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Path to Classroom Not Linked to Teachers’ Success

Study finds little tie between certification route, students’ scores.

The certification pathway that New York City teachers took to their classrooms seemed to have little relationship to how effective they were in raising students’ scores, concludes a study that matched some 10,000 teachers with six years of test results.

The research also found that the variation in effectiveness among teachers with the same certification status—traditionally certified, alternatively certified, members of the Teach for American program, and uncertified—was much greater than the variation between groups.

The study is the second within three months to look for links between certification type and teacher effectiveness in the 1.1 million-student district, and to find that the connections...