Some governors and legislatures look on Teach for America
as a way to save money, because most leave after two or three years
at the bottom of the salary structure and never collect a pension.
This teacher has a suggestion for them:
“Governors who feel 1 and 2 year turnover of Teach for America teachers is the way to
excellence should resign after 2 years to let someone else take over.”
This is an interesting first-person account by a young person who felt lucky to be accepted into the super-elite Teach for America and reports on her year in the Atlanta Public Schools.
Two observations. The five week training program drilled into her that children fell behind because of their bad teachers. She was constantly reminded that she would close the achievement gap because she was better than those ordinary–not TFA–teachers.
The other striking impression: her five weeks of training did not prepare her for reality:
“During my training, I taught a group of nine well-behaved third-graders who had failed the state reading test and hoped to make it to fourth grade. Working with three other corps members, which created a generous teacher-student ratio, I had ample time for one-on-one instruction.
“That classroom training was completely unlike the situation I now faced in Atlanta: teaching math and science to two 20-person groups of rotating, difficult fifth-graders—fifth-graders so difficult that multiple substitute teachers would vow never to teach fifth grade at our school again.
“I had few insights or resources to draw on when preteen boys decided recess would be the perfect opportunity to beat each other bloody, or when parents all but accused me of being racist during meetings. Or when a student told me that his habit of doing nothing during class stemmed from his (admittedly sound) logic that “I did the same thing last year and I passed.” The Institute’s training curriculum was far too broad to help me navigate these situations. Because many corps members do not receive their specific teaching assignments until after training has ended, the same training is given to future kindergarten teachers in Atlanta, charter-school teachers in New Orleans, and high-school physics teachers in Memphis.”
Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas has the most brilliantly illustrated blog of any that I read. He creatively weaves in photographs, graphs, and other eye-catching stuff to make his text vivid.
And vivid it is.
In this post, he analyzes with his typical humor and dry wit the latest Mathematica study of Teach for America. The study made headlines across the nation.
It said that the students TFA’s young recruits got higher math scores than did the students of other novice teachers or of experienced teachers.
But Heilig demonstrates that the sample of TFA teachers was not typical of TFA, and that the differences between the TFA teachers and the other teachers were very small, almost to the point of being trivial.
He refers to the study as “irrational exuberance,” slyly referring to a remark made by Alan Greenspan when the stock market reached a feverish high in 1996. Greenspan implied that the market was a bubble, about to burst, and Heilig implies the same.
First, he points out that there are not many TFA secondary math teachers, and Mathematica had to “scour the country” to get an adequate sample size. Next, he notes that the sample was 80% white, which does not reflect the reality of urban districts or of TFA.
Most important, he shows how Mathematica chose to represent the differences; it used a scale showing the differences as “tenths of a standard deviation.” When the same difference is represented as 1, 2, or 3 standard deviations, it is very hard to see any difference between the novice TFA teachers and the experienced teachers. As he writes, “you need binoculars, maybe a telescope when the effects of secondary TFA math teachers are placed on a scale that is not in tenths of a standard deviation.” In other words, Mathematica presented the results in a scale that exaggerated what they found.
But his most remarkable observation is that the effect size of a TFA recruit is .07, while the effect size of class size reduction is .20. Thus, if you are a policymaker and you want to get the biggest improvement, you would reduce class size instead of hiring TFA, and you would get triple the effect!
Not to end with that huge finding, Heilig goes on to observe that the Mathematica study has findings that are “contrary to what we know from decades of research about teacher quality.”
According to Mathematica, nothing matters but “the magic of TFA.”
Prior ability in math doesn’t matter.
Taking math courses or have a math major in college doesn’t matter.
Working on your masters degree or certification has a negative effect.
Or, in the inimitable words of the irrepressible and brilliant Julian Vasquez Heilig:
In sum, you will be a better airline pilot (teacher) if:
Please read the post and enjoy JVH’s irreverent and often hilarious graphics. Spot on.
Wow! Just think, if you have a TFA teacher, you gain 2.6 extra months in a year of instruction in math! Or so concluded a recent study by Mathematica Policy Research.
But what does this mean?
Gary Rubinstein, himself an alumus of Teach for America, now a math teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, took a closer look at the study and says it does not mean what it claims.
He writes:
The difference between a group scoring in the 27th percentile and the 30th percentile is very small, .07 standard deviations. To give you an idea of how small this is, a 27th percentile on the SAT math section is a score of a 430 while a 30th percentile is a score of 440, which is a difference of one question out of about 60.
