In honor of the 25th anniversary of Teach for America, a reader sent me this spoof from The Onion.
As you know, the slogan of TFA is that “One day, all children will have an excellent education.” (Something like that.)
Well, 25 years later, we don’t seem to be any closer to that day. Maybe it is because TFA has sold politicians and corporations on the myth that having TFA’s “great teachers” matters more than funding the schools. Maybe it is because TFA sells the dubious idea that their young and ill-trained college graduates are better than experienced teachers. (Bring in TFA and save on pensions because they won’t stay around long enough to get a pension.)
But TFA does have a revenue stream of $300 million a year and is one of the most powerful corporate presences in DC. The organization is doing very well indeed. But the day that all children will have an excellent education is no closer. Indeed, TFA will probably have a 50th reunion and sell the same tired cliches about the awesomeness of their corps members.
In Wendy Kopp’s last book (A Chance to Make History), she pointed to three districts as exemplars of TFA success: Washington, D.C.; New York City; and New Orleans. She identified Chris Barbic of YES Prep as one of the best TFA graduates. We know from NAEP that DC has the largest achievement gaps in the nation among urban districts; New York City is in the middle of the pack among urban districts on NAEP; and New Orleans–well, if you think every city should wipe out public education, get rid of the union, fire all the teachers, and start over, that is a model. Not a very good one, according to the many researchers who have concluded that nearly half the charters are low-performing. As for Chris Barbic, he came to the Tennessee Achievement School District as a savior, and left four years later, with little to show for it. The schools in the ASD continue to be among the lowest-scoring in the state.
So, perhaps TFA will point to the districts that demonstrate the amazing transformational power of TFA. Not DC. Not NYC. New Orleans? Only if you believe that one of the lowest-performing districts in one of the lowest-performing states is a miracle.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why do you use absolute measures of performance when it suits your argument, but otherwise (correctly) point out that they’re meaningless out of context?
This denial of growth where it’s happening is intellectually dishonest and makes it obvious that this is about ideology, not results.
The argument that not much has happened in 25 years is also pretty laughable. U.S. public education is one of most intractable bureaucracies in the world. Making minimal progress over decades is the only way positive change will ever happen. Saying progress isn’t happening fast enough, therefore we must resist it is Orwellian doublespeak and part of the problem.
This has been a banner weekend for the status quo demonstrating how it keeps change from happening, with you and Gary Rubenstein “calling out” TFA on DC results because despite growth, DC results are still bad. No kidding? And one flat year in Tennessee means we should ignore two big years of gains?
No matter what changes are made, no matter what we as a society do with how the educational system functions, nothing will ever change. Why? Simple. We as humans are bound by the same laws of nature and the Universe as every other thing is. Not every child will succeed. It will never happen. Sorry to burst everyones bubble. If every child succeeded, that would be an implied utopia where nobody is in jail, there is a 0% crime and unemployment rate, everyone has a great job and is physically and emotionally satisfied. This will never, ever happen. Whether you have public, private, charter schools, human society will always follow a bell curve just like every other species on the planets. Some students will be on top, a big group in the middle and some at the bottom. The only difference for humans is that the ones at the bottom do not get eaten. It has been this way for 4.5 billion years and will be like this for the forseeable future and to think that we can change this is pure hubris.
Scientific fact: bell curves move. That is change.
The idea that we should do nothing because of how statistics work is nonsense.
Relative poverty is about the bell curve. Having enough to eat is about the position of the bell curve, a.k.a. the standard of living.
Currently most of my school is TFA. Some work very hard, many kind of seem like they are patting themselves on the back too much for reaching out to “those kids”. The other day I asked one if she was planning to come back after her second year: the answer was “no”. Another one is applying to grad school. I think most will be moving on.
Teaching for TFA should require a 5 year commitment.
Well, I have yet to be proved wrong. The only thing we can do is give everyone an equal chance. Some will take it, some won’t. I and the way the Universe works has yet to be proved otherwise.
Aggod, yes, but bell curves can be shifted or skewed upwards. That is the goal. The real issue is not a Gaussian distribution, but asymptotic behavior. It takes increasingly more amounts of resources to educate the next kid, but a near infinite amount to educate the last.
