Kovacs: Teach For America Research Fails the Test

This from Phillip Kovacs at Living in Dialogue

In the lengthy piece that follows this introduction Kovacs is reacting to a decision by the Huntsville, Alabama Board of Education to spend $1.7 million to bring Teach For America interns to district classrooms. He debunks TFA claims using only their own research.

On the web page where Teach For America shares research, they boldly state: "A large and growing body of independent research shows that Teach For America corps members make as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers." I will show this is an absurd claim simply by analyzing the reports made public on their "research" page. I will not look at or include other research which shows that TFA has negative effects on student test scores in some places, as others have already done so.

However, it pains me to engage in this analysis because it forces me to enter a conversation that I don't believe we should be having, a conversation that is undergirded by the belief that the best way to evaluate teachers is to look at student scores on tests that have been shown to be invalid, unreliable and flat out ridiculous.

When we reduce children to numbers and teachers to spreadsheet-managers we undermine education by dehumanizing the process. In our test-driven world, teachers have become bureaucrats; we've reduced "learning" to scoring, and, shamefully, we've reduced schooling to sorting, equating a slight change in a test score with "achievement." ...

Tears are a part of my job

"I’m not sure that any educator, 

traditional or nontraditional,

is emotionally prepared for this experience."

-- Caitlin Hannon

This from Caitlin Hannon in the Hechinger Report: 

I broke a cardinal rule of teaching several times last year: I cried in front of my students.

Sometimes it happened out of frustration. Just as often, I was overcome during very honest conversations about the struggles my students face within and beyond the school building. At least twice the tears were brought on by uncontrollable laughter at a student’s joke.

As a first-year teacher, I figured tears (of some kind) were inevitable. I entered the classroom with a conservatory degree in acting, a bachelor’s degree in public affairs, lots of knowledge about urban education and the achievement gap, and the hope that I could improve another person’s life.

I knew I wanted to make a difference, and I thought that difference needed to start in the classroom—not in an office as a policymaker, with little or no connection to, and understanding of, what happens inside schools.

This desire, and my nontraditional education background, led me to Teach For America, a program that trains recent college graduates from various backgrounds to teach in public schools. I spent my first year teaching English at Tech High School, which serves a predominantly low-income, minority population. This year, I am teaching seventh-grade language arts at Emma Donnan Middle School.

By the end of that first year, I realized that the life I’d changed the most was my own...

Major Teach For America Recruiter Does a 180

Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t

This bomb shell from Gary Rubinstein's TFA Blog: 

There was a time, not very long ago, when I was an active volunteer alumni recruiter for TFA. And, as you might expect, I was great at it. One year, I think it was 1998, I did a recruitment session at Colorado College, a very small school, which brought the house down. A year later when TFA published the list of the most popular schools for TFA, Colorado College was listed alongside The University Of Michigan and all the other common TFA schools as one of the top twenty schools for that year...

I’ve been getting some emails from perspective corps members recently asking me if I think they should apply or not. They say that my writings and the writings of others have made them realize that TFA might have its flaws. But, they wonder, do those flaws outweigh the benefits of the program?

When I joined TFA twenty years ago, I did it because I believed that poor kids deserved to have someone like me helping battle education inequity in this country. At the time, there were massive teacher shortages in high need areas. The 1990 corps had 500 members and the 1991 corps had 750 members, with a third of us going to Houston. I was one of those Houston corps members, the first group to ever go to Houston. At the time, we knew that we weren’t going to be great teachers. It was unrealistic to believe otherwise. But we also knew that the jobs we were taking were jobs that nobody else wanted. Principals who were hiring these ‘Teachers For America’ or other paraphrasings of this unknown organization, were completely desperate. If not for us, our students, most likely, would be taught by a different substitute each day. Even if we were bad permanent teachers, we WERE permanent teachers and for kids who had little in life they can call permanent, it was something. The motto for TFA back then could have been ‘Hey, we’re better than nothing.’