So, on a test of 60 questions, the student of a TFA teacher answered one more question correctly than the teacher who was not TFA. How did that get converted to 2.6 months of gain? Read the post.
Florida Governor Rick Scott appointed Rebecca Fishman Lipsey to the Florida State Board of Education. Lipsey describes herself as “a lifelong educator,” based on her long service to TFA.
Meanwhile, TFA leaders continue to pop up in service to the nation’s most reactionary governors, including Jindal in Louisiana, Haslam in Tennessee, and McCrory in North Carolina. All these governors are bent on privatizing public schools and funneling public dollars to entrepreneurs, private schools, for-profit corporations, and religious schools. Scott’s Florida is overrun with for-profit charters and scandalous real estate transactions involving charter entrepreneurs. Will Lipsey abet Scott’s goal of monetizing public education in Florida?
Here is the press release.
“Lipsey, 32, a former New York City public school teacher from Aventura, has held multiple leadership roles with Teach for America from 2006 to 2012 and served as the executive director of Teach for America in Miami-Dade from 2008 to 2012. From 2004 to 2006, Lipsey was a fourth and fifth grade public school teacher in New York City. Lipsey is currently serving as the chief executive officer of Radical Partners LLC. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and master’s degree from Bank Street College of Education.
“Governor Rick Scott said, “With an exceptional career in education, Rebecca is committed to student success and accountability, and it is clear she will be a tremendous advocate for all Florida students. Rebecca will help continue to ensure we are holding students to high standards in Florida and giving them the support they need to succeed in college and their career.”
“Rebecca Fishman Lipsey said, “As a life-long educator, I am deeply committed to what is best for children and could not be more humbled to bring my experience to the table. Having worked closely with principals, parents, educators and students from diverse backgrounds, I know that it is possible for all students to succeed.”
“Lipsey succeeds Kathleen Shanahan and is appointed for a term beginning January 1, 2014, and ending December 31, 2017. The appointment is subject to confirmation by the Florida Senate.
No surprise: Sacramento gets new charter schools staffed by inexperienced Teach for America recruits, non-union, of course.
Michelle Rhee’s husband is mayor of Sacramento.
How many would choose a doctor or lawyer with five weeks of training? Raise your hand.
Lots of money from the anti-union Walton Family Foundation, as well as Gates and Broad.
Maybe the foundations think that it’s good enough for poor kids, not for their own.
I posted before that four TFA alums are running for the Atlanta school board. This seems to be the TFA long-term plan, as Wendy Kopp has often stated: to build a cadre of leaders with a strong network of funders across the nation.
We know what this has meant in Louisiana, the District of Columbia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, where TFA-trained leaders have fought for privatization, high-stakes testing, test-based teacher evaluation, and merit pay.
Here is an Atlanta article about what lies ahead if TFA alums constitute a solid bloc on the board and are close to controlling it. It is interesting that some of the candidates do not acknowledge their TFA connection.
The article describes a little-known offshoot of TFA called “Leadership for Educational Equity” (LEE). This appears to be the political action arm of TFA, spinning off groups like “Families Empowered” and “Mississippi First,” both of which advocate for privately managed charter schools. LEE is not transparent. Only members can access its website.
You can see why the far-right, anti-union Walton Family Foundation gave TFA $50 million, and why it is the favorite charity of major corporations. It is a training ground for the privatization movement.
Especially interesting in this article is the analysis by Julian Vasquez Heilig, who has studied the effects of TFA in the classroom.
The following is a quote from the article:
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“Overall, the four are a largely pro-charter school group. If all four are elected, TFA alumni will constitute a near-majority voting bloc on the BOE.
So, what does this mean for APS, and how might a TFA voting bloc impact educational policy for APS teachers, parents, students, and other stakeholders?
“The first thing is, it’s not surprising you have so many TFA alum running for the School Board.
TFA alums are everywhere but the classroom. Their turnover rate, after three or four years, is around eighty percent,” Julian Vasquez Heilig, an Associate Professor of Educational Policy and Planning at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the Cloaking Inequality blog, told Atlanta Progressive News.
“It’s a revolving door of temporary labor. It [TFA] perpetuates inequality in teacher quality,” he said.
“It empowers districts to continue a revolving of rookie teachers. What TFA will argue is their five weeks of training in the summer is adequate for their teachers,” he said.
“In recent years, they’ve aligned themselves with the corporate reformer movement. That means vouchers, charter schools, parent trigger, anti-union,” he said.
