Pulling Back the Curtain: Providing All Students with Access to Effective Teachers

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has prompted some spirited debates, particularly when it comes to a proposal ensuring that all students have access to effective teachers, regardless of family income or ethnicity. The proposal sounds reasonable, but people have voiced concern, afraid that the implementation of this policy proposal will result in teachers being forcibly transferred into high-poverty, low-performing schools.

The report, published by the Center for American Progress in July 2010, argues that this concern is not valid. Providing students with access to effective teachers will not require forcible reassignment. Instead, a bill recently introduced into the House of Representatives and supported by the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, would close the comparability loophole while specifically barring the use of forced transfers as a means of compliance

According to the report, ensuring education equality and providing effective teachers for all children will have its challenges but will not involve reassignment; school districts will need to identify effective teachers, document their distribution across school, and take steps to promote a more equitable distribution.
 

Read the report.