And we got out butts kicked. As tough as this was, we partly expected it. That was what we signed up for. We were like those front line Civil War soldiers — the ones with the bayonets whose job it was to weaken the enemy front line ever so slightly at the expense of our own health and well-being.

Many of us quit. I think that a third of the 1990 charter corps did. I’m not sure how many of the 1991s did. I lost count. Those of us who made it through the first year had pretty good second years. It was true, I guess, that what didn’t kill us only made us stronger.

Most of the people I knew left after their second year. They went to law school or other graduate programs. Even if they had a bad first year and a much better second year, they could feel they did their part in the fight to help kids. If many of those kids really were going to have rotating subs, we could be sure that we were doing less damage than good.

I’m glad I ‘did’ TFA. Twenty years ago they filled a need. Putting a few hundred barely trained teachers into the toughest to serve schools was one of those concepts that was ‘so crazy, it might just work.’ We weren’t always doing ‘good,’ but we also weren’t doing much harm. Our five or six hundred teachers were pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.

Over the next twenty years, TFA did a lot of growing, but not a lot of evolving. They replicated their institutes and increased their regions. The 2011 corps is nearly 6,000, twelve times as big as the cohorts from the early 90s. Unfortunately, the landscape in education has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Instead of facing teacher shortages, we have teacher surpluses. There are regions where experienced teachers are being laid off to make room for incoming TFA corps members because the district has signed a contract with TFA, promising to hire their new people. In situations like this, it is hard to say with confidence that these under trained new teachers are really doing less harm than good.

As TFA tried to grow and gain private and federal money, they had to develop a public relations machine. They found ways to spotlight their few successes. There were some dynamo teachers — there were bound to be. And then some of those teachers advanced to leadership roles. Some started schools, like the KIPP program which started in Houston in 1995. Some got appointed to big education jobs, like Michelle Rhee​ as D.C. chancellor, and some got elected to public office, like Michael Johnston as a state senator in Colorado.

More and more alumni started charter schools rather than take the long route of becoming an assistant principal at a ‘district’ school and then advancing to principal. Some of these charter schools were successful, some weren’t. Some of the successful ones, it is documented, mysteriously lose their toughest to educate kids. TFA ignored this as they needed success stories to grow.

Even through most of this, up until about three years ago, I still supported TFA and encouraged people to apply to it. But right now, I don’t.

Twenty years ago TFA was, to steal an expression from the late great Douglas Adams​ — ‘mostly harmless.’ Then about ten years ago they became ‘potentially harmful.’ Now, in my opinion, they have become ‘mostly harmful.’

Though the change happened so gradually, I hardly noticed it, TFA is now completely different than it was when I joined. I still believe in the original mission of TFA as much as anyone possibly can. The problem is, in my opinion, that TFA has become one of the biggest obstacles in achieving that mission.

TFA has highlighted their few successes so much that many politicians actually believe that first year TFA teachers are effective. They believe that there are lazy veteran teachers who are not ‘accountable’ to their students and who are making a lot of money so we’re better off firing those older teachers and replacing them with these young go-getters.

Some TFA alums have become leaders of school systems in various cities and states. In New York City, several of the deputy chancellors are from TFA. I already mentioned ex-chancellor Michelle Rhee who now runs StudentsFirst. John White runs the Recovery District in New Orleans. Kevin Huffman, former TFA public relations VP, is the state commissioner of Tennessee. TFA likes to point to these leaders as the true effect of TFA. Even if they haven’t really fixed the training model much and the first years are pretty awful teachers, and even if those first year teachers aren’t ‘needed’ anymore to fill any teacher shortages, it doesn’t matter since as long as a fraction of them become these ‘leaders’ TFA will have a positive impact in a big way on the education landscape.

