A new study from the National Center for Education Evaluation looks at two alternative pathways for teachers in hard-to-staff positions in high-poverty schools. Specifically, the study analyzes the effectiveness of Teach for America and Teaching Fellows teachers in high school mathematics. Here’s a few takeaways:
- “TFA teachers were more effective than the teachers with whom they were compared. On average, students assigned to TFA teachers scored 0.07 standard deviations higher on end-of-year math assessments than students assigned to comparison teachers, a statistically significant difference. This impact is equivalent to an additional 2.6 months of school for the average student nationwide.”
- “Teaching Fellows were neither more nor less effective than the teachers with whom they were compared. On average, students of Teaching Fellows and students of comparison teachers had similar scores on end-of-year math assessments.”
- “Novice TFA teachers were more effective than both novice and experienced comparison teachers. Another common criticism of TFA is that it seeks teachers willing to make a two-year rather than a longer-term commitment to teaching. Critics claim that too many TFA teachers leave teaching before they accumulate the experience needed to be as effective as their counterparts from other routes (Heilig and Jez 2010). To examine this concern, we compared novice TFA teachers (defined as those in their first three years of teaching) with both novice and experienced comparison teachers. We found that novice TFA teachers were more effective than comparison teachers regardless of the comparison teachers’ experience. Students of TFA teachers in their first three years of teaching scored higher on math assessments (by 0.08 standard deviations) than students of their counterparts in their first three years of teaching. Students of TFA teachers in their first three years of teaching also had higher student math achievement (by 0.07 standard deviations) compared with students of comparison teachers with more than three years of experience.”