Teach For America Research Articles

A Comparative Analysis of Teacher Education Pathways: United States vs. Vietnam

This report provides a comparative analysis of teacher education pathways in the United States and Vietnam, focusing on the diversity of options and requirements, advanced educational attainment of novice teachers, and their subject assignments. Both countries offer traditional undergraduate and postgraduate pathways, and the U.S. offers alternative pathways. Traditional programs in the U.S. typically involve a four-year undergraduate degree in education followed by certification, while alternative programs, such as Teach for America, allow prospective teachers to work full-time in classrooms while completing their education coursework. In Vietnam, teacher education often involves specialized training programs within universities that emphasize pedagogy and subject knowledge. Novice teachers in the U.S. frequently pursue advanced degrees within the first few years of teaching. In Vietnam, advanced education is less common among novice teachers, who instead focus on continuous professional development. Subject assignments in the U.S. are typically aligned with teachers' training and certification areas, but teacher shortages can lead to out-of-field teaching. In contrast, subject assignments in Vietnam are more rigid, with teachers usually teaching subjects they specialized in during their training. This report highlights the strengths and challenges of each system and thus contributes to the global discourse on teacher education, aiming to inform policy decisions and improve teacher preparation programs worldwide.

Power and Political Verve of Teachers Unions: A Fitful Five Years for America's Teachers, 2018–2023

This paper provides an overview of major public school teacher union issues that made headlines in the demi-decade from 2018 to 2023, weaving several threads to present a current look at America's educators, the unions that represent them, and the institutional structures that influence our nation's schools. Consideration is given to the U.S. Supreme Court Janus ruling that outlawed agency fees and its impact on teacher unions, the Red for Ed groundswell of union protests that swept the nation in 2018–2019, educator activism reflected in the increased cadence of teacher strikes post-COVID, levers of power being flexed by state politicians, and membership trends of the National Education Association, the nation's largest labor union. Using Malin's (2012) analogy of “tsunami” to describe the rollbacks of ten states’ public sector collective bargaining rights from 2010 to 2012, another round of seismic sea waves characterized the 2018–2023 period, their energy and awe on full display.

The Effects of High-Performing, High-Turnover Teachers on Long-Run Student Achievement: Evidence From Teach For America

An increasing share of new teachers participate in alternative preparation programs. A fundamental question is what effect these programs have on long-run student achievement. To address this question, I study Teach For America (TFA) teachers working in New York City (NYC). I first estimate within-teacher returns to experience and find that TFA alumni teachers improve at double the rate of the average NYC teacher over their first 5 years in the classroom. I then model the joint relationship between turnover and performance over time. The results suggest that the net effect of TFA hiring on long-run student achievement is positive, despite the regular churn within the TFA workforce.

“I knew I had to leave”: A Bourdieusian analysis of why Teach For America teachers quit early

Educational stakeholders have long been concerned about teacher attrition's negative effects. Teach For America (TFA), in particular, has garnered attention for this reason, yet many of its teachers quit even before the program's two-year commitment ends. Drawing on Bourdieu, this longitudinal qualitative study explores heretofore neglected insights from TFA teachers (n = 5) who leave early. We find that while quitters are motivated to teach, their forms of cultural and social capital within the educational field lead many to quit. The paper argues that some of these limitations are attributable to TFA's programmatic design, raising critical questions about its continued approach.

Broadening Participation of Teachers in Computing: Examining Postsecondary Educational Experiences and Prospective Educators’ CS Teaching Interests

Teacher shortages in K–12 computer science (CS) education negatively impact students’ access to CS courses, exposure to CS concepts, and interest in CS-related careers. To address CS teacher shortages, this study seeks to understand factors related to expressing a preference to teach CS among prospective teachers. The study team analyzed data from 27,700 prospective teacher applications accepted into the 2016–2020 Teach For America (TFA) corps (cohorts). The TFA corps is an alternative teacher development program that recruits and prepares participants to obtain their teaching certification while they work for at least two years in underserved communities on a temporary teaching license. Study results show that earning at least one postsecondary CS credit and majoring in CS are positively associated with these prospective teachers’ preference to teach CS. Findings indicate that among these accepted TFA applicants, a larger proportion of male applicants and racially minoritized applicants earned a postsecondary CS credit, majored in CS, and preferred to teach CS compared with female applicants and racially non-minoritized applicants. This study lays the foundation for future explorations of whether early exposure to CS could increase prospective teachers’ interest in teaching CS and reduce CS teacher shortages in K-12 settings. Findings from this study can also serve as a precursor to developing policies that result in a CS teacher workforce that is more representative of students enrolled in K-12 public schools.

