Resource and Teaching Gaps Cited by Education Trust and the Children’s Defense Fund

Charles Darwin, as quoted by the Children’s Defense Fund, said:

“If the misery of the poor can be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”

Two recent reports, one from the Children’s Defense Fund and the other from Education Trust, suggest that our education system does not provide a path out of poverty, but instead perpetuates inequality, particularly in the distribution of quality teachers.

The CDF report

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)’s State of America’s Children 2005 reports on some 37 million people living in poverty in the US, including more than 13 million children. The report includes information on child health, welfare, development, and education.

Research indicates that schools with high percentages of limited-English proficient, low-income, and minority students are more likely to have inexperienced teachers, high teacher turnover, larger classes, and suffer from overcrowding, but the report’s conclusions are even more startling. In 31 of 49 states, districts with high minority populations received fewer per pupil dollars than districts with lower minority populations. The funding “gap” between high and low poverty districts nationwide has actually grown since 1997, from $1,208 to $1,348 in 2002 – which translates into a difference of $33,700 per classroom of 25 students. Similarly, the report finds evidence that the effects of high stakes testing, automatic grade retention, school discipline, and criminalization of school misbehavior have all fallen disproportionately on poor and minority children.

The Education Trust report

The Education Trust (Ed Trust) report suggests that students from disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to achieve not only because they enter school behind, but also because they are often in a classroom lacking a critical component of a successful education: a high quality teacher.

Students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are more likely to be in a class taught by an out-of-field teacher (a teacher lacking even a college minor in the subject). In low-poverty high schools one in five core academic classes is taught by an out-of-field teacher, but in high-poverty schools, this number jumps to more than one in three classes. In middle schools, the situation is much worse: a full 70 percent of math classes in high-poverty and high-minority schools are taught by a teacher that does not even have a college minor in math.

The report also presents case studies of three Midwestern states (Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and three large urban districts (Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee). Without exception, high-poverty and high-minority schools have fewer highly-qualified teachers and more inexperienced teachers than low-poverty and low-minority schools, often by margins of 20 percent or more.

The impact of such a distribution of quality teachers on student achievement is devastating. Recent research also indicates that teachers’ academic skills, content knowledge, experience and pedagogical skill all have a consistent and very significant effect on student achievement.

Recommendations

The CDF report concludes that resources are the heart of the problem, and new investments should be made in quality teachers, smaller classrooms, new partnerships with business and civic organizations, and safe and modern facilities. But just as importantly, CDF argues that these resources should be matched by increased accountability that employs multiple types of assessment beyond a single standardized test and accurately measures dropout rates.

Among other things, the Ed Trust suggests overhauling the hiring process for new teachers by giving principals more control over who teaches in their schools, paying teachers more in high-need schools, puttting the best principals in the neediest schools, building better data systems to identify effective teachers, and eliminating state level funding gaps.

Ed Trust suggests that the inequities that exist are not a result of intentional actions – and as a result no purpose is served in finding blame. Instead energy should be focused on seeking equity in educational opportunity in a more forthright way than has occurred in the past – requiring a more evenhanded approach to balancing competing interests in education, where we often forget the largest stakeholder of all: the students.

Prepared by Charley Cummings, July 12, 2006