The Realities of Teacher Distribution in Primary and Junior High Schools in Ghana: Experiences of Rural Areas in Sekyere Central District

The study critically looked at teacher distribution in Ghana's Primary and Junior High Schools in Sekyere Central District; in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Data were gathered from Education Monitoring Information Systems (EMIS) from the District Education Office, Nsuta for the analysis. Evidence from the rural communities in teacher deployment for the 2021 academic year for 10 rural Primary Schools and 5 Junior High Schools depicted a gloomy picture because there was uneven teacher deployment to these areas where their services are needed. There was a huge teacher deficit in the rural communities so the question of quality and equitable education will not be achieved if policymakers fail to provide incentive packages to the rural teachers. The paper recommends that rural teachers' conditions of service should be different from those of their colleagues in the urban areas. When this is done, teacher manpower utilization and retention of teachers in rural communities would be improved.

Teacher Sorting within and across Schools and Nations: A Comparative Study of South Korea and the United States

Background Although most research on teacher sorting has taken place in the United States, where teacher distribution favors more advantaged children, there is some evidence that the distribution of teachers across schools is much more equitable in South Korea. This is the first study to directly compare teacher distribution across schools and classrooms in the two countries. Research Questions Our research questions are: (1) Are teachers in lower secondary schools distributed evenly across schools in South Korea and the United States? (2) Are teachers in lower secondary schools distributed evenly across classrooms in South Korea and the United States? (3) How does assignment of teachers to classrooms within schools differ in South Korea and the United States? Research Design We use data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey to examine the distribution of teachers across regions, schools, and classrooms in the United States and South Korea. To answer our research questions we employ a range of quantitative techniques, ranging from simple descriptive statistics and Gini indices of teacher variables, to multinomial and ordered logistic regressions of school and classroom conditions on key teacher quality variables. Results We find that across schools, inequitable teacher sorting patterns are more pronounced in the United States. In both countries teacher sorting is more pronounced across classrooms than across schools; specifically, teachers with more total experience are less likely to teach in classrooms with higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students and students with behavioral problems. Further, U.S. teachers with more years of experience in their current schools are less likely to receive assignments in classrooms with more language minority students, economically disadvantaged students, and students with special needs. Conclusions We conclude that South Korea can provide lessons to the United States to help reduce inequities in disadvantaged children's access to qualified teachers across schools through policies like centralized assignment of teachers, incentives to teach in difficult-to-staff schools, and mandatory rotation of teachers across schools. In terms of cross-classroom teacher sorting, our results signal a warning for policy makers in both countries. We argue that the most effective way to reduce within-school teacher sorting is to better integrate language-minority, low-income, and special-needs students into classrooms so that teaching conditions do not differ significantly across classrooms, and teachers have fewer options to sort across.

Is Teacher Sorting a Global Phenomenon? Cross-National Evidence on the Nature and Correlates of Teacher Quality Opportunity Gaps

Although substantial evidence from the United States suggests that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated in the schools and classrooms of academically and socioeconomically advantaged children, it is not clear whether the problem of teacher sorting is global in scope. This study uses data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey to examine whether and how school- and classroom-level teacher distribution patterns vary across 32 education systems with diverse national contexts and education policies. We find that cross- and within-school teacher sorting is common in most countries but within-school sorting is more pronounced in higher income countries. We also identify several national policy variables that are significantly related to both cross-school and cross-classroom sorting of teachers.

Uneven Distribution of Novice Teachers in the Chilean Primary School System

This study examines the allocation of novice primary teachers in Chilean schools, looking at their characteristics and at the attributes of the schools at which they are hired after having completed their initial teacher training. The study reveals that in Chile, more qualified novice teachers are more prone to get jobs in socio-economically advantaged schools or in schools with better academic outcomes. In contrast, in disadvantaged schools, it is more likely to find novice teachers with poor results on their exit exams and who come from socioeconomic backgrounds similar to those of the school populations. These findings provide new data to inform Chilean policies. Thus, achieving a more equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers is a challenge for Chile if the aim is to reduce the achievement gap between schools attended by pupils of higher and lower socioeconomic status. Furthermore, these findings might shed some light on the current debate surrounding teacher education policies. A new law will mandate that novice teachers pass the exit exam that until now they have taken voluntarily in order to be hired in any publicly funded school. This study provides support and evidence to inform the debate that will follow in parliament, since we found that novice teachers performing at a very low level—perhaps below the minimum that will be required—have a high probability of ending up working in schools in more disadvantaged areas. On a more general scale, this research also provides a simple but complete methodology that can be used to study issues of teacher distribution elsewhere.