Teach for America Reports Some Gains

Posted by on December 31, 2004

[posted from Health Professions Partnership Initiative newsletter]

TEACH FOR AMERICA STUDY REPORTS SOME GAINS

A recently released study indicates that students of Teach for America (TFA) teachers matched students of a comparison group of novice and veteran colleagues from the same schools in reading and performed slightly better in math. The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., examined a small sample of 41 TFA teachers across several urban school districts serving mostly at-risk students, and compared them to 57 control teachers of whom 18 were also novices. While the study’s authors viewed the results as evidence of the success of TFA and concluded that “the success of TFA teachers is not dependent on their having extensive exposure to teacher practice or training,” their findings illustrate the failed teaching policies that plague our nation’s urban schools. In fact, the student achievement of both TFA teachers and the control group was abysmal, students made few gains, and the novice control group teachers actually had less teacher preparation than their TFA counterparts in the study. Meanwhile, other studies show that more extensive teacher education can lead to substantial student achievement gains which, sadly, did not materialize for the students in the schools sampled in this study. [Thanks to Jane Lowe, our Program Officer at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for this information.]

http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/teach.pdf