Relentless Pursuit by Donna Foote Page B

to develop a system by which to measure corps member effectiveness. In 2003, it rolled out IMPS—Information Management and Processing System—a database that allowed TFA to track corps member data across the program continuum.
    It got a little help from its friends. As a pro bono project, top consulting firm McKinsey helped TFA redesign its recruiting and selection process. And when McKinsey partner Matt Kramer eventually joined the TFA staff, he pioneered a predictive selection model that could identify which candidates would make the best teachers. The model linked student achievement outcome results to individual corps members’ incoming scores on the seven application competencies. As the data became more and more robust, TFA was able to identify a certain combination of teacher traits that were predictive of success in the classroom. Real people still presided over the interview process, but computers were increasingly relied upon to inform their decisions. By the time Hrag, Rachelle, Phillip, and Taylor applied, TFA had developed six distinct profiles of winning traits in successful teachers.
    Teach For America’s mission from the start had been to
recruit
and
train
the best and brightest to teach in America’s lowest-performing schools. The organization never promised to figure out a way to
retain
them. In fact, it fully expected the majority of its corps members to leave the classroom after their two-year stint. TFA took the long view, guessing that TFA alums would assume positions of power in public life and ultimately figure out the retention piece as part of the larger solution to the achievement gap.
    By 2005, the theory was bearing fruit. “I think most people deeply engaged in ed reform believe and know that TFA is producing an unprecedented and deep pipeline of people moving the ball forward on education reform,” says Kopp. “I think we are going to see a dramatic growth in impact as our alums get older.” Education reformers agree. “We think of TFA as a farm system for leaders,” says Kevin Hall, a former TFA staffer who is chief operating officer of The Broad Education Foundation, one of the leading philanthropies funding school transformation. Jim Shelton, education program director for the mighty Gates Foundation, concurs. Noting that TFA has successfully seeded the educational-reform landscape with high-caliber human capital and talent that is “really, really smart and very, very good,” he describes it as “one of the most important nonprofit organizations serving public education in America.”
    But the immediate and pressing problem of the recruitment and retention of quality teachers has yet to be solved. Nationwide, an estimated 14 percent of teachers leave the classroom in the first year, nearly half by the fifth. High attrition rates are especially pronounced in low-performing schools. In California’s high-poverty schools, 10 percent of teachers transfer away each year. The result: in 2005, children in the state’s lowest-performing schools were five times more likely to face a string of unprepared teachers than were kids in the highest-performing schools.
    At Locke, the numbers were worse. In the 2005–2006 school year, approximately one third of the faculty was new and three fourths had been there fewer than five years. Thirty percent lacked a full credential. Three of the six assistant principals were in their first year as Locke administrators, and not a single one had been at the school longer than five years.
    Locke students suffered the consequences. In the 2005–2006 school year, 32 percent of the classes in core academic courses were taught by teachers not qualified under federal law. And 302 classes were characterized as “teacher misassignments,” meaning that teachers assigned to the class lacked a legally recognized certificate or credential for the course. Three teacher positions went unfilled—a