It would have been too much to expect that the recent gold-plated study of Teach For America by the research firm Mathematica would silence TFA's most vocal critic, Linda Darling-Hammond. The Stanford ed school professor's history of tangling with TFA has proven to be much more than a mere academic debate that could be settled by the facts at hand. TFA is a fundamental threat to the teaching profession. If amateurs are allowed in the classroom, a critical principle unravels: that teaching is a profession requiring years of training.
Having met with little rhetorical success- mostly because parents and schools just plain like the energy and smarts that TFA has to offer- Darling-Hammond continues to hammer away, this time with a study looking at the impact of TFA corps members in the classroom. While the research community may have long ago reached some unsettling conclusions about the bias of Darling-Hammond's research, the larger public is often persuaded hook, line, and sinker.
The study, presented at this month's AERA conference, asserts that TFA teachers are measurably worse than certified teachers- at least those teaching 4th and 5th grade in Houston. Notably, there's little mention of the definitive $2 million Mathematica study, other than to dismiss it for not having "explicitly compared TFA teachers to teachers with standard training and certification, controlling for other student, teacher, and school variables." This statement is just not true.
Where it is true is in Darling-Hammond's own study. She compares a tiny number of uncertified TFA teachers- ranging from 8 to 21 teachers in a period over six years, presumably teaching in the worst schools in Houston- with well over a thousand certified teachers across the district. Critical school variables were ignored. School-level results could have been reported; why weren't they? Further, the results of tests given to Spanish-speaking students, delivered by fewer than a handful of TFA teachers, are given the same weight as a test administered to thousands of Houston students, on which TFA teachers produced more significant success.
Unfortunately, this study will take on a life of its own and will be cited repeatedly as evidence of the harm inflicted by TFA corps members. This field is so politicized that many in it have no qualms over citing weak research - if it advances the cause.
For a fuller explanation of the methodological flaws in this study, we asked NCTQ Advisory Board member Dr. Michael Podgursky for his views. Follow the link below for more from Dr. Podgursky.