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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Teaching Assignment Linked to TFA Retention - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Teaching Assignment Linked to TFA Retention - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Teaching Assignment Linked to TFA Retention

Teach For America teachers who are assigned to teach more than one grade, subject, or out-of-field are more likely to leave their schools—or the profession altogether, a new analysis concludes.
The paper is the latest addition to a complex research base on the popular alternate-route-to-teaching program. (Eduwonk has a nice summary of the research over at his blog.)
Morgaen Donaldson of the University of Connecticut and Susan Moore Johnson of Harvard University conducted the study, which is the first to my knowledge to examine the retention of TFA teachers longitudinally, using a national sample.
It also avoids some of the problems with retention-based literature in general. As the authors note, past studies