Teach For America National AmeriCorps Evaluation: 2017–18 and 2018–19 School Years

Teach For America is a national program that recruits and trains young adults to teach in low-income and disadvantaged communities in the United States to help confront educational inequity through measurable student growth.    

Study Goals:
The goal of the study was to use a quasi-experimental design to compare students’ reading and mathematics achievement based on whether their primary teacher was a Teach For America (TFA) AmeriCorps Members/alumni or non-TFA teacher. The evaluation used end-of-grade state assessments in reading and mathematics from students in grades 4 through 8 in 8 TFA regions (13 sites).    

Research Questions:
The research questions were:

1. Across TFA regions, what was the impact of being taught by TFA AmeriCorps Members on student academic achievement (reading and mathematics) as compared to being taught by novice non-TFA teachers?
2. Across TFA regions, what was the impact of being taught by TFA alumni on student academic achievement (reading and mathematics) as compared to being taught by experienced non-TFA teachers?

Findings:
The intervention found that:

• There were no statistically significant average differences in student standardized state assessment reading or mathematics scores between students taught by TFA AmeriCorps Member/Alum as compared to student taught by a non-TFA novice teacher. 
• However, the evaluation found that TFA AmeriCorps Members taught a greater proportion of students of color, students from low-income households, and students who had lower prior-year achievement scores.

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