StickWithANose

Two categories are noticeably absent in this EdWeek article… social class and segregation. Separate and unequal is the new normal, again.

The best teachers tend to leave when their schools experience an influx of African-American students, according to a study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district published today…

C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., studied patterns of teacher movement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools between 2002 and 2003, which was when the 137,000-student district ended its long-running policy of busing students to keep schools racially integrated. His results, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, show that, at all levels of schooling, high-quality teachers—both black and white—were more likely to switch schools as the policy change began to take effect and student populations shifted…

A growing body of research has found that students in schools with high concentrations of poor students and students from minority groups tend to have teachers who are considered, on average, to be of lower quality than teachers in better-off suburban schools.

The answer put forth by the education lobby is to flood high-poverty, racially-segregated schools with inexperienced teachers possessing alternate licensure who, in general, stick with teaching for 2-4 years and then leave the profession. Needless to say this is a less than successful model [pdf].