Gary Rubinstein noticed a burst of TFA tweets making dramatic claims. They said that a new study found that students of TFA teachers gained one year more than teachers with same experience, and that middle students gained a half year more from TFA teachers than from other new teachers.
Gary read the study and found that these dramatic claims were over hyped.
In eight comparisons, five showed no statistically significant difference.
In the middle school study, the students in TFA classrooms got two extra questions right on a 40 question test. The amazing one-year of alleged gains were based on three more questions right.
Gary concludes:
“I think that TFA needs to back off on the miracle stories. The fact is that new TFA teachers are not much better, if they even are any better, than new non-TFA teachers. Neither are that good, really. Teaching has a big learning curve, but by the time you figure it out, you generally have to wait until next year to have a fresh start with a new group. As far as alumni teachers, yes, I think they are generally pretty good. I’d let an alum teach my kids. But as good as they might be, to ignore the fact that most of the comparisons were pretty neutral and then buy into the idea that when one group of students learns a year more than another group, they will only get, on average, three more questions correct on a multiple choice math test, well that’s the kind of thing that is going to keep me investigating these kinds of claims and spreading the word.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Occasional exaggeration of one’s success, or putting the best face on things, can be called spin.
When it’s a chronic pattern of deception, as with TFA, it should be called what it is: lying.
When don’t they lie? Their whole mission, which keeps changing, is a lie. They didn’t close the achievement gap. Their leaders are not leaders. Their mission is to destroy the union, the profession and to promot the privatization/destruction of all public schools.
This raises an interesting point. When I took over a 6th and 7th grade math class in a “difficult” school, I had two different cohorts. I came in at the middle of the year because the new teacher hired for Sept. bailed out in Oct. The kids had subs for 2 months until I came in. The first 2 months were h*ll until they realized I was for real and I wasn’t going to abandon them. Things improved drastically and real learning was taking place.
The two different cohorts translated into two different performances on the state standardized tests given in March. When the groups went into the next year, the now 7th graders CMT scores reversed its negative slope as traced from math CMT cohort scores for 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. On the basis of the graphs, I had made a dramatic improvement in test scores. However, the difference was really “only” an increase of 3 students achieving “proficient” instead of “basic” as their previous 3 years. The rest of the cohort scored approx the same. And the now 8th graders were still slope flatlined so no test score improvement there. Same teacher.
Was I an effective teacher? Should I have kept my job? Did the test scores of these two different cohorts tell us anything useful?
Hmmmmm…..maybe they used the Rhee method of improving test scores????
Perhaps TFA teachers are just better at “teaching to the test.” In my experienced opinion, students who perform better on standardized tests do not necessarily have the critical thinking and creativity skills that we want our future leaders to possess.
Ain’t it great to have Gary on our side?
Talk is cheap and all the TFA, Gates, Broad, Walton, HP et al have is lots of cheap talk. This is found by just what this person did and that is to actually analyze what they said with the base documents. One extra answer is equal to what????? This is the level of their true arrogance. Some people do the real work and that is analysis of base documents which have not been altered and then the comparison to other data bases with the same information. It is amazing how often I find different information on different data bases for the same subject. That is impossible in the real world. One example is in the 2009-10 LAUSD Superintendent Budget and in the same year on the California Dept. of Ed. (CDE) website. That is the ADA of LAUSD. How can that number on the two databases for the same year and subject be 72,000 students different? Or in the 2012-13 budget special ed is 4.7%, the national average is 12-13%, the State of California in a power point at the State Board of Ed. says 10% and the Chanda Smith Special Education court appointed monitor for LAUSD says it is 11.47%. I asked the monitor how can from the same data base can special ed be in the same year 4.7% and 11.47% which is a 250% variance? He did not know. I then asked if he knew that at LAUSD state and federal catagorical special ed funding was 24% of the total revenue of LAUSD and he did not know that. Since then nothing has happened in spite of the Federal Court monitor know of these disparities. Does this smell to you? And we have not gotten to the big money yet.
and that middle students gained a half year more from TFA teachers than from other new teachers.
The have TFAs teach from Kindergarten and then kids will be graduating high school while their nonTFA taught friends will be finishing 8th.