We found negligible
differences in teacher quality between programs, amounting to no more than 3 percent of the average test - score gap between students from low - income families and their more affluent peers.
These within - school differences likely understate the overall import of teacher effectiveness because, as recent evidence suggests, there are
also differences in teacher quality across schools.
But since the report's publication, scholars have developed more precise data on teacher effectiveness, and, by probing
at differences in teacher quality within schools, have found very large impacts of teacher quality on student achievement.
An admittedly indirect way to evaluate the effects of these
unobserved differences in teacher quality is to consider how the performance gain associated with having a teacher of the same race varies across different types of schools.
The government needs to create a «coherent plan» by April, they recommend, plus set out what represents an «acceptable» workload, say more about the teacher vacancy service, take a more «strategic» role on teacher housing, address
regional differences in teacher quality, explain how CPD will improve, and give more detail on the opportunity areas.
The chief obstacle to attributing these sizable differences to the race of the teacher is the possibility that they are instead a function
of differences in teacher quality that could not be directly observed.
This Brownsville parent, who has twin daughters enrolled in different kindergarten classes, says that
the difference in teacher quality he observes in their classrooms is unfair to his children:
We do know from our other work that
differences in teacher quality are more significant than the differences arising from having inexperienced teachers.
At the same time, most of the difference in achievement between low - income and high - income students is not due to
differences in teacher quality.
Rivkin et al. (1) noted that students and parents refer often to
differences in teacher quality and act to ensure placement in classes with specific teachers.
Assuming that these schools differ in their ability to recruit good teachers, this pattern suggests that
differences in teacher quality are not distorting the findings on the effect of white students» being exposed to white teachers.
If these assumptions hold, evidence that the effects of being assigned to a teacher who shares one's race are concentrated in disadvantaged or highly segregated schools would suggest that
differences in teacher quality are influencing the findings to some degree.
The best of these studies, so - called value - added studies that concentrate on the determinants of growth in achievement across individual classrooms, find
that differences in teacher quality have a profound impact.