Addressing Teacher Shortages in Disadvantaged Schools: Lessons From Two Institute of Education Sciences Studies

Two recent IES studies evaluated teachers from two highly selective alternative routes–Teach For America and the Teaching Fellows programs–and less selective alternative routes that accept nearly all applicants. An evaluation brief discusses the following lessons learned from these two studies:

• Teachers who enter teaching through alternative routes to certification can help fill teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools and subjects without reducing student achievement.
• Coursework taken while teaching appears to decrease teachers' effectiveness.
• Predicting teacher effectiveness at the time of hiring appears to be difficult.

View, download, and print the report as a PDF file (614 KB)

To view the video of the forum on the brief, click here.