Teacher qualification and the achievement gap: A cross-national analysis of 50 countries

Abstract

Many countries around the world are struggling with how to equalize students' access to qualified teachers. How does the major gap in students' access to qualified teachers affect the achievement gap between students? To examine whether the level of achievement gap in a country is driven by the educational system that allows unequal distributions of qualified teachers, we conducted a cross-national analysis of the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data collected from students and teachers in 50 countries. The study found that the percentage of students who were taught by qualified teachers in the USA did not change much from 2003 (60.3∈%) to 2007 (60.2∈%), but the difference in the percentage of students taught by qualified teachers between high-socioeconomic status (high-SES) and low-SES students narrowed from 14.4 to 7.8∈%. Despite the narrowed gap in students' access to qualified teachers, the size of the gap is still larger than the international average of 4.0∈%. The study further found that the countries with a greater inequality in students' access to qualified teachers tend to produce a larger achievement gap. The USA faces a major challenge of increasing qualified teachers while ensuring students' equal access to qualified teachers in a highly decentralized system with a major variation in financial capacity to attract qualified teachers across districts and schools.