Although most students with disabilities (SWDs) receive instruction from general education teachers, little empirical work has investigated whether these students have suitable access to high-quality teachers. We explore the differences in teacher quality experienced by SWDs and students without disabilities (non-SWDs) in the Los Angeles Unified School District, examining how access varies within schools as well as across school-level disadvantage rates. We leverage several different indicators of teacher effectiveness for general education teachers who instruct both SWDs and non-SWDs. We find that SWDs are significantly more likely to have teachers with lower math value-added (–0.024 standard deviations) than their non-SWD peers, and we find emerging gaps in teacher evaluation scores and exposure to novice teachers. In general, these gaps do not vary by school-level disadvantage.
AaronsonD.BarrowL.SanderW. (2007). Teachers and student achievement in the Chicago public high schools. Journal of Labor Economics, 25(1), 95–135.
2.
AngristJ. D.GuryanJ. (2008). Does teacher testing raise teacher quality? Evidence from state certification requirements. Economics of Education Review, 27(5), 483–503.
3.
BoydD.LankfordH.LoebS.WyckoffJ. (2005). Explaining the short careers of high achieving teachers in schools with low-performing students. American Economic Review, 95(2), 166–171.
4.
BoydD.LankfordH.LoebS.WyckoffJ. (2008). Consequences? The impact of assessment and accountability on teacher recruitment and retention: Are there unintended consequences?Public Finance Review, 36, 88–111. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/1091142106293446
5.
BrownellM. T.RossD. D.ColónE. P.McCallumC. L. (2005). Critical features of special education teacher preparation: A comparison with general teacher education. Journal of Special Education, 38(4), 242–252.
6.
BrunoP.StrunkK. O. (2019). Making the cut: The effectiveness of teacher screening and hiring in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(4), 426–460.
7.
ChettyR.FriedmanJ. N.RockoffJ. E. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers II: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2633–2679.
8.
ChildA. E.CirinoP. T.FletcherJ. M.WillcuttE. G.FuchsL. S. (2019). A cognitive dimensional approach to understanding shared and unique contributions to reading, math, and attention skills. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(1), 15–30.
9.
ChingosM. M.PetersonP. E. (2011). It’s easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness. Economics of Education Review, 30(3), 449–465.
10.
ChudowskyN.ChudowskyV.KeberN. (2009). State test score trends through 2007–08, Part 4: Has progress been made in raising achievement for students with disabilities?Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy.
11.
ClotfelterC. T.LaddH. F.VigdorJ. (2005). Who teaches whom? Race and the distribution of novice teachers. Economics of Education Review, 24, 377–392.
12.
ClotfelterC. T.LaddH. F.VigdorJ. L. (2006). Teacher-student matching and the assessment of teacher effectiveness. Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 778–820.
13.
ClotfelterC. T.LaddH. F.VigdorJ. L. (2007). Teacher credentials and student achievement: Longitudinal analysis with student fixed effects. Economics of Education Review, 26(6), 673–682.
14.
Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE–1, 580 U.S. ___ (2017).
15.
FuchsL. S.GearyD. C.FuchsD.ComptonD. L.HamlettC. L. (2016). Pathways to third-grade calculation versus word-reading competence: Are they more alike or different?Child Development, 87(2), 558–567.
16.
GilmourA.HenryG. (2018). A comparison of teacher quality in math for late elementary and middle school students with and without disabilities. Elementary School Journal, 118(3), 426–451.
17.
GilmourA. F.HenryG. T. (2020). Who are the classmates of students with disabilities in elementary mathematics classrooms?Remedial and Special Education, 41(1), 18–27.
18.
GilmourA. F.WehbyJ. H. (2019). The association between teaching students with disabilities and teacher turnover. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1037/edu0000
19.
GoldhaberD.LaveryL.TheobaldR. (2015). Uneven playing field? Assessing the teacher quality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Educational Researcher, 44(5), 293–307.
20.
GoldhaberD.QuinceV.TheobaldR. (2018). Has it always been this way? Tracing the evolution of teacher quality gaps in US public schools. American Educational Research Journal, 55(1), 171–201.
21.
JohnsonE.SemmelrothC. L. (2014). Special education teacher evaluation. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 39(2), 71–82.
22.
JonesN. D.BrownellM. (2014). Examining the use of classroom observations in the evaluation of special education teachers. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 39, 112–124.
23.
KalogridesD.LoebS. (2013). Different teachers, different peers: The magnitude of student sorting within schools. Educational Researcher, 42(6), 304–316.
24.
KaneT. J.RockoffJ. E.StaigerD. O. (2008). What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City. Economics of Education Review, 27(6), 615–631.
25.
KraftM. A.PapayJ. P.ChiO. L. (2020). Teacher skill development: Evidence from performance ratings by principals. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 39(2), 315–347.
26.
LaddH. F.SorensenL. C. (2017). Returns to teacher experience: Student achievement and motivation in middle school. Education Finance and Policy, 12(2), 241–279.
27.
LankfordH.LoebS.WyckoffJ. (2002). Teacher sorting and the plight of urban schools: A descriptive analysis. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(1), 37–62.
28.
PapayJ. P.KraftM. A. (2015). Productivity returns to experience in the teacher labor market: Methodological challenges and new evidence on long-term career improvement. Journal of Public Economics, 130, 105–119.
29.
RiceJ. K. (2010). The impact of teacher experience: Examining the evidence and policy implications (Brief No. 11). Washington, DC: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
30.
RivkinS. G.HanushekE. A.KainJ. F. (2005). Teachers, schools, and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73(2), 417–458.
31.
SaatciogluA.SkrticT. M. (2019). Categorization by organizations: Manipulation of disability categories in a racially desegregated school district. American Journal of Sociology, 125(1), 184–260.
32.
SchulteA. C.ElliottJ. J.TindalS. N.NeseG. (2016). Achievement gaps for students with disabilities: Stable, widening, or narrowing on a state-wide reading comprehension test?Journal of Educational Psychology, 16, 925–942.
33.
SchulteA. C.StevensJ. J. (2015). Once, sometimes, or always in special education mathematics growth and achievement gaps. Exceptional Children, 81, 370–387.
34.
StaigerD. O.RockoffJ. E. (2010). Searching for effective teachers with imperfect information. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(3), 97–118.
U.S. Department of Education. (2019). The NCES Fast Facts Tool provides quick answers to many education questions. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.
37.
WeintraubF. J.MyersR. M.HehirT.Jaque-AntonD. (2008). A contextual overview of the modified consent decree in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Journal of Special Education Leadership, 21(2), 51–57.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
