Mathematics Coaching Access and School Characteristics in US Schools

Although coaching is a prevalent professional development structure to support teaching and learning in US schools, little is known about the school characteristics that correlate with the presence of mathematics coaches in those schools. We position mathematics coaches as a valuable and high-quality professional development structure; thus, determining who has access to mathematics coaching is situated around issues of equitable distribution of resources. Using the nationally representative, restricted-use 2017 NAEP dataset for fourth and eighth grades, we investigated the distribution of school characteristics by the level of mathematics coaches available (i.e. no, part-time, or full-time) and the proportionality of the distribution of each school characteristic measured. Findings indicated that certain student populations are more likely to have access to a mathematics coach, and having one type of coach (i.e. literacy or mathematics) predicts having access to the other. These findings have implications for both the policies and practices around mathematics coaching, as well as implications for future research to expand this emerging body of the literature.