Aggod,
“The only thing we can do is give everyone an equal chance”
Not true. For example, we can spend more resources on those that need it most. We can provide small group instruction. There are *lots* of things that we do, and more that we can do, than give everyone an equal chance and just see what happens.
Besides that, “equal chance” is a myth. Do kids in typical urban schools have an equal chance with those in typical suburban schools? Does a student from an affluent family have an equal chance to be successful as a student from a low income family?
When I say equal, I mean free piblic education. That is all.
You don’t need test scores to see the damage TFA does, its fundamentally flawed ideology, and the driving motive behind most of these “reformers” (profit).
Gary Rubinstein made a persuasive case based on state data that the ASD in Tennessee was a flop. Why do you think Chris Barbic quit? He admitted in his parting statement that it is easier to get results in a choice school (where the school chooses) than in a neighborhood school. Kudos to him for candor. No kudos to you for making excuses.
MathVale: as a classic example of innumeracy, until a few years ago I would not have understood what you wrote, much less the meaning of “asymptote.”
Re the last, according to the dictionary bundled with my word processor: “a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance.”
You said so much in so very few words that I will let a very old and very dead and very Roman guy say what I am thinking:
“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.”
😎
Dear John:
Thank you for your interest in becoming a staff writer for the Onion.
Your attempts at satire and sardonic writing appear to come up to the 23th percentile on our standard bell curve evaluation which is slightly less than most of deroceras reticulatum’s results. As such though, we are delighted to inform you that you have a bright future writing for Fox News or any of the other Main Stream Media to whom you should apply.
Please do not apply again as we do not like paying lawyers fees to have you cease and desist.
Sincerely,
The Onion Editors
Duane,
This site is at its best when it posts intellectually honest criticisms of reforms, and at its worst when it applies whatever rationalization supports doing nothing regardless of evidence.
This is a fine example of the latter.
John, you may have noticed that teachers who have dedicated their lives to teaching, day in, day out, at relatively low pay compared to other professionals, and with very little public gratitude, don’t like temps who arrive to “save” the children and leave after two years.
To what does the second this refer? TIA, Duane After I know that we can have a “discussion for the better education of all students.”
Sorry you didn’t enjoy the humor intended.
Define the term “growth” please.
TFA is actually closing down some branches since 2014. They are going downhill business wise, as they are receiving less applications than they used to back while ago.
Thank you for the chuckle. I reread that satire article now and then. Teaching must be the only profession where Reformers insist less experience is good, lower pay produces better results, and a more knowledgeable employees are a hindrance to success.
MathVale: you are on a roll today!
😃
It’s all part of the fascination that rheephormsters have with George Orwell.
¿?
1984. Kind of their playbook. They adhere most rigidly to what they consider the admonitions contained therein:
For example, to parallel your comment: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
How can they think and speak like that? Because they have mastered a new way of looking at things, to wit:
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
I’m glad I could clear that up…
😎
Mathvale, you just made my little book of quotes:
“Teaching must be the only profession where Reformers insist less experience is good, lower pay produces better results, and [a] more knowledgeable employees are a hindrance to success.”
Thanks for peeling away the layers of hype and spin to reveal reality, something that is in short order among “reformers.” TFA is “reformer” mythology.
Nobody who goes to work every day in a school for a career choice ( as opposed to a two year resume booster) is saying that we should do nothing. Personally I would like to see pay stalled for anyone who consults for TFA, or other “reformers” as limited to 40k max. We will see who is really committed to children.
John what is your role and how much do you make?
John,
I can will almost 99.99999% confidence that in 50,100,500 years we will still have human that will not succeed. Charter schools just like public school can do nothing to stop this.
Maybe near the probability the sun will no longer rise, but I still get up every morning. I’m not sure your point.
Read, “Bad Students, Not Bad Schools.” By Weissman. He tells it how it really is.
Aggod,
I simply don’t believe that we have more students of “mediocre intellectual ability” than we had decades ago.
We will continue to have about the same number of students of “mediocre intellectual ability” so long as we define “intellectual ability” by test scores. We define “mediocre” as “right around the cut score” on test scores. Whenever we get to a point on a particular test where too many students are doing too well on that test, we throw it out because, obviously, it’s not a valid test if that many kids are doing that well, right? So then we re-norm that test or start all over with a new test so just the right number of kids are “mediocre”. And then we turn around and complain that too many kids are “mediocre”. Sheesh.
Dienne,
I agree re cut scores. The book Aggod recommended makes the case that there are just more kids of mediocre intelligence in schools these days. It bugs me when people equate deficits with intelligence.
Another TFA success story: (except the kids are still failing)
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/a-turnaround-in-denver/460086/
In Colorado, where TFA hires illegals to teach. Wendy would dig up cadavers and pay them nothing, but keep the $50,000 plus for herself if she could.
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/04/14/3425830/denver-school-district-daca-teachers/
In Colorado, where TFA hires illegals to teach. Wendy would dig up cadavers and pay them nothing, but keep the $50,000 plus for herself if she could.
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/04/14/3425830/denver-school-district-daca-teachers/
Donna – Aside from your characterization of young people who qualify for DACA status, brought to this country by their parents while children as “illegals”, I have to agree that this program is one hot mess!
You’ve got the Waltons and TFA using the vulnerabilities of DACA recipients to undermine the hiring of traditionally trained teachers and supplant their roles in the classroom under the guise of “culturally responsive pedagogy” while TFA gets to showcase their diversity. That is one amazing feat.
Imagine for a moment the instant promotion of butchers to surgeons … or deck builders to bridge engineers. Imagine Cub Scout troop leaders as military generals … or menu makers as the next classic authors.
That’s where we are with these instant baptisms of new teachers from the college campuses of Oz. And suddenly idealism has more credence than preparation. These instant apostles almost always find their calling in the most difficult schools … and for many, it is their young life mea culpa … perhaps for their plush lives that delivered them to the moment. Can it be true that guilt still exists in this nation?
I don’t care about their idealism or their atonement for whatever … they are simply the sad tonic for what plagues the very schools they tumble into. Bumbling educational missionaries armed with buzz-words and a larger vocabulary that would smile any sociologist. They are an aspirin for a cancer.
All of this … this entire supposition … is based on the whimsy that teaching is inborn … as natural as a yawn. And that with just a bit of fine tuning and a small spirit dance, a young, ill-prepared newbie can deliver like a pro. Try that in law,. Or medicine. Or engineering. OrLaw enforcement.
This is what we reap for turning over our brains to the likes of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan and David Coleman … all name-famous, but each with the thinnest classroom lay-overs one could imagine. We have suffered to long at the hands of the self-appointed.
We have listened to the idiots for too long.
Denis Ian
“(Bring in TFA and save on pensions because they won’t stay around long enough to get a pension.)”
Pension: “a fixed amount, other than wages, paid at regular intervals to a person or to the person’s surviving dependents in consideration of past services, age, merit, poverty, injury or loss sustained, etc.”
Please stop using the word “pension” when describing what teachers receive for retirement. We do not receive a pension. My father receives a pension from Bethlehem Steel. My father did not contribute anything to his pension. It is an amount of money paid to him for the number of years that he worked for Bethlehem Steel. Teachers contribute to their retirement. Teachers have a savings plan with a percentage matched by the school district, set away to be used by the teacher for his/her retirement. It is much like private industry’s 401K. I doubt anyone working in the private sector would call their retirement savings a pension. Teachers save for retirement just like everyone in the private sector. The exception is that we do not have a choice if we want to save that money or not. It is a forced savings plan; it is not a pension. The word is misleading. It makes it sound like teachers are receiving a benefit that actually isn’t available to them, causing confusion and criticism from the general public. The word “pension” is now skewed to include amounts employees contribute, but when thinking of teachers’ pensions, I believe most people think in terms of the original meaning of “pension.”
rkotay,
What most teachers get, and what you father gets *are* pensions, or “defined benefit” plans. They pay a set amount at retirement, and it is up to the state do invest whatever is necessary on top of your contribution to get the return needed to pay out that fixed amount.
This is very different from a 401k or 403b “defined contribution” plan, where what you get depends on how your investments do.
My second favorite Onion article — spoofing billionaire’s buying influence, comparing it to a teacher donating $300:
http://www.theonion.com/article/bernie-sanders-clearly-pocket-high-rolling-teacher-50990
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“Bernie Sanders Clearly In Pocket Of High-Rolling
Teacher Who Donated $300 To His Campaign
“BURLINGTON, VT — After accepting a check sent to his campaign office by a local elementary school teacher, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was roundly criticized Monday as being firmly in the pocket of the high-rolling educator who had donated $300.
