If you are a hacker (you are posting to hacker news), I suggest you avoid it.
I don't know anything about Teach For America specifically, but several people in my graduate program did work for a variant of it (local and math focused). None of them were happy with the program, though several stuck with it for financial reasons. One of them was put in charge of statistical analysis, since he was the only person in the room who knew what a standard deviation was (I'm not exaggerating). His conclusions:
1. Except for the grossly incompetent, teacher quality doesn't matter. He could not reject the null hypothesis (teacher quality doesn't affect student outcome).
2. Students do not benefit from being in the program, unless it removes them from a dangerous school. He couldn't reject the null hypothesis here either (accepted students perform the same as rejected ones). (This fact is usually well hidden: students accepted by special teaching programs as well as students who apply but are rejected usually perform better than students who do not apply.)
According to him, other programs usually get similar results (well hidden in the appendix of a report), at least when the results are reported.
Overall, he said it is a waste for a talented individual to go into teaching. You won't make a difference. As a software person, you will.
Leave teaching to people who can't do anything else. They have a comparative advantage (even if they lack an absolute advantage).
[Disclaimer: I've been teaching computer science at the high school level for nearly eleven years now. My B.S. is in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, and I set the curve in some of my courses.]
I hesitate to disparage the analysis of an anecdotal person I've never met, but I disagree with the claim that statistically teacher quality doesn't affect student outcome.
The current leading meta-statistical analysis of teachers and teaching methods and their effect on student learning is "Classroom Instruction that Works", by Marzano, et al. They have statistics on good teacher/bad school, good teacher/good school, bad teacher/good school and bad teacher/bad school and the effect on student performance. The average effect size when comparing multiple studies shows that good teachers do make a significant and measurable difference in student achievement.
I think leaving teaching to "people who can't do anything else" is a cop-out. I've taught the basics of programming to over 1000 students in my career thus far. I know of at least a dozen who now do it for a living, including some who say that a career in programming never crossed their mind before taking my class. Do you think I've had a net positive effect on the industry? I can write a lot of code, but teaching others to code eventually produces more. "Teach a man to fish" and all that.
I do agree with Prrometheus below that a lot of public education is "an inflexible, pathological bureaucracy."
I also agree that if you don't enjoy working with young people, don't bother. Further, if you can't set healthy boundaries, you'll eventually get burned out. Also, if you're a hacker at heart, you'll need to keep coding somehow, or you'll go mad.
Of course, I don't know anything about Teach for America either, but I do know that I really enjoy teaching, and I'm glad I went that route rather than industry or starting something of my own.
Well, keep in mind what I'm describing is one special program in math. Also, everything I know I heard over beers, while complaining about our advisors.
Regarding teacher quality, he found the best fit was a failure model. Most teachers perform adequately, and these teachers are statistically indistinguishable. Some teachers fail, with varying degrees of failure.
Basically, think hard drives. Most work, and these are all the same. Some fail, with varying degrees of data loss.
If the sample in the study you mention comes from the partially failing region, they could easily find an increasing relation. Or possibly this program was special, that I don't know.
However, I do stand by my statement to leave teaching to those who aren't great at other things. That's just basic comparative advantage.
You are comparing your students with you as a teacher to your students with no teacher. The proper comparison is "you program, joe blub teaches" vs "you teach, joe blub programs." If joe blub teaches almost as well as you, but you program much better than him, then it's far better if you leave the teaching to him.
Of course, if you enjoy teaching, you certainly are not obligated to do the most economically efficient job. I'm certainly not (postdoc in math here).
Yes, but the number of students in my program is higher than the other two (wealthier) schools in my district, and a lot higher than schools with comparable demographics.
Even if Joe Blub teaches nearly as well as I do (and I'm willing to accept that he may), I recruit a whole lot better than he.
But if I teach my students Java (as the AP exam requires), does that make me Joe Blub?!? :)
Ouch. This is sort of the conclusion I came to by observation (and my mom is an excellent teacher). But I guess it's better to know and not like the answer than just bury your head in the sand for the sake of ideology.
I don't know anything about Teach For America specifically, but several people in my graduate program did work for a variant of it (local and math focused). None of them were happy with the program, though several stuck with it for financial reasons. One of them was put in charge of statistical analysis, since he was the only person in the room who knew what a standard deviation was (I'm not exaggerating). His conclusions:
1. Except for the grossly incompetent, teacher quality doesn't matter. He could not reject the null hypothesis (teacher quality doesn't affect student outcome).
2. Students do not benefit from being in the program, unless it removes them from a dangerous school. He couldn't reject the null hypothesis here either (accepted students perform the same as rejected ones). (This fact is usually well hidden: students accepted by special teaching programs as well as students who apply but are rejected usually perform better than students who do not apply.)
According to him, other programs usually get similar results (well hidden in the appendix of a report), at least when the results are reported.
Overall, he said it is a waste for a talented individual to go into teaching. You won't make a difference. As a software person, you will.
Leave teaching to people who can't do anything else. They have a comparative advantage (even if they lack an absolute advantage).