[Conor Friedersdorf]
The Urban Institute has published a paper on Teach for America that suggests the recent college graduates it employs are an impressive bunch.
As the abstract notes (emphasis mine):
TFA teachers are more effective, as measured by student exam performance, than traditional teachers. Moreover, they suggest that the TFA effect, at least in the grades and subjects investigated, exceeds the impact of additional years of experience, implying that TFA teachers are more effective than experienced secondary school teachers. The positive TFA results are robust across subject areas, but are particularly strong for math and science classes.
Eduwonk notes:
What this study should do is shift the burden off of Teach for America to prove why TFA'ers should teach and onto critics of TFA to show, because they're as good or better, why they shouldn't. It should also spark a renewed debate about how we train and license teachers because it's frankly not a ringing endorsement of the status quo that kids just out of college with a five week crash course turn in results like this. Just think about the results from a system that gave schools more flexibility about hiring, encouraged mentoring and support for new teachers, and included rigorous preparation...
Take that education schools!
See the rest of Eduwonk's post here for more.
UPDATE: I've clearly got too many Eduwonk posts open in my browser. (Thanks to AR for the pointer -- the above Eduwonk quote refers to an earlier study lauding Teach for America.)
Eduwonk's take on the current study:
The genius of TFA is that they've figured out a way to screen for some of the other traits that matter to effective teaching. Unfortunately, as is often the case in our field, rather than replicate or learn from that people are still mostly attacking it...in our industry if you build a better mousetrap you either get an argument about mice or they just come to your door and burn down your house...
Take that education schools!
Um, that eduwonk post you link to is from 2004. It's in reference to a different study. ...
The theory of comparative advantage springs to mind.
I volunteered in an almost identical program called the Alliance for Catholic Education, which placed Notre Dame graduates into struggling Catholic schools (as opposed to TFA, which places Yale graduates into struggling public schools). Both programs recruit and place super-smart and super-motivated teachers.
It's not surprising that super-smart and super-motivated teachers outperform less-smart and less-motivated ones. It would be very surprising if these results could be replicated with a different group of teacher candidates.
I can say from experience that educational masters programs simply filter out people who can't stand tediousness.
in our industry if you build a better mousetrap you either get an argument about mice or they just come to your door and burn down your house.
We mice have...shall we say...coh-negg-shuhnz.
people have only so much energy; if energy is spent with adminstrators and in meetings, then less energy will be spent inspiring students.
Spending 4 hours after work trying to finish some required "teaching 2nd language learners/child psych." course, probably makes that teacher less effective the next morning in his/her classroom.
It's really easy for someone who doesn't teach to bag on teachers, but teaching is pretty exhausting, which is probably one reason the experienced teachers don't do that well. It's also one reason that programs like TFA spend a lot of money, time, and attention to recruit and maintain motivated teachers. Even then, they don't retain all of their teachers in the profession.
If we followed a scorched earth policy and closed every education school in the country, and just tossed willing BAs into the schools, we might not do any worse, but this would not increase the supply of good teachers. In order to get motivated people to become teachers and stay teachers, you're going to have to recruit motivated people, give them a structure in the schools that supports them, and make them feel valued (this includes paying a decent salary, but it also means treating "teacher" as a prestigious profession and not having every jagoff opinion writer blame them for intractable social problems).
In other words, you at least are looking at cloning TFA on a much larger scale. People who howl about the badness of the education lobby are rarely willing to follow through with the sheer scale of what we would need to replace it.
There's at least one flaw in the study. By using teachers who finish the TFA program, the exclude the TFA burnout #'s. How many ed school teachers leave their first job in the middle of the first year? How many TFA teachers do. I know more than a few in the second category and none in the first.
The other issue is that TFA teachers rarely continue teaching as a profession. It's one thing to give a program everything you have for 2 years and another to try to balance teaching with the rest of your life. More money might make more TFA teachers stay in the profession, but unless you are proposing every schools plans for a 2 year turnover for most of its teaching staff, this doesn't seem like a good model to expand.
This seems to miss the most obvious logical flaw here, which is that TFA teachers commit to teaching for only 2 years (as bsci notes).
The TFA participants that I know are essentially highly-educated, highly-motivated individuals that join to TFA to make a difference before continuing on to more lucrative, equally rewarding careers. This means you get teachers who are both extremely able and also willing to devote themselves wholeheartedly to their mission for a limited period of time. (Try doing anything enthusiastically for 30 years and let me know how great you are by the end.)
Plus, many TFA teachers move to less advantaged areas; these are obviously not preferred locations for any teachers and the best can often avoid placement there. You don't get a premium for teaching in poorer schools, but you definitely take a hit in terms of materials, funding, and student interest.
I realize it's very tempting to hold this study up as some example of how lousy most teachers are and how great the TFA system is, but don't let ideology blind you to the obvious advantages that TFA maintains here.
In response to bsci...
Your two assertions, I believe, are logical reactions and are generally the two biggest criticisms I've seen of TFA. Unfortunately, they just aren't accurate. First, you overlook the most critical reason TFA exists in the first place--teachers from traditional ed schools generally choose not to teach in low-income schools. Thus, comparing the number of TFA burnouts, as you say, with the number of ed school teachers who quit is irrelevant. (Full disclosure: As a TFA alum myself, I also know that the choice is often between a TFA teacher and a long-term uncredentialed sub, so comparing TFAers to those graduating from ed schools is even more of a reach.) The number that does matter is the number of TFAers who finish their two years compared to the number of non-TFA novice teachers in low-income schools. The data actually show that a greater percentage of TFAers finish two years than do their counterparts (87% vs 82% I believe).
This leads to your second point--what happens after year #2? It turns out that TFA teachers stay long-term much more than "rarely". As my above point shows, teacher retention is a much bigger problem than this discussion. Ben's point is right on the money with this. Past the two year commitment, however, a full third of TFA teachers stay in teaching and another third stay within the field of education (administrators, literacy specialists, ed policy). Again, the data do not back up your claims.
Even for those who move on from the education world, the insinuation that geoffbro makes is largely untrue. I challenge you to find a TFA alum who has moved on and doesn't think about their classroom regularly. One whose views as a leader weren't informed by their two years (or more) in the classroom. The premise of TFA is that whether individuals become teachers for the rest of their lives or not, they will become leaders who care about and prioritize the issue of education. And that is what is happening in places like DC where the relatively new chancellor of schools and 10% of principals are TFA alums. Where the only National Teacher of the Year DC ever produced was a 1996 TFA corps member who was still at his school when he won the award in 2005. Where numerous education aides to senators and members of congress are alums. The point isn't that we should move to a national policy of two-year rotations. It's that more of our future leaders--inside and outside of education--need to understand what it will take to close the achievement gap. Until then, no real reform efforts will take place.