By Jennifer Brooks - THE TENNESSEAN -

Some of the most effective new teachers in Tennessee are being trained, not by four-year programs at the universities, but over the course of a single summer before they head into the classroom.

"I was thinking the other day, 'Wow, I have the best job in the world,' " said Neily Todd, who majored in English at Vanderbilt but now teaches freshman algebra at Stratford High School. "I love it. I love my students."

Teach for America, which placed 108 new teachers in 39 schools around Nashville this year, trains non-education majors to become teachers. Its graduates outperformed most traditional university training programs on the state's 2010 scorecard on teacher training.

That's hardly surprising because Teach for America is a small-scale, highly competitive program that takes some of the nation's brightest college students and places them in disadvantaged schools. But state officials are hoping to learn from this program — and other successful teacher training programs — to improve classroom quality across the board.

"We know enough (about how Tennessee teachers are performing overall) to feel good," said Rich Rhoda, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. "To say that this is somehow an indictment of (traditional) teacher training programs would be unfair."

Graduates of Vanderbilt's storied Peabody education college also scored well on the state report card, registering the best math scores in the state. New teachers out of Middle Tennessee State University — one of the state's largest teaching colleges — racked up some of the lowest scores in the state for social studies. MTSU's dean of education declined to comment on the report.

Of the state's 42 teacher colleges or teacher accrediting agencies, eight show poor results, including the University of Memphis.

"Some of the things that the report indicated needed changing have already been changed," said Curt Guenther, university spokesman. "To strengthen our graduates' skills in the areas of math, science, language arts and social studies, our students are now being required to take coursework in all four areas," he said.

Under stricter requirements adopted by the Tennessee Board of Regents, education majors now must complete one year as a student teacher instead of a partial semester. They also must pass a series of tests that include being videotaped as they teach, and they must prove mastery of elementary literacy, he said.

About 46,000 people applied to join Tennessee's Teach for America program last year. The average applicant had a grade point average of 3.7 and a resume packed with leadership activities and other accomplishments. It's not a model that could be easily copied by the state's 42 teacher colleges or teacher accrediting agencies.

But some of the things Teach for America does — like provide intensive one-on-one mentoring for the young teachers during their first years on the job — might be something the state could copy on a broader scale, Rhoda said.

The state issues a teacher report card every year, evaluating new teachers on their students' "value added" test scores, which measure learning gains on standardized tests. Teach for America's graduates outperformed not only their peers among new teachers, but the scores for veteran teachers, as well.

Teach for America puts its student teachers through a rigorous summer training institute, where they learn things like how to draw up a lesson plan and how to manage a classroom. They then go to work in the district, earning the same pay as any other new teacher and completing the requirements toward their teaching certificates.

Participants commit to teach at least two years in an underprivileged school district. Shani Jackson Dowell, executive director of Teach for America in Nashville, said two-thirds of the program's alumni nationwide continue to teach.

"Our students become lifelong leaders in education," she said.