Which sounds great except these leaders are some of the most destructive forces in public education. They seem to love nothing more than labeling schools as ‘failing,’ shutting them down, and blaming the supposed failure on the veteran teachers. The buildings of the closed schools are taken over by charter networks, often with leaders who were TFA alums and who get salaries of $200,000 or more to run a few schools.

Rather than be honest about both their successes and their failures, they deny any failures, and charge forward with an agenda that has not worked and will never work. Their ‘proof’ consists of a few high-performing charters. These charters are unwilling to release the data that proves that they succeed by booting the ‘worst’ kids — the ones that bring down their test scores. See this recent peer reviewed research paper from Berkely about KIPPs attrition.

TFA and the destructive TFA spawned leaders suffer a type of arrogance and overconfidence where they completely ignore any evidence that their beliefs are flawed. The leaders TFA has spawned are, to say this in the kindest way possible, ‘lacking wisdom.’

They say things like ‘Poverty is not destiny,’ which is true if they’re saying that it is possible for some to overcome it, but not true if they are saying that teachers, alone — and untrained teachers, at that — have the power to do this.

And the very worst thing that the TFA alum turned into education ‘reformers’ advocate is strong ‘accountability’ by measuring a teacher’s ‘value added’ through standardized test scores. It might be hard for someone who is not a teacher yet to believe that this is not a cop out by lazy teachers. The fact is that even the companies that do the measurements say that these calculations are very inaccurate. Over a third of the time, they misidentify effective teachers as ineffective and vice versa, in certain models. ‘Value added’ is in it’s infancy, and certainly not ready to be rolled out yet. But ALL the TFA reformers I’ve followed are strong supporters of this kind of evaluation.

So TFA has participated in building a group of ‘leaders’ who, in my opinion, are assisting in the destruction of public education. If this continues, there will soon be, again, a large shortage of teachers as nobody in their right mind would enter this profession for the long haul knowing they can be fired because of an inaccurate evaluation process. And then, of course, TFA can grow more since they will be needed to fill those shortages that the leaders they supported caused....

If I were ‘America’ I would have this to say to TFA: While I appreciate your offer to ‘teach’ for me, I’ve already got enough untrained teachers for my poorest kids. And if teaching is just a stepping stone, for you, on the path to becoming an influential education ‘leader,’ thanks, but no thanks to that too. I don’t need the kind of leaders you spawn — leaders who think education ‘reform’ is done by threats of school closings and teacher firings. These leaders celebrate school closings rather than see them as their own failures to help them. These leaders deny any proof that their reforms are failing and instead continue to use P.R. to inflate their own claims of success. We’re having enough trouble swatting the number of that type of leader you’ve already given us. If you want to think of a new way to harness the brain power and energy of the ‘best and brightest,’ please do, but if you’re just going to give us a scaled up version of the program that tries to fill a need that no longer exists, please go and teach for someone else.

Does TFA Displace Veterans -- Do They Stay?

This from This Week in Education:

The most recent episode of Treme, David Simon's New Orleans-based follow-up to The Wire, includes a biting rap about TFA candidates displacing veteran teachers that will ring true or false depending on your perspective:

Four years at Radcliffe, that's all you know
A desire to do good and a four point oh
You're here to save us from our plight
You got the answer 'cause you're rich and white
On a two-year sojourn here to stay
Teach for America all the way
Got no idea what you're facin'
No clue just who you're displacin'
Old lady taught fathers, old lady taught sons
Old lady bought books for the little ones
Old lady put in 30 years
Sweat and toil, time and tears
Was that really your sad intention?
Help the state of Louisiana deny her pension

At this point in the scene, another character breaks in and reminds the speaker that it was the government, not TFA, who let the veteran teachers go.  The response?  "A scab is a scab is a scab."

