The New Teacher Project’s long-running partnership with the New York City schools is having a profound impact. TNTP’s flagship NYC Teaching Fellows program and its innovative Math Immersion track are leveling the playing field between students in low- and high-poverty schools by bringing thousands of high-quality teachers to high-need schools and subject areas. Today, one in 10 teachers in New York is a NYC Teaching Fellow. The direct impact of the NYC Teaching Fellows program has been complemented by TNTP’s analyses of the policy barriers to effective school staffing in New York City, which have advanced the district's efforts to create a comprehensive human capital strategy focused on quality.

New York City is home to the largest public school system in the country, with nearly 80,000 teachers serving 1.1 million students at 1,400-plus schools. Over the last seven years, The New Teacher Project has partnered with the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and played a key role in the city’s work to improve the quality of its teacher force. What began with the recruitment, selection and training of 325 new teachers for New York City’s hard-to-staff classrooms has evolved into the largest urban alternative certification program in the nation, and one of the more productive partnerships in education reform.

Today, more than 8,300 active teachers—or about 11 percent of the city’s total teaching faculty—were recruited and trained by The New Teacher Project’s NYC Teaching Fellows program. TNTP has also analyzed barriers to effective teacher staffing and helped to implement critical policy reforms. The organization’s work in New York City has led to measurable gains: A 2007 study published by the Urban Institute found that the NYC Teaching Fellows program substantially leveled the playing field between low- and high-poverty schools, bringing thousands of teachers with strong credentials to the schools that need them most.

A Growing Force: More than 8,300 NYC Teaching Fellows

In the summer of 2000, New York City’s public schools were under pressure from the state to eliminate uncertified and emergency credentialed teachers from the workforce. The district turned to The New Teacher Project for help developing and implementing a program that would inspire outstanding young and mid-career professionals to teach in the city’s most under-performing schools.

In collaboration with the New York City Department of Education, TNTP created the NYC Teaching Fellows, an alternate route to teacher certification program that attracted more than 2,100 individuals to apply for 325 available positions.  The quality of the applicant pool was so exceptional that the program expanded significantly, to 1,100 Fellows in 2001, 1,900 in 2002, 2,450 in 2003, and—due to a decreased need for elementary and social studies teachers—1,850 in 2004 and 2005.  In 2006, the program contributed approximately 2,000 new teachers to the city’s schools, out of 17,700-some applicants. As each year passes, more NYC Teaching Fellows join high-need classrooms and gain the type of experience that has been proven to enable them to affect real gains in student performance.

The 2007 application season was the most competitive yet for individuals hoping to become Fellows, with nearly 20,000 applicants vying for approximately 1,800 teaching positions. “Each year the Teaching Fellows program has attracted an increasing number of talented and driven people to teach in New York City public schools,” said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. “This year the process is so competitive that only the best out of every 10 applicants will become a teacher here. That is great news for our students.”

Today, there are more than 8,300 NYC Teaching Fellows actively teaching in New York City, accounting for nearly 11 percent of the total teaching faculty within the NYC Department of Education.  In fact, there are more Teaching Fellows in New York City than there are teachers in the public school systems of San Francisco, Milwaukee, or Boston. The dedication exhibited by Teaching Fellows “has been one of the reasons for our success,” says Sana Nasser, principal of Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. “We will continue to count on the NYC Teaching Fellows program to fill our vacancies. Without a doubt, you have the most qualified teaching candidates available.”

The Teaching Fellows program has not only redressed a dire teacher shortage, but has filled vacancies with a particularly outstanding group of teachers: 

• The average GPA of Fellows entering the classroom in 2007 is 3.3
• 44 percent of the 2007 Fellows are people of color
• 19 percent of the 2007 Fellows hold advanced degrees

Today, 87 percent of Fellows begin a second year of teaching, a higher rate than the national average, and nearly three-quarters teach a third year. These retention rates are noteworthy since Fellows teach in some of the hardest-to-staff schools in the city.  Nearly half (49 percent) of all Fellows who start their first year continue into at least a fifth year in the classroom.

Serving New York City's Neediest

The Teaching Fellows program targets its recruitment, selection and training efforts to meet the district’s greatest needs. The vast majority of active NYC Teaching Fellows teach in Title I schools, the federal government’s designation for schools serving the highest concentrations of students from low-income families. In fact, 92 percent of 2007 Fellows work in such schools. In addition, about 16 percent of all teachers in Bronx schools—traditionally some of the hardest to staff in the entire city—are Teaching Fellows. 

High-need subjects, including math, science, bilingual education, Spanish and special education are also consistently problematic areas for New York City.  Currently, Teaching Fellows make up 25 percent of all New York City math teachers, 20 percent of the city's special education teachers and 15 percent of the city's science teachers.  More than eight in 10 (84 percent) of 2007 Fellows are working in the city’s highest-need subject areas.

