Perspective | The time is now: Acting to ensure equitable access to excellent teachers in North Carolina
By Kevin Bastian and Johanna Anderson - Posted Mar 1, 2021
Teachers are the most important school-based resource for student learning. Highly effective teachers are an investment in our future — a sure way to promote students’ academic and social-emotional development.
Unfortunately, North Carolina’s investments in teachers have not generated equitable returns for all students. Prior studies show that students from historically marginalized populations have less access to effective teachers. Through a funding partnership with the Belk Foundation, the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) recently released a report confirming this troubling trend.
North Carolina’s students who are economically disadvantaged, low-performing, or of color are less likely to have well-credentialed, highly-effective, and same-race teachers. Relative to white non-economically disadvantaged students, Black economically disadvantaged students are two times as likely to have a first-year teacher and less than half as likely to have a Nationally Board Certified (NBC) teacher. Likewise, low-performing students have teachers with lower prior-year evaluation ratings (NCEES) and lower prior-year value-added estimates (EVAAS) than their high-performing peers.