There is a long literature showing that minority children and students living in poverty are disproportionately saddled with weaker teachers. Lots of studies have shown that better teachers tend to land in more affluent districts, where they serve children who arrive at school with the built-in advantages of stable home lives with college-educated parents. Meanwhile, less effective teachers tend to end up in classrooms in high-poverty communities, with students who can least afford to be hamstrung by mediocre instruction.

A new study adds to this understanding of teacher sorting by showing that it even plays out within schools, as lower-achieving students tend to be assigned to less effective teachers who got degrees from less competitive colleges. The study from Stanford University researchers, published last month in the journal Sociology of Education, looked at teacher assignment patterns within the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the country’s fourth-largest school district.

The researchers found that “less experienced, minority, and female teachers are assigned to classes with lower achieving students than are their more experienced, white, and male colleagues. Teachers who have held leadership positions and those who attended more competitive undergraduate institutions are also assigned higher achieving students.”

The researchers speculate that there could be a number of explanations for the pattern.  For example, female teachers in the district are more likely to be special education instructors, and special ed students tend to have lower test scores. Black and Hispanic teachers also tended to be assigned more frequently than their white counterparts to poor and minority students, who also have lower test scores than their white peers. The tendency to assign teachers with degrees from more competitive colleges to higher-performing students, the researchers say, could be because higher-level classes require “more mastery” of the subject matter. That could make the sorting along those lines a rational practice, say the researchers. Similarly, if minority students learn more when taught by minority teachers — a conclusion for which there is research support — then the student-teacher racial matching that the study saw might have actually improved student achievement, the paper argues.

The study provides a lot of new food for thought to discussion of teacher effectiveness. Some of the sorting the study observed seems to be further evidence within schools of the type of the disparities in teacher quality seen between more and less affluent school districts. But the authors note that some of the patterns seen in Miami-Dade are “likely to be neutral or beneficial to students.”

One piece of Massachusetts-based speculation to add in here:  Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman demanded last month that the city’s school department launch an investigation of its new teacher evaluation system, in which black teachers have been three times more likely than white teachers to be put on a “directed growth plan” or “improvement plan,” steps that can lead to termination if no turnaround in performance is seen. Hispanic teachers have been one-and-a-half times more likely than white teachers to be put on such a plan, the union said.  

The union complaint is based on very small numbers, and school department officials say the data could change significantly once evaluation of all teachers is complete. However, school officials say they also noted the pattern and may tap an outside expert to study it. If the pattern persists, perhaps it’s worth examining whether any of the teacher assignment dynamics seen in Miami-Dade are at work in Boston and, if so, whether they could be contributing in any way to the racial disparities in teacher performance in the new evaluation system.  

–MICHAEL JONAS

MARATHON BOMBINGS

With a lot of “mights” and “maybes” thrown in, Judith Miller — she of notorious Iraqi WMD reporting fame — suggests in City Journal that, unlike their Boston brethren in blue, the New York Police Department might have caught the Tsarnaevs before their alleged act. Yet Time says attacks like the Marathon bombings are nearly unpreventable.

A Worcester mortician asks Gov. Deval Patrick to intervene, as cemeteries across the state refuse burial for Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The New York Times links the Marathon bombings to an online push by al Qaeda that shows lone radicals how to launch small-scale attacks without outside aid. The Times also profiles the quiet radicalization of the Tsarnaevs.

Lawyers for Robel Phillipos, the Cambridge RIndge and Latin School classmate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who is being held on charges of lying to investigators following the Marathon bombings, want him released on bail, arguing that he had nothing to do with the deadly attack.

The Globe reports that some in Boston’s black community are wondering why the ongoing plague of gun violence in their neighborhoods doesn’t elicit the kind of sympathy and support seen following the Marathon bombings. CommonWealth’s Michael Jonas raised this question last week.

Boston hospitals look to provide some counseling and care to caregivers traumatized by the Marathon bombing.

BEACON HILL

In an editorial, the Salem News criticizes the Legislature and the governor for pursuing a quick-fix law that nearly put an Andover company with 250 employees out of business.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

A Globe editorial faults Boston’s housing inspection system following a deadly fire in an Allston house crammed with 19 college students.

The Fall River mayor and City Council are tussling over who should issue permits for carnivals and parades.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

The National Review says gun control advocates are “delusional” if they think they can target gun rights supporter Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire to change her mind and her vote on background checks. In Dorchester, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords speaks at the JFK Library and challenges Congress to show more courage on gun control.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas commented last month that Barack Obama became president because he “was approved by the elites and the media.”

ELECTIONS

GOP Senate nominee Gabriel Gomez begins his venture into media-infested waters with a sitdown with Keller@Large. Gomez goes positive with his first ad, as Herald columnist Kimberly Atkins traces Ed Markey’s current difficulties back to Beacon Hill Democrats’ fear of an interim senator appointed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. Howie Carr says that if Gomez wants to win in June, he should leave the state and let Markey talk himself out of the race.

Markey has a murky path forward, if the primary results are any indication of the future, CommonWealth’s Paul McMorrow reports.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

With casino profits falling and sea levels rising, Next City asks whether Atlantic City can be saved.

Big Data goes to the movies.

CHARITIES

Google is testing a new mobile app called One Today that will feature a different nonprofit each day and prompt users to donate $1 to the highlighted charity and share it with friends.

EDUCATION

Worcester sets a funding plan for its schools that is below the state benchmark for the city, the Telegram & Gazette reports.

Boston plans to boost background checks on school department employees even beyond the measures required by a new state law.

The Fall River school department has about two weeks left in its negotiating window with the teachers’ union to come to an agreement on opening a new innovation school that would help struggling high school students earn college credits to smooth the pathway to higher education.

TRANSPORTATION

GateHouse Media newspapers, in partnership with WGBH, has launched a series on bicycling in Massachusetts, examining the rise of the two-wheelers for commuting and the strengths and weaknesses of state efforts to accommodate bikers.

Middleboro officials are concerned about the new Cape Cod commuter rail service that will be running through town this summer and want state officials to address a number of safety issues.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

Seattle plans to be carbon-neutral by 2050, the Seattle Times reports.

MEDIA/CULTURE

Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke beat Jason Collins out of the closet by couple of decades — but no one wanted to hear it or write about it, says Allen Barra in The Atlantic.

The Washington Post, new home of former Globe editor Marty Baron, is losing money in spectacular fashion. The Atlantic calls the Post Company “a healthy television company attached at the hip to a money-hemorrhaging mishmash of education and publishing businesses.”

A tweetie-ish tweet shows the hyperlocal potential problem-solving power of social media.