The Teach for America (TFA) program places accomplished college graduates, screened for their potential as teachers, into high-poverty schools with the goal of elevating the quality of instruction. Because TFA’s assessment of leadership potential receives substantial weight during the screening process, a possible additional benefit of the TFA program is that some participants who remain in public education beyond their two-year teaching commitments may eventually become effective administrators. Of course, this possibility depends on the accuracy of TFA’s ability to judge leadership potential and the skills of the TFA corp members who eventually become principals.

In this paper, we compare the career patterns and job performance of principals in Texas who began their careers as TFA teachers to principals who take more traditional accession paths. Our analysis is based on a rich collection of student- and school-level administrative data combined with records provided by the Teach for America organization.  We use value added methods to measure principal effectiveness, focusing on test scores but also exploring other measures of academic performance. When we study the career trajectories and mobility patterns of principals coming from TFA or more traditional paths, we focus on any systematic differences in job transitions between schools and transitions out of principal positions. We are particularly interested in differences between TFA alumni and other principals in their school’s student composition, in the probability of leaving a high-poverty school for a school with a lower share of disadvantaged students, in the probability of accepting a more advanced administrative position, and in the probability of leaving the Texas public schools entirely.

To gain additional insight into how performance as a teacher relates to subsequent performance as a principal and to learn more about how leadership practices may differ systematically between TFA alumni and other principals, we describe teacher transition patterns within their schools. An important question is how effective are TFA alumni at developing learning communities that retain and attract effective teachers and discourage ineffective teachers from remaining in the school. In addition, we use available information on TFA teacher performance in the classroom to examine the association between ratings as a teacher and subsequent effectiveness as a school leader.