Teach for America Expanding into Applachia

BRINGING 90 DEDICATED TEACHERS TO

KENTUCKY’S HIGHEST-NEED SCHOOLS
OVER NEXT THREE YEARS

National Nonprofit Joins Local Effort to Expand
Educational Opportunity in Eastern Kentucky

This from Teach for America:

Teach For America announced today that it will expand to Appalachia, with plans to bring at least 30 top college graduates to teach in some of Eastern Kentucky’s highest-need schools for the 2011-12 school year. The organization also outlined plans to bring at least 30 additional teachers in each of the following two years. Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo, Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and supporters from across the state joined a press conference at the Kentucky Department of Education to announce the organization’s 41st region. Teach For America recruits, trains, and supports outstanding recent graduates and professionals who commit to teach for two years in under-resourced schools and become lifelong leaders in the pursuit of educational equity.

“We have great teachers in Eastern Kentucky, and I’m excited that these new educators are joining their ranks,” said Lieutenant Governor Mongiardo. “I am confident the excitement and enthusiasm these young teachers bring will be contagious for our schools and I thank Teach for America for its part in helping to improve the lives of Eastern Kentucky school children.”

“I’m very excited to welcome Teach For America to the Appalachian region,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “One of the key recommendations from the Governor’s Task Force on Transforming Education in Kentucky was to recruit high-quality individuals to increase the pool of talented teachers. Teach For America, with its emphasis on recruiting from a variety of backgrounds, majors and professional experiences, will help us answer that call and improve educational opportunities for children.”

Launching its 20th-anniversary year last May, Teach For America fielded 4,500 new corps members from an applicant pool of more than 46,000. Among the 8,200 current corps members teaching in urban and rural school districts across 31 states and the District of Columbia, some 85 are from or attended school in Kentucky. Teach For America received nearly 48,000 applications for its 2011 corps, including more than 600 from individuals in Kentucky.

“Teach For America has been working to find the right entry point into Appalachia for a number of years, and we’re grateful for the leadership of the state legislature and the Education Professional Standards Board in reaching this point,” said Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach For America. “We're excited to join the region’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its education system and look forward to recruiting and developing individuals who will work alongside other committed educators to expand educational opportunity for Eastern Kentucky's children.”

Teach For America selected Appalachia as an expansion site for the coming school year based on interest from state and school district leaders in partnering with the organization to provide an additional pipeline of effective teachers to address the region’s significant achievement gap. Another determining factor was state legislation enacted last year that enables Teach For America corps members to obtain teacher certification.

Teach For America corps members will apply for open positions in high-need schools in the Floyd, Knox, and Martin county school districts, and the organization will open a central office in Hazard. Teach For America will continue to pursue partnerships with additional school districts over the coming weeks.

During today’s announcement, Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear delivered a video message welcoming Teach For America to the state. “Governor Beshear and I are delighted to welcome Teach for America as a partner in our state’s effort to improve educational outcomes for all Kentucky students,” Mrs. Beshear said. “For more than 20 years, Teach for America has harnessed the energy of thousands of our nation’s most promising young leaders in the effort to close the achievement gap that negatively impacts students growing up in poverty. Teach for America is a valuable resource for many of Kentucky’s most impoverished communities that complements the work of other great educators across our state.”

A broad coalition of supportive community groups, corporations, local philanthropists, and school leaders made the Appalachia region of eastern Kentucky an ideal location for Teach For America. Lead investors include Kentucky River Properties, Inez Deposit Bank, the Kentucky Department of Education, and philanthropists Edith Bingham, Molly Bingham, Eleanor Miller, and Paul Chellgren...

A revised 2009 Urban Institute study found that high school students taught by Teach For America teachers outperformed their peers, even those taught by fully certified teachers. The study used cross-subject student and school fixed effects models to estimate TFA effects.

Bad Economy Boosts Teach for America

This from the New York Times:

Alneada Biggers, Harvard class of 2010, was amazed this past year when she discovered that getting into the nation’s top law schools and grad programs could be easier than being accepted for a starting teaching job with Teach for America.

