Corps effectiveness

Given the fact that their students are often years behind students in high-income communities, corps members must advance their students more than is typically expected in a year to put them on a level playing field. This is difficult for any teacher, and even more difficult for corps members whose students often face greater socioeconomic disadvantages than those growing up in other areas and whose schools often do not have the capacity to meet their students' needs. To be effective, corps members must surpass traditional expectations and reach beyond the current resource and time constraints of their schools, and that means a lot of hard work.

Yet, in hundreds of classrooms across the country, we have seen that the hard work pays off—that when children growing up in low-income communities are given the opportunities they deserve, they can and do excel. While we continue to work to improve our teacher training and support, every year we see an increase in the number of corps members who significantly impact their students' educational prospects. We seek independent, rigorous studies on the impact our corps members have on their students’ achievement. A growing body of research shows that corps members have a positive impact on their students’ achievement. Learn more about these studies

Internal Gains Measure

To inform corps members’ teaching and our own program development, we also seek to evaluate each corps member’s effectiveness in advancing students achievement. We measure the level of student achievement in each corps member’s class and categorize it as “significant,” “solid,” or “limited” academic gains. To qualify for significant academic gains, corps members must demonstrate that their students have made at least one and a half years of academic growth; that their students show 80 percent mastery of ambitious grade-level standards; and/or that corps members have reduced by 20 percent the gap on state assessments between their students and those in schools in higher-income communities. Corps members use the most rigorous assessments available to ensure that we have a comprehensive understanding of their students’ achievement.

Corps retention

Ninety-one percent of corps members return for a second year, which is higher than the estimated average for first-year teachers in low-income communities in general (83 percent) and the overall average for all first-year teachers regardless of school setting (86 percent).¹
Those who have not completed their commitment have left for a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction with teaching or their school administration, health problems and family emergencies.

¹ "No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children" (2003) National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. Washington, D.C.