Posted inBlogs, Elementary to High School, Eye on Education

Eye on Education: Does Teach For America work?

By Aaron Pallas

How do we tell if a program or policy “works”? It’s no easy task, for several reasons. First, programs often have ambiguous or multiple goals, and hence a program may “work” with respect to some, but not all, of these goals. Second, judging whether a program is meeting a particular goal is not simply a technical judgment, but also a political one; it frequently involves asking the question, “compared to what?”