Improving educational performance, including narrowing equity gaps, is frequently touted as a matter of improving the quality of teachers in the lowest performing, often disadvantaged, schools. However, the assumption that teaching is of poorer quality in disadvantaged schools is largely unsubstantiated. Using the Quality Teaching Model of pedagogy, we observed 832 lessons in 193 New South Wales primary schools and found a small relationship between teaching quality and school-level advantage. However, when 174 teachers from across the school spectrum participated in Quality Teaching Rounds we found equivalent, and substantial, gains in teaching quality across all levels of school advantage. This result indicates that differences in teaching quality are less a reflection of teacher capabilities than of the challenging circumstances in disadvantaged schools. We argue that policies seeking more equitable achievement should address wider social inequities, rather than unfairly blaming teachers for being unable to level an unequal playing field.

改善教育表现，包括缩小公平差距，经常被吹捧为提高表现最差、往往处于不利地位的学校的教师质量的问题。然而，关于弱势学校教学质量较差的假设在很大程度上是没有根据的。使用教学法的质量教学模型，我们观察了新南威尔士州 193 所小学的 832 节课，发现教学质量与学校水平优势之间存在小的关系。然而，当来自整个学校范围的 174 名教师参加质量教学轮次时，我们发现在所有学校优势水平上的教学质量都有相当的和实质性的提高。这一结果表明，教学质量的差异与其说是教师能力的反映，不如说是弱势学校的挑战性环境的反映。我们认为，寻求更公平成就的政策应该解决更广泛的社会不平等问题，而不是不公平地指责教师无法创造一个不平等的竞争环境。