No Child Left Behind (NCLB) demands that “all students have access to qualified teachers, particularly in core academic subjects” and requires that “state and local policies have introduced incentives to attract well-qualified teachers to low-performing and urban schools.” The Institute of Education Sciences/National Center for Education Statistics have recently released comprehensive statistics detailing exactly who it is that is teaching students, and which teachers are teaching poor, urban students.
Because of the difficulty of garnering statistics from various school districts, a survey was conducted to track teachers based on graduation from undergraduate education/teacher certification programs. The result was the 2008/2009 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (BB:08/09), the first follow-up of a nationally representative cohort of 2007-08 baccalaureate graduates. Findings focus on the experiences of recent graduates who entered K-12 teaching. Data include graduates’ demographic, educational, and employment characteristics, as well as the characteristics of the schools in which they are teaching, especially with a view towards schools with greater need, such as schools with higher percentages of FARMS students.
As an example, while 31.8% of teachers teaching in a school with a poverty level less than 10% were required to complete remedial level courses in college, 36.4% of teachers teaching in a school with 50% or more students with Free and Reduced Meal eligibility were required to do so. This statistic reveals a disparity in teaching quality that puts more affluent students at an advantage.
No conclusions are included with the data; however, these data are useful in evaluating the success/lack of success of NCLB in bringing about its stated goals and the need for further work in attracting high quality teachers to our most needy schools.
For more information and a link to download the extensive Web Tables, please visit this link: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013153
