Study Gives High Marks to 'Teach for America'

This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Education
Report.

Teach for America is a program that has provided more than ten
thousand teachers to schools across the country. They have taught
more than a million children from poor families.

Teach for America trains recent college graduates to work in
low-economic schools in different areas of the country. They are
expected to teach for at least two years.

A student at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, had
the idea for Teach for America in nineteen-eighty-nine. Wendy Kopp
wrote a paper in which she proposed a national teaching
organization.

People supported her idea. Money from major companies helped
launch the program. The program has also received money from the
federal government. And money comes from people and businesses in
areas where the teachers work. Wendy Kopp still leads Teach for
America.

Some education experts have criticized the lack of experience
that the young teachers have before they begin work. But now the
Mathematica Policy Research organization in Princeton has examined
the effects of Teach for America.

The Mathematica study took place
in six areas around the country between two-thousand-two and
two-thousand-three. It involved nearly two-thousand children in
seventeen schools. Researchers tested the students at the beginning
and end of the school year. They compared the results of students
who had Teach for America teachers with those who did not.

The study found that both groups did equally well on average in
reading. The Teach for America group scored higher in mathematics.

But two times as many of the Teach for America teachers reported
that physical conflicts among students were a serious problem. Even
so, the study found that the two groups of teachers had similar
rates of student expulsions and suspensions.

The researchers had praise for the Teach for America teachers.
They say the new educators had more success than teachers with an
average of six years of classroom experience.

Most of the Teach for America teachers said they planned to teach
for just a few years. About ten percent said they expected to teach
until retirement. By comparison, that was true of sixty percent of
teachers outside the program.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy
Steinbach. This is Steve Ember.