Are the" Best" Teachers in the "Neediest" Schools?

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between distribution of teacher resources and student need. The effort was to determine if the "best" teachers are teaching the "neediest" students in the elementary schools in the "Big 8" urban school districts in Ohio as equity principles would mandate. Using Pearson correlation analysis, we investigated the relationship between average teacher salary (used to measure teacher quality) and percent of disadvantaged students as well as level of student achievement (both measures of student need) for all public elementary schools in each of the eight districts. In general, the findings show that as the percent of disadvantaged students increased, average teacher salary decreased for the statistically significant relationships. Furthermore, as student achievement increased, average teacher salary increased. Both sets of findings suggest that the "best" teachers are not teaching the "neediest" students.