The New Teacher Project has developed and implemented the “Math Immersion” pathway to help career changers who did not major in math but who have significant professional experience meet New York State certification requirements in math education. To date, the Math Immersion pathway has supplied more than 1,700 math Teaching Fellows to the city’s classrooms. On measures of retention, student outcomes and principal feedback, Math Immersion Fellows perform as well as if not better than Fellows who majored in math.

Lasting Impact

As each year passes, Fellows continue to play a critical role in New York City schools. These teachers are gaining the type of experience that has proven to make them as effective if not more so at raising student achievement than their traditionally certified peers. In fact, two independent research teams released studies in 2005 showing that Teaching Fellows rapidly grow to be equal or better than teachers from other certification pathways in their effect on student achievement. Meanwhile, they are also helping to level the playing field between students in low- and high-poverty schools.

A report issued in September 2007 by CALDER, a publicly funded educational research center run by the Urban Institute, found that the gap in teacher qualifications between high- and low-poverty schools narrowed significantly in recent years, due in large part to the NYC Teaching Fellows program. “These changes can be attributed to the New York State policy that eliminated uncertified teachers and the New York City policy that established the Teaching Fellows program,” the report noted. By 2005, nearly 40 percent of all new hires in the poorest 25 percent of New York City schools were Teaching Fellows or Teach For America corps members. These specially recruited teachers on average brought stronger academic backgrounds to their new careers and outperformed other new hires on an exam for educators. “The hiring of Teaching Fellows and TFA teachers into high-poverty schools, instead of temporarily licensed teachers, has been responsible for much of the narrowing of the gap in teacher qualifications between high-poverty and low-poverty schools,” the report’s authors wrote. The study found a corresponding improvement in student achievement in the city’s high-poverty schools. (Click here for more information on the Urban Institute's report.)

The successes of the NYC Teaching Fellows program have been noted in national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Education Week, CNN, “World News Tonight” on ABC, “Good Morning America,” and PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” In May 2007, the U.S. Department of Education profiled NYCTF in an episode of its “Education News Parents Can Use” program on PBS. Now in its eighth year, the NYC Teaching Fellows program continues to exceed expectations.

Partnering in Strategic Reform

The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has turned to The New Teacher Project not only to implement the NYC Teaching Fellows program, but to evaluate its teacher hiring policies and help implement broader policy reforms. In the fall of 2004, the district engaged in a comprehensive assessment aimed at transforming Human Resources into a more responsive, data-driven and schools- and teacher-focused entity. The district charged TNTP (which had recently published Missed Opportunities, a report on the devastating effects of teacher hiring delays) with conducting a detailed teacher hiring analysis.

TNTP researchers were struck by the degree to which New York City’s collectively-bargained teacher transfer and excess rules impeded effective hiring. TNTP discovered that these rules:

• Gave schools little or no choice in hiring many transfer and excess teachers (nearly a quarter of the 11,900 teachers hired in the 2004-05 school year were placed in schools that did not interview or choose them);
• Required more than 35 percent of schools to take more than one transfer or excess teacher;
• Hurt the city’s newest teachers, whose positions were often re-posted at the end of their first year;
• Minimized the use of effective evaluation and dismissal procedures; and
• Forced schools to delay new teacher hiring until late summer.

• Ultimately, TNTP found that the district’s hiring practices had a negative impact on nearly every school in the district. The district used these findings to help resolve a nearly two-year deadlock in contract negotiations with the city’s teachers union. TNTP Chief Executive Officer Michelle Rhee spoke before an independent arbitration panel, explaining how excess rules in New York City adversely affected schools, teachers and children.

Based on the panel’s non-binding recommendations, the city and the union agreed to eliminate the practice by which transfers were based solely on seniority. In addition, teachers excessed from their schools would no longer be able to bump more junior teachers from their jobs. The union’s members voted to ratify the new contract—which ushered in a “mutual consent” teacher placement system—with the district in November 2005.

Chancellor Klein credited TNTP’s testimony as a key factor in the reformed contract. Soon afterward, TNTP issued a new report, Unintended Consequences, that was built upon the data gathered in New York City and four other urban districts.

Today, The New Teacher Project continues to help the NYCDOE tackle its most vexing human capital challenges. Most recently, TNTP has worked with hundreds of excessed teachers—those displaced from positions because of a fall in school enrollment, budget declines, programmatic changes, or school closures—to help them find new jobs and to study their hiring patterns, in order to identify barriers and potential reforms. Data from this analysis formed the core of TNTP’s spring 2008 policy brief, Mutual Benefits: New York City’s Shift to Mutual Consent in Teacher Hiring.

A Measurable Impact

New York City’s public schools have come far in the seven years since The New Teacher Project first partnered with the district. In September 2007, the Broad Foundation honored New York City with its prestigious Broad Prize in Urban Education, for districts that have seen improvements in student achievement and a closing achievement gap. In presenting the award, Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation, called New York City “a model of successful urban school district reform.” In his remarks at the ceremony, Chancellor Joel Klein credited TNTP for its impact on the district’s approach to improving human capital.

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