More On Inequitable Teacher Distribution

Yesterday I blogged about inequitable teacher distribution between schools. Today, Education Week posted an article about inequitable teacher distribution between grades within schools.

The Ed Week article discusses a new study authored by Ruth Curran Neild (a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University) and Elizabeth Farley-Ripple (a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania). It finds that high-school freshmen in Philadelphia are more likely to be taught by inexperienced, uncredentialed teachers than their sophomore, junior and senior counterparts. And those freshmen who take two or more classes with novice, uncredentialed teachers average two more absences per academic year.

The freshman year is regarded as a critical time especially for those students at-risk of dropping out of high school.