Across ten districts combined, high-poverty middle schools have significantly fewer highest-performing teachers than low-poverty middle schools¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q3
Currency · newest study 2011 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2016: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? In middle school math and English language arts, the distribution of highest-performing teachers across school poverty quintiles differs significantly from an equitable distribution, disadvantaging high-poverty schools. → Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max 2011
Evidence¶
Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max 2011¶
Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max. (2011). Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers? NCEE Evaluation Brief, NCEE 2011-4016. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20114016/pdf/20114016_app.pdf
q3 · i? · associational · r2
Observational analysis of value-added estimates for teachers in ten districts; chi-square tests of the relationship between school poverty quintile and prevalence of highest-performing teachers were significant for middle school math and ELA but not elementary. The article reports "the distribution difference is statistically significant" in the middle grades.
"In the elementary grades, the distribution of highest -performing teachers does not statistically differ from an equitable distribution, but in the middle grades, the distribution difference is statistically significant -- schools serving disadvantaged students tend to get less than their fair share of highest -performing teachers compared to schools serving more advantaged students."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- The most extreme district disparity: District A's high-poverty middle schools had about 1 in 20 highest-performing math teachers versus about 12 in 20 in the lowest-poverty quintile — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- The distribution of highest-performing teachers across schools is statistically unlikely to be random, with significance for middle school teachers on both poverty and achievement groupings but for elementary teachers only on achievement groupings — a broader claim this one bears on
- Across ten districts combined, elementary schools show no statistically significant difference from an equitable distribution of highest-performing teachers — related
- Main results are robust to grouping schools into four poverty quartiles instead of five quintiles — related
- Elementary under-representation of highest-performing teachers appears in 4 of 8 districts despite the aggregate null — related
- Findings on the distribution of highest-performing teachers are robust to omitting empirical Bayes shrinkage of the value-added estimates — related
- Teachers with the lowest value-added and observation scores are overrepresented in schools serving the most disadvantaged students — related
- District G shows the opposite pattern: highest-poverty elementary schools were most likely to have highest-performing teachers — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
high-poverty-middle-schools-underrepresented-highest-performing-teachers |
title |
Across ten districts combined, high-poverty middle schools have significantly fewer highest-performing teachers than low-poverty middle schools |
description |
Across ten districts combined, high-poverty middle schools have significantly fewer highest-performing teachers than low-poverty middle schools |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2011 |
recheck_by |
2016 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — steven-glazerman-and-jeffrey-max-2011 |
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