Estimates of Teach for America Effects on Student Test and Nontest Academic Outcomes Over Time

This article examines the impact of Teach for America (TFA) on following-year student test and nontest outcomes in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Using data from 2010 through 2021, this article measures the extent to which student exposure to TFA is followed by improved outcomes in the future, relative to students with other early-career teachers in the same school. In particular, this article measures days missed due to absences or suspensions, course grades in each core subject, and progression in math courses. We find that students taught by TFA math teachers go on to have higher grades in math courses in the following year and are less likely to miss school due to being absent or suspended. However, while students in TFA classrooms score higher on math and ELA assessments in a given year, these test score gains fade out by the following year.

Liquidity for teachers: Evidence from Teach For America and LinkedIn

There are teacher shortages in the U.S. and around the world. In a three-year field experiment with a large teacher placement program, Teach For America (TFA), Coffman et al. (2019) finds that providing upfront liquidity to prospective teachers in financial need dramatically increases the rate at which they start teaching through TFA. In this paper, we combine TFA administrative data, survey data, and publicly available data (e.g., LinkedIn profiles) to extend those results. We follow individuals for a few years post treatment and find that providing upfront liquidity not only increases the rate that financially constrained individuals join TFA but also increases the rate that they complete the full two years of teaching. Further, providing liquidity to those who need it increases their likelihood of being teachers at all – not just through TFA – through at least two years.

Playing it Safe in the Classroom: How Avoiding Controversy Norms the White Conservative Experience

Controversial as it may be, I entered education through Teach for America (TFA), an organization that purports to place new teachers in regions that struggle with literacy, retention, and poverty. There are many very harsh and warranted criticisms of the program, particularly related to their perpetuation of a white-savior mentality and the appeal to ambitious graduates looking to boost their resumes with a bit of social justice work before moving on to prestigious careers in public policy, politics, and law. I begin here not because I want to shape perspectives on TFA, but to contextualize how TFA has shaped me and, more specifically, my approach to curricula. I applied to the program several years after leaving university, motivated both by my passion for education and by my desire to help dismantle systemic oppression in America. I wanted to work for and with students who were disenfranchised, silenced, and otherwise ignored, but let’s be clear: I did not want to save my students; I wanted to celebrate them.

Jonathan Zimmerman. The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America.

American academic life is highly professionalized, except when it comes to teaching. Years of rigorous graduate-school education are dedicated to learning methods of research and writing in the particular disciplines, but almost no time is dedicated to learning how to teach. After a year of graduate seminars in Berkeley in the late 1970s, I was set to work as a teacher of undergraduates with no preparation of any kind, an experience that was then normal. Professional advancement for more than a century now has come through publication in prestigious journals and presses, and almost never from distinguished teaching. Jonathan Zimmerman’s marvelous book The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America explains why and shows that centuries of effort to improve college teaching have almost always failed. Eighteenth-century students hated the old technique of recitation, which required them to learn passages by heart and recite them in class. It was stultifying and extremely boring. But the gradual shift to lectures in the nineteenth century did not bring a new dawn. Dull lectures from uncharismatic teachers were equally bad. Underpaid professors often had to work exceptionally long hours—future US president James Garfield, for example, as president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, was forced to offer his geology course at five o’clock in the morning. Most students responded to uninspired teaching by cheating as much as possible, playing wicked pranks on their tutors, boycotting the most hated professors, and staging rebellions. Zimmerman mentions in passing Harvard students’ “Rotten Cabbage Rebellion” of 1807.

