Gauging the Effectiveness of Alternative Teacher Training and Certification

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The quality of public education and a looming teacher shortage rank high on the list of our country's educational concerns. Our major evaluation of the Teach For America (TFA) program examined the impact of TFA teachers on student learning, finding that students of TFA teachers made stronger gains in math than students of other teachers, while holding their own in reading. TFA focuses on expanding the pool of teachers for our nation's most disadvantaged students by recruiting recent college graduates from some of the nation's best colleges for two-year teaching commitments in urban and rural public schools. Since the program's inception in 1990, it has provided more than 10,000 teachers who have touched the lives of more than 1.5 million children.

The TFA evaluation was conducted in 17 high-poverty schools in 6 regions around the country where TFA places teachers. Researchers, after randomly assigning students to a TFA teacher or a non-TFA teacher, administered a standardized test. They then compared the performance of the students of TFA and non-TFA teachers. The findings provide information to educators about whether hiring TFA teachers helps alleviate teacher shortages without hurting student performance. They also inform the national debate on alternatives to traditional methods for recruiting and training new teachers.

The evaluation consisted of a pilot study in one school district during the 2001-2002 school year and a full-scale study in five other school districts during the 2002-2003 academic year. Along with scores from a standardized test administered at the beginning and end of the school year, researchers also collected student data from school records and teacher data from teacher surveys.

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