Ensuring equitable access to great teachers: State policy priorities 

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 has often been described as a civil rights law (King, 2016; Obama, 2015), insofar as it aims to provide “all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps” (Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA] of 1965, section 1001). And no part of ESSA speaks to this aim more clearly than its requirement that states outline specific plans to ensure that students from low-income families and students of color are not disproportionately taught by “ineffective, out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers” (ESEA, section 1111(g)(1)(B)).  

The grim reality is that these two (somewhat overlapping) groups of students tend to have the least access to the most effective teachers. And, as a wealth of research findings has shown, teacher quality is the single most important contributor (among school-based factors) to students’ immediate academic outcomes and long-term achievement (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014; Jackson, 2012). (For a comprehensive review of the literature on teacher quality and distribution, see Rice, 2010. For more about how students from low-income families and students of color do not get their fair share of high-quality teachers, see Feng & Sass, 2017; Peske & Haycock, 2006; Sass et al., 2012.)