Disparities in Teacher Experience:
All Education Is Not Created Equal

Jan 20, 2025

Due to teacher shortages in public schools, students in some of the poorest areas in urban and rural Michigan are sixteen times more likely to have teachers with temporary or emergency credentials than their peers in Michigan’s wealthiest public school districts. And a number of these teachers also are assigned to teaching subjects that are not in their field.

These latest revelations come out of a recent study done by a non-partisan research and advocacy non-profit organization, Education Trust-Midwest.

Teacher shortages. Why? Experienced teachers can find higher pay, lower class sizes and more resources in more affluent school districts. Fewer and fewer young people are going into the teaching profession if it means they take on serious student loan debt, only to get a teaching job in a district that may qualify you for a Bridge Card because the pay is so low.

So, high-poverty school districts are more hard-pressed to retain experienced teachers and end up taking on teachers with little or no experience in the subjects they are hired to teach, hire them on a temp basis, and pay them less. In the words of a ninth grade math teacher with Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), “They are trying their best but they are literally not trained.” And she talked about how her students were taught in middle school by a long-term substitute and are missing the foundations of algebra. No wonder that you see the problems with lower test scores in reading and math in the high-poverty school districts.

This most recent study, like numerous ones before, just puts into print, with statistics, what working-class parents, students and teachers, and anyone who works in public education have known for a very long time: all education is not created equal. And poverty and inadequate resources put into public education are the common threads that run through all the problems.

So year in and year out, while politicians talk about “equitable funding,” they actually place education funding at the bottom of their priorities after using public money for bank bailouts, corporate subsidies and incentives.

And year in and year out, education experts conduct studies that draw conclusions about “What Can Be Done to Fix” the problems in the highest poverty school districts, never questioning, “Why poverty?” They never conclude that to “fix the problems,” eradicating poverty has to be the first step.

But in any event, ALL children should have the best quality education, no matter where they come from. After all, children are the future for the whole of society.