Hope, vulnerability, and grief: An aspiring teacher's journey through teaching and Teach for America

This article utilizes a poststructuralist framework for conceptualizing how institutional practices and discourses shape teacher emotions. Part of a larger qualitative study examining the philosophies and teaching experiences of former Teach for America (TFA) teachers, this article explores one aspiring teacher's brief journey through teaching. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews examined Dominic's educational past, teaching experiences, and reflections. Structured as an emplotted narrative analysis, findings captured Dominic's emotion-laden transition into and release from TFA and teaching. This article contributes to teacher emotion research from a poststructuralist perspective by situating emotions within larger discourses.

The Emergence and Policy (mis)Alignment of Teach For Taiwan

ABSTRACT Teach For All (TFAll) is global network of programs based on Teach For America. Since 2007, TFAll has spread to more than 60 countries and had a considerable impact on educational policy across educational jurisdictions. Scant research, however, has examined ‘shadow’ programs based on this model but unaffiliated with TFAll, such as Teach For Taiwan (TFT). This paper engages in a critical policy analysis of TFT and examines both its emergence and (mis)alignment with educational policy. Our analysis first highlights the inspiration and support TFT has drawn from TFAll and its affiliate programs, despite its unofficial status. The paper then examines how TFT is aligned strategically with recent policy shifts toward deregulation in Taiwanese education. We also find that TFT is misaligned with key educational structures, including the national salary scale for teachers and teacher education system, resulting in a new category of transient teachers who are uniquely positioned in the teaching roles they assume but largely unable to continue teaching beyond TFT. We argue that more attention within education policy studies should focus on the impacts of (un)official TFAll programs – particularly given their disproportionate power and positioning to effect global educational change – and their (mis)alignments with national systems.

Megan Blumenreich and Bethany L. Rogers. Schooling Teachers: Teach for America and the Future of Teacher Education New York: Teachers College Press, 2021. 210 pp.

Megan Blumenreich and Bethany L. Rogers. Schooling Teachers: Teach for America and the Future of Teacher Education New York: Teachers College Press, 2021. 210 pp.

Teach For America influence on non-TFA teachers in TFA-hiring schools

Teach For America (TFA) has left an indelible mark on education in the United States and worldwide through its expansion via Teach For All. A considerable body of research examines the impact and experiences of teachers who enter the profession via TFA and related organizations, including the ways in which they embody controversial policies and new forms of teacher expertise and professionalism. Scant research, however, has examined the experiences of non-TFA teachers who work alongside them. This instrumental case study draws on interviews with nine non-TFA teachers working in traditional public schools to explore their experiences of interacting with TFA teachers at their schools. The findings focus on the perceived inexperience of TFA teachers as well as the labor expended by non-TFA teachers in support of these novice teachers. The paper also examines experiences of TFA teacher attrition and its impact on other teachers, students, and staff at the schools. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of this study and related research across individual, institutional, and broader structural levels.

Civilian national service programs can powerfully increase youth voter turnout

Low rates of youth voting are a feature of contemporary democracies the world over, with the United States having some of the lowest youth turnout rates in the world. However, far too little is known about how to address the dismal rates of youth voter participation found in many advanced democracies. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of a potentially scalable solution that has attracted renewed interest today: voluntary national service programs targeted at the youth civilian population. Leveraging the large pool of young people who apply each year to participate in the Teach For America (TFA) program-a prominent voluntary national service organization in the United States that integrates college graduates into teaching roles in low-income communities for 2 y-we examine the effect of service participation on voter turnout. To do so, we match TFA administrative records to large-scale nationwide voter files and employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around the recommended admittance cutoff for the TFA program. We find that serving as a teacher in the Teach For America national service program has a large effect on civic participation-substantially increasing voter turnout rates among applicants admitted to the program. This effect is noticeably larger than that of previous efforts to increase youth turnout. Our results suggest that civilian national service programs targeted at young people have great promise in helping to narrow the stubborn and enduring political engagement gap between younger and older citizens.

