September 12, 2013 12:24PM # When Does 5 Weeks of Training Beat 4 Years of Higher Ed? By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE …when the training is doled out by Teach for America and the higher ed. is a traditional teachers’ college. That’s the conclusion of [a new study by Mathematica Policy Research](http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20134015/pdf/20134015.pdf), a respected purveyor of quantitative social science research. The salient details are [summarized by *Politico*](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/teach-for-america-student-achievement-math-96548.html): > the researchers found statistically significant gains, which they calculated as the equivalent of about two and a half extra months of learning for students of TFA recruits.… The TFA teachers got better scores from their kids than a comparison group of teachers who went through traditional university training programs. It kind of makes you wonder, what are they teaching in those four years of university instruction? I haven’t seen a comprehensive recent rundown of the subject, but back in the 1990s a top-flight journalist, Rita Kramer, spent a year visiting teachers’ colleges all over the country. What did she find? Well, she called her book [*Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America’s Teachers*](http://www.amazon.com/Ed-School-Follies-Miseducation-Americas/dp/0595153240). I talked a little more about the TFA study with Bob Bowdon at *[ChoiceMediaTV](http://bit.ly/15SMHaQ)*. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).