Mathematica Policy Research recently released a study on the effectiveness of Teach For America secondary school math teachers that found that TFA teachers were more effective than the teachers with whom they were compared, regardless of the route to certification or years of teaching experience for the comparison teachers. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, this was the first large-scale, random assignment study of the effects of secondary school math teachers from TFA on student achievement.
The key findings include:
- Students assigned to TFA teachers scored higher than those assigned to comparison teachers on end-of-year math tests; the difference in scores is equivalent to the gains from an additional 2.6 months of math instruction.
- Students of inexperienced TFA teachers in the study (those who had only taught for three years or less) outperformed students of more experienced comparison teachers.
- Although TFA is often criticized for the fact that its teachers make only a two-year commitment to teaching, the findings suggest that over the long term, continuing to fill a position with TFA teachers who depart after a few years would lead to higher student math achievement than filling the same position with a non-TFA teacher who would remain in the position and accumulate more teaching experience.
Mathematica’s study is the largest, most rigorous assessment of secondary school math teachers from TFA to date. The TFA analysis included more than 4,500 students from 45 schools and 11 districts in eight states during the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years.
The LMU School of Education is Teach For America’s exclusive university partner in California, providing graduate training, mentoring and support for corps members in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose. Founded in 2000, the LMU/TFA Partnership is one of the organization’s largest and most successful university partnerships in the country, with more than 500 current corps members teaching in urban schools. Since 2009, more than 90 percent of LMU/TFA Partnership graduates have remained in education following their two-year commitment.
Learn more about the LMU/Teach For America Partnership.
