Lower-Achieving Students Assigned to Less-Experienced Teachers, Patterns Seen in Elementary and Middle School

A new study shows an undeniable bias in some schools: Lower-achieving students are sometimes taught by less-experienced teachers, as well as by teachers who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges.

This study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank takes an in-depth look at data that examines certain distinctions made at schools by a teacher's gender and race.

Previous research indicates that high-quality teachers can significantly improve education outcomes for students. However, not all students have equal access to the best teachers.

"It is well-known that teachers systematically sort across schools, disadvantaging low-income, minority, and low-achieving students," said Demetra Kalogrides, a research associate at the Graduate School of Education's Center for Education Policy Analysis and one of the study's three authors, according to a press release. "Our findings are novel because they address the assignment of teachers to classes within schools. We cannot assume that teacher sorting stops at the school doors."

The authors note that more research needs to be done to see whether such patterns exist within schools across the country.

Teachers with more power, due to experience or other factors, may be able to choose their preferred classes. Parents, particularly those with more resources, also may try to intervene in the process to ensure that their children are taught by certain teachers, according to the study.

"We wanted to understand which teachers are teaching which students," said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford professor of education, the director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis, and an author of the study. "In particular, are low-achieving students more likely to be assigned to certain teachers, and if so, why?"

Using extensive data from Miami-Dade, the authors compared the average achievement of teachers' students in the year before the students were assigned to them. They discovered that certain teachers - those with less experience, those from less-competitive colleges, female teachers, and black and Hispanic teachers - are more likely to work with lower-achieving students than are other teachers in the same school.

They found these patterns at both the elementary and middle/high school levels.

Teachers with school seniority or a higher degree maybe be able to pick a preferred class or number of students or type of students, according to researchers. However, less-experienced teachers tended to be able to have less say.

In addition, it could exacerbate within-school achievement gaps - for example, the black-white gap. Since they are lower-achieving on average, minority and poor students are often assigned to less-experienced teachers than white and non-poor students. Less-experienced teachers tend to be less effective, so this pattern is likely to reinforce the relationships between race and achievement and poverty and achievement, the researchers said.

The study also found that lower-achieving students are taught by the teachers who graduated from less-competitive colleges, based on test scores for admission and acceptance rates. This trend is particularly evident at the middle school and high school levels, possibly due to the more varied demands of middle and high school courses. Teachers from more competitive colleges may have deeper subject knowledge than their colleagues from less-competitive colleges, leading principals to assign them to more advanced courses, the researchers said.

The researchers noted that assignment patterns vary across schools. Experienced teachers appear to have more power over the assignment process when there are more of them in a school; senior teachers are assigned even higher-achieving students when there is a larger contingent of experienced teachers in the school.

At the same time, schools under more accountability pressure are less likely to assign higher-achieving students to more-experienced teachers than schools that are not under accountability pressure.

The findings were published in the April issue of Sociology of Education.