– School-based hiring is associated with a larger gap in the distribution of teacher quality between advantaged and disadvantaged schools.
– There is an association between school-based hiring and inequality of achievement based on socioeconomic status of students.
– School-based hiring may contribute to exacerbating inequality in learning opportunities and increasing family background’s positive effect on achievement.
– ESCS (a proxy of family SES) is positively associated with student performance in mathematics and science.
– School-based hiring is not associated with student performance on average, but school-based hiring is associated with the larger achievement gap between high- and low-SES students.
– More school autonomy in hiring was associated with a larger gap in the distribution of teacher quality across schools as well as larger socioeconomic achievement inequality.
– School-level mean SES has a positive and significant relationship with math and science achievement.
2018 - School-based Teacher Hiring and Achievement Inequality: A Comparative Perspective
This study used PISA 2012 data on mathematics scores as well as mathematics instructional quality, including the possibility that students were exposed to the problem types used in PISA assessments, by using a student questionnaire. This study analyses 295,416 students in 34 OECD member countries.
DV: school-level teacher quality (proportion of certified teachers; proportion of teachers with a bachelor’s degree; principal’s report on the extent to which a lack of qualified math teachers hinders student learning; and principal’s report on the extent to which a lack of qualified science teachers hinders student learning); Student achievement (PISA assessment scores)
IV: country-level indicators of school-based teacher hiring (three levels: fully school-based teacher hiring; shared hiring decisions by school and external authority (school has some responsibility for hiring teachers); and fully external authority-based hiring (no school autonomy in teacher hiring))
Controls:
National level: gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (in current U.S. dollars), existence of national examinations at the upper secondary level
Student level: gender, modal grade level, family socioeconomic status (SES), immigration status, and language spoken at home
School level: school-level mean SES, school ownership (public vs. private), school community location (urban vs. rural), school program type (academic vs. pre-/vocational), and teacher shortages in mathematics and science