| Marigee Bacolod
University of California, Irvine
Equalizing educational opportunities: Who teaches and where they choose to teach
FINAL REPORT:
Concern is often voiced over the low academic achievement of US K-12 students, especially gaps in achievement among income and racial or ethnic groups. Despite policies aimed at equalizing per-pupil spending across schools, however, considerable differences in school resources and in teacher qualifications persist. Given this disparity, it is essential to understand the underlying mechanisms that drive who teachers and where they choose to teach.
This paper investigates the key determinants of entry into the teaching profession, and the subsequent sorting of new teachers across urban, suburban, and rural schools. Of particular interest is the relative importance of teacher salaries, alternative labor market opportunities, and non-pecuniary job attributes or working conditions on this decision process. A nested logit model where a college graduate faces the sequential choice of teaching, and conditional on teaching, the location of the school, is then applied to the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Study. The B&B is a nationally representative cohort who graduated with their BA in 1993, 12 percent of whom had taught by 1997.
Findings suggest that work conditions play a relatively more important role in determining where new teachers end up choosing to teach, rather than differences in teacher salaries. This is especially true for women. However, wages do play a relatively more important role at the occupational entry decision, when male and female college graduates are deciding to teach. In addition, consistent with earlier findings, there is significant variation in teacher quality indicators across schools.
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