Since its birth in 1990, Teach For America (TFA) has been one of the most scrutinized education reform programs on record. Not without reason: TFA takes a bold, innovative approach to teacher selection and preparation. Instead of having aspiring teachers slog through the conventional education school coursework before setting foot in a classroom, TFA recruits young people from selective universities, provides a five-week training program, and places them in high-need schools, including in Northeast and Southwest Ohio. The research evidence on TFA teachers’ impact has been mainly positive—particularly in math in the higher grades. But somewhat less known is the impact of TFA in the earlier grades. This study analyzes TFA teachers’ effectiveness in grades PK–5, employing “gold standard,” random-assignment methodology. Researchers randomly assigned 2,153 students to 156 teachers—sixty-six TFA and ninety comparison teachers—in thirty-six high-poverty schools, most of which were located in the urban South. The study compares students’ reading and math outcomes from the 2012–13 school year along the Woodcock-Johnson III achievement test for grades PK–2 and state tests for grades 3–5. The main finding: Across grades PK–5, no differences in average math and reading outcomes were detected between students taught by a TFA versus non-TFA instructor. In other words, elementary TFA teachers were just as effective as their traditionally trained counterparts, who had an average of about fourteen years of classroom experience. But when the researchers broke down the research results, they discovered that PK–2 TFA instructors had a positive impact on reading—at a magnitude of roughly 1.3 additional months of learning. Therein lies the good news. The study reported no other significant outcomes, either positive or negative, for any other “subgroup” subject and grade-span combination. The upshot: As Sara Mead of Bellwether notes, some concerns have been raised about early elementary TFA. The hard evidence from this report should put those worries to rest.
Source: Melissa A. Clark, et al., Impacts of the Teach For America Investing in Innovation Scale-Up (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica, March 2015).
