Roosevelt | Teach for America in New Haven Schools

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

Teach for America in New Haven Schools

One of several proposed projects for the 2007-2008 Center on Education is a project examining the results and impact of Teach for America in New Haven public schools.

This project calls for a study of the effectiveness and integration of Teach for America teachers in the New Haven School District. Teach for America (TFA) is a national program that places recent college graduates and other professionals whose background is not in education in low-income schools as teachers. TFA teachers make a two-year commitment and typically teach core subjects such as math, reading, science, or foreign languages. This project would compare the achievement of students who had TFA teachers with the achievement of their peers in their school who had other teachers, and with the achievement of other students who had first-year teachers in that academic year. It could also examine the environment of schools with large numbers of TFA teachers through interviews and surveys of TFA and non-TFA teachers and principals.

Teach for America was founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp, a Princeton graduate. Since then, it has placed over 17,000 teachers. In the last academic year, 4,400 teachers were placed in 25 different areas, 45 of whom taught in New Haven. According to Alderman Nick Shalek, the program is expanding from 45 teachers last year to 120 teachers next year in the New Haven public schools. Despite this vote of confidence from the New Haven school district, objective studies have found Teach for America’s results to be decidedly mixed. A 2004 study by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., found that TFA teachers had statistically the same impact on students’ reading scores and a slightly more positive impact on their students’ math scores (translating to a roughly a 10% higher grade). Another study, by the Stanford University School of Education, found that the student achievement results for certified teachers nearly always exceed the results for uncertified teachers, including TFA teachers. These results suggest that hiring TFA teachers may not be the most efficient way for a school district to improve achievement, especially considering the costs of replacing TFA teachers every two years. The goal of our project would therefore be to study the effectiveness of TFA teachers in New Haven in order to report to the School Board and school district on whether TFA teachers are, on average, a worthwhile investment. We would also seek out trends and circumstances, such as the role of the principal or the environment of the school, that make some TFA teachers more effective than others.