Engineering Equality: The Organization of Education Labor Markets and the Distribution of Teacher Quality

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. The Organization of Education

Abstract

Given the importance of teacher quality to student performance (Darling-Hammond 2000) and the fact that the locally controlled education labor markets have produced a disparity in educational opportunities (Borman and Kimball 2005), there is an incentive to examine a more centrally controlled system as an alternative organizational tactic of educational equality. I will investigate the organization of education labor markets in Japan, particularly a unique facet of Japan’s public education system known as jinji idou, a mandatory teacher rotation system governed by the prefectural board of education in which teachers are systematically transferred to other schools throughout their careers. I compare the public and private education sectors in Japan since the former features a centrally governed system characterized by compulsory teacher rotation while the latter features a locally governed system. Analyzing original data collected on 1426 teachers embedded in 49 schools in Japan, I test and find support for two hypotheses: the presence of jinji idou produces a more equal distribution of quality teachers (H1), and the public sector, overall, has a higher mean level of teacher quality than the private sector (H2). These corroborative findings could provide an incentive to revamp a U.S. system that has historically favored policies conducive to educational inequality.

Author

• Ryan Seebruck, University of Arizona