Feds aim to redistribute quality teachers

New data out from the Education Department find sizable — and in some states, huge — disparities in children’s access to fully qualified and experienced teachers.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, more than 20 percent of teachers are unlicensed in the schools with the largest concentration of minority students. In largely white schools, just 0.2 percent of teachers lack a license, the data show.

Or consider Louisiana: Nearly 20 percent of classes in the most impoverished schools are taught by teachers who don’t meet the federal definition of “highly qualified” — which generally means they lack a bachelor’s degree, are unlicensed or don’t have a strong academic background in the subject they’re teaching. In the wealthier schools, fewer than 8 percent of classes are led by a teacher who’s not highly qualified.

In New York, students in high-poverty schools are nearly three times more likely to have a rookie teacher and 22 times more likely to have an unlicensed teacher than their peers in more affluent schools.

“The inequitable distribution of teachers teaching low-income students is staggering, sobering and getting worse,” said Arnold Fege, president of Public Advocacy for Kids, an education policy group.