Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?

The Institute for Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education issued this report, which discusses the prevalence of high-performing teachers in ten districts across seven states. The data show that, on average, low-income students have unequal access the highest-performing teachers at the middle school level but not at the elementary level. There was variation across the ten districts as high-poverty schools in some districts at both the elementary and middle school levels had fewer highest-performing teachers, other districts had an uneven distribution favoring lower-poverty schools only at the middle school level, and one district favored high-poverty elementary schools in its distribution of highest-performing teachers.