Report: Teaching program could benefit from enhanced oversight

Government reviewers found that a program to recruit military personnel for teaching careers and place them in underserved schools enhances the diversity of the nation's teacher pool, but could benefit from better management.

A Government Accountability Office report published Wednesday on the Troops-to-Teachers program, which is jointly administered by the Education and Defense departments, cited statistics indicating the program has been successful at helping military personnel launch careers in public school teaching, through financial and placement assistance.

But the report (GAO-06-265) said that management shortcomings, including weaknesses in data analysis and coordination with a similar Education Department program, could keep teachers from being placed where they are most needed and result in excessive administrative costs.

The program offers participants -- active-duty military personnel on the verge of completing their service, as well as reserve personnel meeting certain eligibility requirements -- up to $5,000 in reimbursement for teacher accreditation courses and an additional $5,000 bonus for teaching in schools designated as high-need.

More than 80 percent of recently placed participating teachers are male and more than 25 percent are African American, the report said. This is markedly different from the representation of these groups in the general teaching pool, which is 26 percent and 9 percent, respectively. About a third of troops hired through the program between January 2002 and June 2005 taught in the priority areas of math, science, special education or vocational education, according to GAO.

Over the 2002 to 2005 period on which the review was based, 3,875 troops were hired through the program.

But GAO found that despite the program's success at "contributing to the diversification of the teaching workforce," the Education Department, which funds and oversees it, failed to sufficiently scrutinize program results reported by Defense Department managers. This happened in part because differing definitions of high-need schools and school districts made it difficult to thoroughly analyze the data, the report said.

Reviewers also urged the Education Department to enhance the use of metrics to evaluate the performance of 33 state offices for teacher recruiting and placement, noting that costs per teacher hired range from $181 in Arkansas to $22,000 in Montana, and were about $4,000 on average.

Coordination between the program and the Education Department's Transition to Teaching program, portions of which also serve military personnel, was also highlighted as an area for improvement, and GAO recommended that Education develop a plan to coordinate the two.

Responding to the report, Christopher Doherty, acting assistant deputy secretary of the Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement, said some of GAO's concerns with data recently had been addressed, and an analysis of efficiency measures for the state offices would be completed by the summer.

John Gantz, chief of the Troops to Teachers program for DoD's Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support, said that regardless of GAO's oversight concerns, the program is enormously successful. As an example, he said DANTES data indicates that after five years, three-quarters of participants continue to pursue education careers.

"They may be moving from the classroom to the principal's office, but they're still in public education," Gantz said.