Ha- Teach for America teachers now getting training at Ed schools

[Hannah Bell]

In two decades, thousands have been inspired to apply to be Teach For America teachers, bypassing teacher education in favor of a summer crash course in teaching. The program has been held up as a model solution to problems faced by the most-troubled schools. But is it?

Large-scale, peer-reviewed studies in Arizona and Texas - conducted under the auspices of prestigious research laboratories, involving thousands of teachers and over 100,000 students - show that the program's teachers are almost as good as poorly qualified (that is, uncertified) teachers at raising kids' reading scores and a bit better at raising kids' math scores.

But when comparing the program's teachers with fully qualified teachers, it's a different story. A 2010 study called Teach For America: A Review of the Evidence found "standard certified teachers consistently outperformed uncertified Teach For America teachers with comparable experience in similar settings." Each study comes to about the same conclusion: The program's teachers are slightly better than the least prepared but far worse than the fully prepared. When the program's teachers take additional course work in education and get additional supervision, mentoring and experience, they improve.

Why is this? Because teaching takes YEARS to master and cannot be learned in a few weeks before school starts... But it became clear early on that beginning Teach For America teachers were floundering. So the organization now has increasing numbers of partnerships with schools of education, providing much-needed education courses to its teachers. The program just doesn't broadcast those arrangements.

http://queensteacher2.blogspot.com/2010/08/teach-for-america-bad-deal-for-public.html

[MichiganVote]

1. K&R

[Starry Messenger]

2. Shocker.

:sarcasm:

[LWolf]

3. So, once TFA sends it's teachers to schools of education to

bring them up to speed, what, exactly, is the point?

Perhaps they'd like to fund the full education of some young people who plan on actually making a career of educating instead. :D

:

[w4rma]

4. No kidding. Who thought a well educated teacher was worse than a summer schooled one? (nt)