To the Editor:
Your front-page article “Study Sees Positive Effects of Teacher Certification” (“Study Sees Positive Effects of Teacher Certification,” April 27, 2005.) did not mention the attitude of the existing staff of teachers in a school toward incoming Teach For America staff members. I taught in a school in 1992, when TFA was fairly new. The established teachers (no reference is meant here to whether they were qualified or not—just that they were already on staff) actively shunned the TFA teachers and treated them with disrespect.
If this type of treatment was and still is common, it may be a variable affecting the results of the Stanford University research team, as well as the information in the graph headlined “Who’s Taught by Certified Teachers?”
Madge Haven
Alexandria, Va.
