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Monday, December 13, 2010

Teachers in high-poverty schools — Joanne Jacobs

Teachers in high-poverty schools — Joanne Jacobs

Teachers in high-poverty schools

Teachers in high-poverty schools are only slightly less effective than teachers in low-poverty schools, concludes a study conducted in Florida and North Carolina. But the least-effective teachers in high-poverty schools are worse than the least-effective teachers in affluent schools, according to a new analysis (pdf) from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER. That means low-income students are more likely to be taught be a very bad teacher.

“Teaching experience seem to improve a teacher’s effectiveness in a low-poverty school, but less so in a high-poverty school,” writes Stephen Sawchuk on Teacher Beat. After awhile, teachers in tough working