There’s been some good blogging lately on how to interpret the studies on Teach For America (TFA) teacher effectiveness – see Matthew Di Carlo and Adam Ozimek. But neither addresses the research from a Relinquisher standpoint. Here’s what they say:
Matt’s takeaway: TFA teachers are by most standards “talented” – i.e., they went to selective universities, graduated at the top of their class, are motivated, and work hard. But they don’t dramatically outperform traditional teachers. So perhaps that link between recruiting “talented” teachers and increasing test scores isn’t as tight as it might seem.
Adam’s takeaway: TFA teachers get five weeks of training and achieve roughly the same results as teachers who go through much longer university-based training programs. So imagine what “talented” TFA-type folks could do if they actually had more training.