Value Added of Teachers in High-Poverty and Lower-Poverty Schools

Posted by on December 19, 2010

What good is experience if you’re burnt out?

A new report from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research looks at whether teachers in high-poverty schools are as effective as teachers in more affluent schools. Using recent student-level data from Florida and North Carolina, the authors found the average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is only slightly less than in other schools, and not in all comparisons. Within-school-type variation in effectiveness was common, with highly effective teachers similar across school settings. Observed differences in teacher quality between high- and lower-poverty schools were not due to experience, certification status, and educational attainment, but stemmed from the difference in payoff from increases in these characteristics. For instance, higher productivity from increased experience is stronger in lower-poverty schools, and the lower return for experience in high-poverty schools is likely because exposure to challenging students leads to burn out; teachers in schools with high poverty therefore may not improve much as time goes by. The authors conclude that changing the quality of new recruits or importing teachers with good credentials into high-poverty schools may not close the achievement gap. Measures that induce highly effective teachers to move to high-poverty schools and that promote an environment in which teachers’ skills will improve over time are more likely to be successful.

See the report: http://www.caldercenter.org/