Sorry to repeat the joke in the headline, but could the Seattle Times editorial board be any less informed about the subjects on which they choose to opine? For example, this data-less blowjob of Teach for America:

A district often accused of not making data-driven decisions is smart to wait until the end of the contract and measure TFA's effectiveness. Until then, rely on parents' and principals' up-close observations.

It is too early to glean information about TFA's impact from standardized test scores or other data. But TFA teachers appear to be doing the right things...

That's right, a school board accused of not making data-driven decisions should instead rely on anecdotes and appearances, instead of, you know, peer-reviewed research. Why? Because as the corporate reformers feeding the editorial boards their talking points surely know, there's not a single peer-reviewed study that finds that TFA has a positive impact on students. In fact, most of the studies find that TFA and other under-certified teachers do worse than veteran or traditionally certified teachers:

"In reading, mathematics, and language, the students of certified teachers outperformed students of under-certified teachers, including the students of the TFA teachers, by about 2 months on a grade equivalent scale. Students of under-certified teachers make about 20% less academic growth per year than do students of teachers with regular certification."
— The effectiveness of Teach for America and other under-certified teachers on student academic achievement: A case of harmful public policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10 (37).

"When compared to college-recommended teachers, alternative-route teachers often provide smaller gains in student achievement, at least initially, and for ELA it takes longer to catch up."
— How changes in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce and affect student achievement. MIT's journal of Education Finance and Policy, 1 (2): 176-216.

"Uncertified TFA teachers showed significant negative effects on student achievement in five of six estimates..."
— Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13 (42).

TFA doesn't release its full research, though that doesn't stop it from making extraordinary unsupported claims based on bogus "Value Added Measurements." So no... after two decades of TFA nationwide it's not "too early to glean information about TFA's impact." And it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that, on average, trained, certified teachers do a better job than untrained, uncertified ones. They may cost more money, sure, but as in most things, you get what you pay for.

The Seattle Times closes its information-free editorial by belittling TFA critics for their "scathing blog posts and anti-TFA speeches." Heaven forfend! But as Gary Rubinstein, a 20-year TFA alum-turned-critic, blogging on TFA's own website explains, there are good reasons why people have started hating on TFA:

The big reason, though, that people who hate TFA is the way TFA benefits from actions that hurt kids and teachers. When a school gets shut down unfairly, a TFA alum will be there to start a charter school in the old building. When a school fires half its staff for a ‘turnaround,’ TFA licks its chops as they get to populate these schools with more TFAers. Meanwhile, TFA must know, deep down, that shutting down schools and turning them around doesn’t work. TFAs silence on these issues is another thing that people hate about TFA. Surely some of these schools employ plenty of TFAers and have administrators who were TFAers who get fired because of these. Destructive corporate reforms seem to benefit TFA and nobody else. And TFA could do the right thing and speak up against this, but they don’t since these reforms are the source of much of their money and power.

If the editors' goal was truly to improve education, then they'd be passionately and relentlessly advocating for the one education reform that's been irrefutably proven to work: Universal preschool. But if their goal is merely to punish teachers and bust their unions, then all this advocacy for TFA and charter schools makes perfect sense.