Study Sees Positive Effects of Teacher Certification

Students learn more from certified teachers than they do from uncertified teachers, even when the uncredentialed teachers are Teach For America recruits from some of the nation's top colleges, a Stanford University research team concludes from a study of test scores in Houston. Findings from the study, which researchers presented in Montreal on April 15, 2005 during the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, have refueled the fierce, continuing debate in research and policy circles over programs that let new teachers into the field without traditional training. The Stanford team arrived at its conclusion after analyzing seven years of test-score data for 4,400 4th and 5th graders in Houston, a district that leans heavily on the Peace Corps-style Teach For America program to fill teaching positions in hard-to-staff schools. However, critics said the study left out important information and analyses. They said the researchers omitted information on the number of teachers involved in some of the analyses, and analyzed other data in a way that might confuse teachers' experience with their certification status. Indeed, two other studies have suggested that Teach for America recruits may be as effective as or better than other teachers in their schools and districts. In the more recent of those reports, researchers from Mathematica Policy Research Inc., of Princeton, New Jersey, found that elementary students taught by Teach for America recruits in eight cities learned more mathematics over the course of a school year than their peers whose teachers were hired through more traditional routes. In reading, the two groups of students fared about the same.