Teachers tested: private vs. public training.

• Author: Evans, Zenon
• Position: Citings - Teach for America - Brief article

TEACH FOR AMERICA, a nonprofit that places newly minted college grads at needy public schools, is not always popular with teachers' unions. Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis declared in 2012 that the organization's trainees "kill and disenfranchise" their students. But a recent study commissioned by the Department of Education indicates that by at least one measure, the instructors trained by Teach for America do a better job than conventionally trained teachers.

The study, which was carried out by researchers at Mathematica Policy Research, focused specifically on mathematics. Over two school years, the researchers gathered information on 4,573 students in III different classrooms taught by 136 teachers in 45...