Taking Stock in 2005 Getting Beyond the Horse Race

During the summer of 2004, a new study of the impact of Teach for America (TFA) teachers on pupils' achievement was released by Mathematica Policy Research, Incorporated. Taking stock in 2005, this editorial uses the new TFA study to make several points about research on teacher preparation programs in general and about how this research is often used and misused in the discourse about teacher preparation reform. The editorial begins by reviewing two previous studies of TFA, noting that although they asked similar questions, they reached directly opposing conclusions and, not surprisingly, engendered directly opposing critique from those with differing political and professional agendas. Then the editorial briefly describes the Mathematica study, arguing that although it was not designed to compare the effectiveness of teachers prepared in university-based teacher education programs with that of teachers who entered teaching through alternate routes, it is nonetheless being constructed that way in the larger political discourse. The editorial makes the argument that the new study is one more indication that we need to get beyond the teacher education "horse race," which pits one route, program, or structural arrangement against another to declare the "winner" or the "one best" approach to teacher preparation. Instead, we need to focus directly on the essential ingredients in the preparation of all teachers and the ways these interact with what teacher candidates bring and with the contexts of programs and schools to produce desirable outcomes. ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF TFA TEACHERS: PREVIOUS STUDIES In June 2004, a major national study (Decker, Mayer, & Glazerman, 2004) of the impact of TFA, an alternate teacher recruitment and training program, was released by Mathematica, an independent research firm that provides analyses of the socioeconomic issues that drive public policy. Not surprisingly, the Mathematica study generated immediate response. Since its inception in 1989, TFA has been a hot-button issue among teacher education researchers and practitioners and among educational policy makers. Indeed, in many of the most contentious debates, TFA has been constructed as both the poster child for alternate routes into teaching (even though it is technically not an alternate route but a teacher recruitment and initial training program) and a major battleground for larger discussions about who should teach, what they should know, how and where they should be prepared, and who should decide. The Mathematica study is not the first analysis of the impact of TFA teachers on pupils' achievement as indicated by test scores. Raymond, Fletcher, and Luque (2001), for example, studied TFA teachers for the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), a research group of the Hoover Institute. This study compared new TFA teachers hired in Houston with other new teachers hired there and concluded that TFA teachers were at least as good as others in terms of pupils' test scores and better than other new teachers in raising pupils' math test scores. The foreword to the study, written by Chester Finn and Marci Kanstoroom, concluded, "The TFA program, we learn from this study, proves that it's not necessary to spend an extended period in an ed school to be effective in a K-12 classroom" (p. ix). Spokespersons for major national organizations supporting professional teacher preparation were quick to critique the study, pointing out that because Houston has an unusually large number of uncertified teachers (including teachers without even a bachelor's degree), the study actually compared TFA teachers with teachers who were less well-qualified than they were. Critics concluded therefore that the study did not really "prove" anything about the effectiveness of teachers prepared in "ed school" programs in comparison with teachers entering through alternate routes. Critics also pointed out that the exceedingly high attrition rate of TFA teachers in the Houston study (60% to 100% after 2 years) was a major concern. …