How Teaching in Underserved Schools Affects Beliefs about Education Inequality and Reform

Abstract What effect does experience as a teacher—the street-level bureaucrat of the education system—have on one’s education policy opinions and beliefs? We consider the case of Teach For America (TFA), a prominent alternative teacher preparation provider with an admissions process that generates quasi-random variation in applicants’ likelihood of being a teacher. We leverage this variation using a regression discontinuity design and collect outcome data by surveying TFA applicants regarding education inequality and reform. We find that teaching in underserved schools leads individuals to favor more structural as opposed to individualistic explanations for poor student outcomes. When asked to evaluate education reform strategies to address education inequality, we find that these teachers are more likely to support policy prescriptions that improve both student outcomes and teachers’ working conditions, namely investments that expand access to school-based services (e.g., meals, counselors) for low-income children. Similarly, teaching experience causes no change in support, and in some cases, less support for policy levers that do not unambiguously improve student outcomes or teachers’ working conditions, such as market-based school reforms. Moreover, experience in the classroom cultivates greater optimism in the potential of educators and schools.

Book Reviews - The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America by Jonathan Zimmerman. Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning by Scott M. Gelber

Book Reviews - The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America by Jonathan Zimmerman. Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning by Scott M. Gelber

Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning

Although Jonathan Zimmerman's The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America and Scott M. Gelber's Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning cover much of the same historical terrain, the focus of each book proves quite distinct and yet highly complementary. Zimmerman best articulates the stark paradox at the center of both studies. As the United States developed the most elaborate system of higher education and the scholarly endeavors of faculty members evolved into a “highly professionalized enterprise, marked by elaborate codes of credentialing and practice” (p. 10), college teaching in contrast remained a game of chance, conducted by “amateurs, working according to folkloric traditions rather than codified ones” (p. 226). Zimmerman's work attempts a simple and yet daunting task: to supply a history of college teaching in America. Zimmerman excels in discussing the stories of great lecturers and efforts for reform, but often leaves more questions than answers when it comes to the myriad attempts (usually dismissed by faculty) to systematically assess college teaching, exactly where Gelber's work fills in the gaps. As Gelber notes in his conclusion, the evaluation of collegiate teaching and learning “ranks among the greatest unsolved problems of academia—a basic scholarly dilemma” (p. 156). Taken together, these two books may help academicians begin to work toward solutions, simply by finally offering accessible historical overviews of their related areas, though Gelber seems the more optimistic of the two with regard to the possibility (or necessity) of positive change.

Book Review of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America

Book Review of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America

Maintaining meritocratic mythologies: Teach For America and Ako Mātātupu: Teach First New Zealand

ABSTRACT Alternative teacher education programmes associated with the Teach For All network are emerging worldwide. Largely inspired by Teach For America, these programmes draw on the meritocratic vision that ‘one day’ all children will receive a high-quality education and fulfil their potential. This paper questions the underlying ideology of meritocracy as evident in two Teach For All affiliate programmes – Teach for America and Ako Mātātupu: Teach First New Zealand. By drawing on qualitative data collected from across both programmes including interviews with participants and stakeholders, this article explores the ways in which meritocratic discourses undergird each programme’s mission and are subsequently voiced by participant teachers. Findings suggest that, despite significant differences in socio-political and economic contexts, strikingly similar discourses surface. We argue that the meritocratic ideologies evident in both contexts promote narrow definitions of ‘achievement’, disillusionment among teachers, and a general obfuscation of inequality.

How does Teach For America engage its alumni politically? A case study in Detroit

We describe the alumni engagement efforts by Teach For America (TFA) in Detroit as a case study of the specific ways that the organization works to influence its alumni’s involvement in educational politics and disposition towards particular types of educational reform. During the 2019-20 school year, TFA Detroit facilitated a series of “policy workshops” for its alumni, intended to inspire TFA corps members and alumni to engage in political and policy advocacy. Combining field notes and other artifacts from the policy workshops with a social network analysis of the featured participants and central organizations, we show that TFA Detroit drew upon its local, state, and national policy networks to construct workshops that in turn would politically mobilize alumni to support their networks’ preferred city and state policies and reforms.