The gap in the qualifications of teachers when comparing New York City’s highest- and lowest-poverty schools closed “substantially” between 2000 and 2005, with modest average improvement in the achievement of students in the poorest schools as a result, concludes a report from the Washington-based Urban Institute.
In New York, as elsewhere, teachers with the lowest qualifications—as measured, for instance, by college-admissions-test scores and passing rates on teacher-certification tests—have tended to cluster in schools with more students and lower achievement, says the report. But that trend has been reversed, the report suggests, largely through the enactment of two policies: New York state’s ban on uncertified teachers, and the establishment of the New York City Teaching Fellows program, which recruits teachers with strong qualifications and places them in high-poverty schools.
The study was conducted by five researchers from Columbia University, Stanford University, and the State University of New York at Albany.
