CURMUDGUCATION: Do Poor Students Get the Worst Teachers?

CURMUDGUCATION: Do Poor Students Get the Worst Teachers?:

Do Poor Students Get the Worst Teachers?

This has been open to debate forever, but the debate has gotten more spirited ever since the Obama administration made it a matter of policy that poverty just doesn't matter if you have an awesome teacher in the room. There are three real answers to this question. Let's consider each one.

No, They Don't

A recently-released report from the Institute of Education Sciences (part of the USED) has been touted as proof that all socio-economic levels of students have similar supplies of swell teachers. And there is also an argument to be made that since teachers in high-poverty schools are doing more heavy lifting against a greater weight of outside issues, they are actually tougher for it. I have no doubt that some of the greatest, mightiest, teacheriest teachers in the country are working in poverty-wracked schools.

This is not a new idea. The teacher program that I graduated from was run by a small-town upper-mid-class college, but it required student teachers to work in Cleveland (i.e. poor urban) schools. Their reasoning was that if you could handle that environment, you could handle any teaching environment.





Yes, They Do

There are plenty of reasons to suspect this might be so. Many policy choices have made recruitment a challenge.

In some states, test results (which are reliably lower in poorer schools) are tied to teacher evaluation, which means that taking a job at a poor school can damage a teacher's career, even end it in states that have removed tenure and made "low performance" grounds for dismissal. Who wants CURMUDGUCATION: Do Poor Students Get the Worst Teachers?: