Gary Rubinstein was a member of one of the first cohorts to join Teach for America. He decided to make a career of teaching, unlike most of those who enter TFA. He is now one of its sharpest critics because he knows the organization well.
In this post, he expresses amazement and amusement that TFA is boasting about anew research study that doesn’t reflect well on TFA teachers. Those in the first two years of teaching, where mostvTFA are, don’t do well.
Either TFA didn’t read the report carefully or it just decided to spin the conclusions.
Guy Brandenburg read the same report and concluded that it “crushed” the myth of the TFA Super Teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is interesting, but not earth shattering. First of all, we are simply looking at scores, and judging the so-called teacher by scores, which we know, is flawed practice. There are many variables that have to be set aside to draw any conclusions about the so-called teachers. The greatest unknown variable is the socioeconomic levels of the different subgroups. For example, are there more affluent students in regions A and B than C, D and E? We also know nothing about attrition rates in the various regions. What that we do know is that TFA is no miracle solution in education.
TFA no longer has the elevated appeal it once had. Fewer dewy eyed recruits are taking the bait to serve as an “indentured servant” for the 1%. Young people are more aware of the churn and abusive practices in the organization. TFA is actively seeking recruits to fill their vacancies. One recent posting required a college degree and a 2.5 GPA.
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TFA’s Star has faded but not its bulging bank account or its political ambition to take control of school districts, train its people to run for office, and bust teachers unions everywhere.
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yes; time to take the F out of the acronym: there is little “for” left in the public goal, they simply wish to control how America is taught to think about schools, teachers and unions
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I am sure that TFA will continue to appeal to the ambitious and amoral that see an opportunity to make a lot of money. They will continue to peddle their brand since they are backed by so much money.
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Is it really about “teachers”, TFA?
It seems to me to be more about a training program for managers and consultants and future CEOs, in, specifically, ed reform or education related business ventures.
It might be interesting to see not how many TFA people remain teachers, but instead how many go on to lucrative careers on the management, consulting, marketing and product development side of ed reform. That to me seems to be the “pipeline’ they’re filling.
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“Recent studies suggest that some students are college ready at the end of 11th grade. What do you think about high school students skipping senior year?”
File that under “how ed reform is incredibly out of touch with actual public schools”
Ohio public schools have an entire program where students can earn college credit in high school. They don’t “skip” anything, and it doesn’t involve vouchers or all of the other ed reform favorites. Many times the courses are actually offered IN the public school, which makes a lot of sense, because then the students don’t need incredibly complex transportation schemes.
Ed reformers could study this idea right now. But it’s happening in PUBLIC schools, so they’re completely unaware of it and believe it is a new idea.
The echo chamber dictates that public schools are run on a “factory model”, so EVEN WHEN they aren’t, ed reformers believe that are.
This is the result of a “movement” that revolves around charters and vouchers. They have no idea what’s happening in public schools.
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My nephew graduated from college in three and half years, but not from early entrance. He had accumulated so many AP credits that he cut a semester off his degree.
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“Recent studies suggest that some students are college ready at the end of 11th grade. What do you think about high school students skipping senior year?”
In practice how this works is they take some college level classes and some high school level classes because many of the students and families actually value what public schools offer to 16 and 17 year olds and they don’t want their children going to college at 16. No one “skips” anything. “Skipping” isn’t necessary.
But in edreform world this idea requires a voucher and massive disruption, even though public schools are doing it RIGHT NOW without ed reformers, without vouchers, and without massive disruption or forcing students to choose between high school and college.
If charters were doing this there would be 500 ed reform articles extolling how innovative they are, but since public schools are doing it it is completely ignored.
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Despite its failing model, TFA continues it’s out sized influence inside federal & state governments.Their well honed PR apparatus is in full swing in TN ever since our state report card came out last week.
Case in point: TN’s teacher prep report card awarded TFA and TNTP the highest scores on it’s now, third year of grading higher education teacher prep programs. Check out the scores here: https://teacherprepreportcard.tn.gov/
(Side note, that Western Governors University was awarded a “3”. WGA is a for-profit, online school.) Word on the street was that in year 1 of the report, TFA scored very poorly. TN DoEd adjusted the factor weights & added the candidate profile in the evaluation to boost TFA & TNTP scores.
Aside from rigging the assessment, is it even credible to believe that a 5 week cram course represents the highest standard in preparing professionals? Who even believes such foolishness? Well, our elected officials & the press believe it. No public institution can questioned this premise for fear of retaliation. This state lege, DoEd & the gov. has not hesitated to cutting funding for dissent.
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From GR’s article: “Though these studies are based on the results from standardized tests that may or may not be appropriate for this purpose,”
It’s not a matter of “may or may not be,” it’s a fact that they are completely invalid and therefore completely inappropriate “for this purpose”.
When oh, when will we attack the beast at it’s most vulnerable spot-all the onto-epistemological invalidities involved in the standards and testing malpractice regime?
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You’re right Duane, all these so called studies that assume teacher quality is tied to student standardized test performance are just vacuous.
No better than VAM, which mathematician Cathy ONeil has called a random number generator.
It is foolish to tout these studies when they support ones claims because they perpetuate the myth that the tests are the be all and end all of Education.
From the report
“Students of TFA corps members are 3.7% less likely to pass
STAAR ReadingGAS </b than students of new non-TFA-affiliated teacher”Fixed
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And I would beg to differ on the percentage.
All my sources indicate it’s 3.829567 % not 3.7%
Where they got just 3.7 is anyone’s guess, but they are clearly waaay off. Not even in the right ballpark.
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“Junk is Junk”
Junk is junk, it isn’t changed
No matter how it’s used
No matter how it’s rearranged
The junk should be refused
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TFA paid someone to go through the report and highlight any phrase that could be used to make TFA look like a success — then ignore the rest of the report as if it doesn’t exist.
Bible thumpers use this method all the time. They go through the Bible and Hi-Light a few phrases that match their confirmation bias, and then they ignore the rest of the Bible, the other 99.999999 percent and use the few, rare phrases, not even complete sentences or passages, to preach their misleading false prophet reasoning to others.
Somewhere in that report must have been at least one phrase — there is always at last one — that could be twisted out of context and make TFA look good.
Then they repeat that phrase every chance they get until the next report where they will scrounge through the text to find another few words that can be used to mislead the easiest to fool.
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“Scrounge”, both in justification and implementation is the perfect word for ed deform.
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The appointed CEO of the Lorain, OH, public schools who is a TFA alum and is recruiting TFAs to replace veteran teachers. He denies that his ultimate goal is to close the public schools and turn them into charters, but his work history and affiliations along with his actions suggest otherwise. This situation should be getting nationwide coverage as it exemplifies so much of what is wrong with the reform movement. His statements about his length of tenure and accomplishments don’t jive with various on line accounts. Here’s one however: “Teach For America Alumni: Miami-Dade 2003
David Hardy Jr. is the Chief Executive Officer for Lorain City School District in Lorain, OH. As part of the Fellowship, David was the Chief of Academic Supports for the School District of Philadelphia. Previously, David served as the Executive Director of Regional Achievement for the New Jersey State Department of Education, where he led the Regional Achievement Center that is responsible for the support and turnaround of 26 of the lowest performing schools in the state of the New Jersey. Prior to this role, David was the founding Principal at Achievement First East New York Middle School and a Principal-In-Residence and Dean of Students at Achievement First Bushwick Middle School. Before working with Achievement First, David began his search for educational equality in 2003 as a Teach For America corps member in Miami-Dade County. He has been honored as a Sue Lehmann Regional Finalist, a Rookie Teacher of the Year nominee, and the 2007-08 Teacher of the Year at Madison Middle School.
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