“ ‘He might have the reputation of being the people’s candidate, but when your candidacy is effectively bankrolled by the multi-hundred-dollar donation of a fourth-grade teacher, it’s clear who’s really pulling the strings,’ said political analyst Peter Mathews, who noted that when a check arrives with a handwritten note that says …
” ‘Behind you 100 percent, Bernie! ‘
“… it comes with certain expectations.
” ‘He’s already spouting off talking points about supporting unions and increasing funding for education. Where do you think he got those ideas? He might think he’s not influenced by that money, but when someone has deep enough pockets to drop $300, you pick up the phone when they call.’
“Mathews went on to say he wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders’ strong support for a living wage could be directly traced to the fat $20 contribution he got from a fast-food worker.”
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My third favorite Onion article — spoofing charter schools that have no or accept no difficult students… only admitting the easiest-to-educate. This charter school is taking it one further… this charter school HAS NO STUDENTS – PERIOD, but still “receives $80 million in public funding”:
http://www.theonion.com/article/progressive-charter-school-doesnt-have-students-33009
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“Progressive Charter School Doesn’t Have Students
(PICTURE of a teacher sitting at his desk where all the students desks are empty)
“ATLANTA — One year into its founding as the purported ‘bold next step in education reform,’ administrators on Monday sang the praises of Forest Gates Academy, a progressive new charter school that practices an innovative philosophy of not admitting any students.
“ ‘We’ve done something here at Forest Gates that is truly special, combining modern, cutting-edge pedagogical methods with a refreshingly non-pupil-centric approach,’ said academy president Diane Blanchard, who claimed that the experimental school boasts state-of-the-art facilities, a diverse and challenging syllabus, absolutely zero students, a world-class library, and the highest faculty-student ratio in the nation.
“ ‘Thanks to our groundbreaking methods, we’ve established a structured yet free-thinking environment where the student is taken out of the equation entirely, and in fact, is not even allowed on school property.
“And the results, we think, speak for themselves.’
“According to its budgetary records, Forest Gates has so far received approximately $80 million in public funding from the state of Georgia.”
This, too, is a parody. Seems to explain TFA:
Christine, that is hilarious!
All of the discussion above about expectations and bell curves recall a pretty bitter debate that arose from the book by the title, The Bell Curve. Stephen J Gould wrote a response that pointed out where people are pushing for a specific goal, the bell curve is warped asymmetrically toward that goal. He used the batting averages (a misnomer, they are actually ratios expressed as decimal fractions) to point out that the bell curve does not model human intelligence or performance. A professor I know spoke at that time of a phenomenon in his classroom grades of a double humped curve.
This grade pattern is one I have noticed throughout my teaching career, especially since high stakes testing took over from teachers. Since the schools are punished more for students who do not graduate than for any other student behavior, schools have found ways to make that possible. Now there are bigger numbers of honor students and Niger numbers of people who barely get by. No more middle at all.
We know people are going to fail. How we as a system respond to failure is what makes us great. If we allow failure to develop into catastrophe, we get people who drop out of society altogether. If we treat failure as temporary, commonplace, and we respond appropriately to it, we create a system that can meet people where they are and create the best possible outcome for all of us. From the individual teacher to the president of the country, this is the issue: how do we deal with failure. Presently, the only level of education that is dealing with failure is the classroom level. Administration refuses to ask county fathers for enough money to have classes for those not ready to succeed. Political leaders would prefer to create charters that can skim off the cream and give them all they want, then consign the rest to underfunded places of temporary residence that are routinely called out for their “failing schools”. Teachers, on the other hand, are expected to teach 30 differing abilities and behavioral situations and manage the remediation of their problems within a classroom. Argue that this is absurd, and you will be met with administrative sympathy at best, certainly not any action at any level.
I can easily design a test that all high schoolers fail, or one that all high schoolers pass. The statistical outcome would symbolically represent, but not definitively measure, the test creator’s expectations (mine). On the contrary, it would say nothing about the students who took the test.
Enough of this bell curve nonsense.