Dive Brief:
- Just 25% of educators who came from the Teach For America alternative certification program remained in classrooms for five years or more compared to 43% of non-TFA educators, according to a study published in the Harvard University research journal Education Next.
- However, the study found the average TFA teacher’s impacts on student learning, based on annual student math and reading test scores, improve at more than double the rate of their non-TFA peers when they’ve been instructing for at least five years.
- The study estimates that if a school leader continuously replaced departing TFA teachers with new corps members rather than non-TFA educators, student achievement would rise by 5%.
Dive Insight:
Alternative certification programs like TFA have generally expanded over the last three decades. There are over 200 alternative educator preparation program providers, and they train about 1 in 5 newly hired U.S. public school teachers, the study said.
Nearly 70,000 recent college graduates have been trained through TFA and placed in high-poverty classrooms nationwide since the program’s founding 34 years ago. After completing an intensive summer seminar before they are fully certified to teach, TFA’s corps members enter the classroom with additional training and support for the next two years.
The study published in Education Next analyzed the student performance of 308 TFA and 40,000 non-TFA teachers instructing in New York City Public Schools between the 2012-13 and 2018-19 school years.
Despite TFA’s success, the study said, concerns remain that novice teachers trained by the often-selective program are not prepared enough to serve students who likely have the greatest need for strong instruction.
Additionally, previous research suggests that, overall, teacher turnover can harm student achievement. While districts continue to explore ways to catch students up from pandemic-era learning loss, teacher shortages are stifling some schools’ abilities to recover academically, according to a 2023 report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
And as teacher shortages persist in schools nationwide, districts like Baltimore City Public Schools have continuously relied on alternative certification programs to help fill high-needs teaching roles.
Efforts to diversify the teacher workforce have also been growing as education leaders seek to have teacher pools better reflect student demographics. Despite high teacher turnover in alternative certification programs like TFA, the Education Next study noted that these programs also train a much more racially diverse group of teachers compared to those from traditional educator preparation programs in higher education.
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