“You see the Teach for America alum leading out in this movement to corporatize education. What that means, take education out of the public space. They [charter schools] are no longer democratically controlled,” he said.
“What TFA has done over the last few years, is aligned themselves with a variety of faces in the reform movement that are taking democratic control away from communities, and they seek to privatize many functions,” he said.
“The voters have to decide if they like what TFA is selling. If the public is happy with the temporary tourist approach to education, then they’re the right choice,” he said.
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This question comes up again and again, and different studies reach different conclusions. Typically, TFA teachers get better than usual results in math, but not in reading, which is less susceptible to test prep and more influenced by home life.
Mathematica Policy Research released a new study today, saying that TFA and TNTP teachers get better results in math than traditionally prepared teachers. But Dana Goldstein analyzes the findings and learns that the headline oversimplifies.
For one thing, the gains were modest: “For the average child in this study, who scored in just the 27th percentile in math compared to her peers across the country, having a TFA teacher will help her move up to the 30th percentile–still a long way off from grade-level math proficiency.”
For another, the study shows that experience matters: “The bias against first-year teachers is borne out in the data. The students of second-year teachers outperformed the students of first-year teachers by .08 standard deviations–a larger gap than the one between the students of TFA and non-TFA teachers. And even though TFA recruits did well in this study, that doesn’t mean teachers reach their pinnacle after two years on the job. To the contrary, the researchers found that for teachers with at least five years of experience, each additional year of work was associated with an increase of .005 standard deviations in student achievement. ”
And Goldstein notes that 89% of the TFA teachers in the study were white, which causes concern because there are many reports of urban districts losing teachers of color, especially African Americans. That may be as big or bigger a problem in the long run that a few percentage points up or down.
Edushyster obtained internal planning documents from Teach for America in Chicago.
The document displayed on her website shows plans for 52 new privately-managed charters that will open over the next five years.
These charters will be staffed largely by TFA’s young recruits, with five weeks of training.
Just weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools, claiming they were “underutilized.” But the school closures presented an opportunity to expand the charter sector.
EduShyster notes that the plan is symbolic of TFA’s new role:
“TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.”
TFA has become the handmaiden of the privatization movement. Without TFA’s ready supply of eager and inexperienced young college graduates, willing to work long hours without a union and with meager wages, it would be impossible to expand these private-sector schools at such a rapid clip.
Since the projected hiring of many more TFA corps members coincides with the layoff of large numbers of Chicago public school teachers, it is safe to say that TFA is helping not only to privatize the Chicago public schools but to bust the union.
This may fit right in with the far-right ideals of the Walton Family Foundation, which gifted TFA with $50 million, but it somehow does not sound all that idealistic.
Imagine the new TFA recruiting poster: Join TFA and Privatize America’s Public Schools! Bust the Teachers’ Unions!
John Wilson, formerly executive director of the NEA, now writes in “Education Week,” where he posed the question above. Which governor ran as a moderate, then revealed himself as an anti-government, anti-teacher, anti-public school extremist as soon as he was elected?
Perhaps you think of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Paul Page in Maine, John Kasich in Ohio? Or your own governor?
No, says Wilson, the prize for the Most Deceptive Governor of all goes to Pat McCrory of North Carolina. He had been a decent mayor of urbane Charlotte, giving no hint of his radicalism . He did not campaign on a platform of destroying public education, restricting the right to vote, restricting access to abortion, and appointing inexperienced cronies to fat government jobs.
Yet he has turned out to be the governor of ALEC’s dreams, using the one-party control of government to implement a radical agenda of privatization.
“Educators know his deception very well. He campaigned as a supporter of public schools and teachers; yet he signed an appropriation bill that cut over 5,000 teachers and almost 4,000 teacher assistants, eliminated pay to teachers who earn a masters degree in the future, and refused to provide a pay increase to the state’s teachers, despite the fact that they are close to being the worst paid in America. Governor McCrory supported legislation that reduced textbook funding to $15 per student even though a reading textbook in elementary school costs $35. Hundreds of millions of dollars were cut from programs that affected the services of students directly.”
While cutting public schools, McCrory has signed legislation for more charter schools and for vouchers. His senior education advisor, be it noted, is a TFA alumnus named Eric Guckian, who formerly worked for New Leaders for New Schools and is a devotee of charters and digital education. But obviously no fan of public schools or experienced teachers. Guckian joins the constellation of TFA leaders such as Michelle Rhee, John White of Louisiana, and Kevin Huffman who seek to dismantle public education and the teaching profession.
Diane Ravitch's blog 