts local autonomy.
The issue is sure to spark debate when Congress takes up reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. That law, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001, set out the first requirements for equitable distribution of teachers.
The inequities laid bare in the state profiles could also fuel more lawsuits akin to the landmark Vergara case in California, which overturned the state’s teacher tenure law.
In that case, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled that tenure and related job protections shielded grossly incompetent educators — who too often ended up assigned to teach the neediest students in the most impoverished schools.
Being continually saddled with weak teachers deprived students from low-income families of their constitutional right to an equal education, the judge ruled. “Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” Treu wrote.
Several families have filed a lawsuit making similar claims in New York, and others may well follow, especially in states where the federal data show stark inequities, analysts said.
“Post-Vergara, states ought to be more aware that they can be challenged in court using some of these fact patterns,” said Tim Daly, president of TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project), a nonprofit focused on ensuring an equitable distribution of teachers.
But Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said she hoped states and the federal government would use the data “as a tool to inform and build, not as a hammer to sanction.” In addition to focusing on teacher qualifications, she said, policymakers must ensure that minority students and students from low-income families have access to other vital resources, including a rich curriculum, small class sizes and up-to-date technology.
Other analysts noted that the statistics about teacher experience and certification say nothing about effectiveness, so it’s hard to draw conclusions about whether poor and minority kids are truly receiving an inferior classroom experience.
“These profiles are a conversation starter, at best,” said Anne Hyslop, a senior policy analyst with Bellwether Education Partners.
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