Ms. Biggers says that of 15 to 20 Harvard friends who applied to Teach for America, only three or four got in. “This wasn’t last minute — a lot applied in August 2009, they’d been student leaders and volunteered,” Ms. Biggers said. She says one of her closest friends wanted to do Teach for America, but was rejected and had to “settle” for University of Virginia Law School...

Ms. Biggers [counts herself] lucky to be among the 4,500 selected by the nonprofit to work at high-poverty public schools from a record 46,359 applicants (up 32 percent over 2009). There’s little doubt the numbers are fueled by a bad economy, which has limited job options even for graduates from top campuses. In 2007, during the economic boom, 18,172 people applied.

This year, on its 20th anniversary, Teach for America hired more seniors than any other employer at numerous colleges, including Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Harvard, 293 seniors, or 18 percent of the class, applied, compared with 100 seniors in 2007. “So many job options in finance, P.R. and consulting have been cut back,” said Ms. Carlson, the Yale grad.

In interviews, two dozen soon-to-be-teachers here in Houston, one of eight national Teach for America centers that provide a five-week crash summer course in classroom practices, mentioned the chance to help poor children and close the achievement gap as major reasons for applying...

While Teach for America is highly regarded by undergrads...it gets mixed reviews from education experts.

Research indicates that generally, the more experienced teachers are, the better their students perform, and several studies have criticized Teach for America’s turnover rate.

“I’m always shocked by the hullaboo, given Teach for America’s size” — about 0.2 percent of all teachers — “and its mixed impact,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, a University of Texas professor. Dr. Heilig and Su Jin Jez of California State University, Sacramento, recently published a critical assessment after reviewing two dozen studies. One study cited indicated that “by the fourth year, 85 percent of T.F.A. teachers had left” New York City schools...

Teach for America... [cites] a 2008 Harvard doctoral thesis indicating that 61 percent of their recruits stay beyond the two-year commitment. However, that same thesis also says “few people are estimated to remain in their initial placement school or the profession beyond five or six years” — a finding not highlighted in the releases...

“These people could be superstars, but most leave before they master the teaching craft,” Dr. Heilig said...

Teach for America

I always thought that Catherine would make a fine teacher. Ever since elementary school she seemed to display the kind of disposition so important for public school teachers. She is kind, patient, organized, enthusiastic and smart. But she decided instead to major in business.

So you can imagine my surprise when she told her mother and I that now, at the end of her college career, she was applying for the Teach for America program.

Teach for America seems to be built on one slim data point: that the best teachers were the smartest students. There is some evidence to suggest that student achievement is greatest when the teachers' own test scores are high. So Teach for America looks for students with GPA's in excess of 3.5. Then they send their recruits to work with the most needy children after a training program that has been widely criticized for being too short.

Kids.

This from the Indianapolis Star:

Untraditionally trained teachers getting mixed reviews

More of your child's instructors

don't have a degree in education.

But maybe that's a good thing.

Stephanie Parido works her class like a pro: pausing to ensure everyone is with her, assigning varied tasks to kids at different skill levels, pushing 12-year-olds to make complex analyses.

These are exactly the things education professors tout and what principals look for. But Parido didn't pick them up in education courses at college.

Parido, 23, didn't decide to teach until the end of college. Instead of four years of courses on teaching techniques, she attended a five-week summer crash course and then started teaching at Gambold Middle School on the Westside.

Parido is part of Teach for America, one of several programs that put teachers into classrooms without college degrees in education, the standard regimen for generations...

...educators, though, question whether the teachers, especially those who have had only fast-track five-week training courses, are equipped to handle situations that require detailed knowledge of child psychology or to work with special cases, such as a child who struggles to read.

What is clear is that political support for these programs has never been stronger. Both Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, and President Barack Obama, a Democrat, are pushing for more opportunities for those without education degrees to become educators...

'Relentless Pursuit': A Year Teaching America

This from NPR:

Teach For America recruits receive five weeks of training before heading out to teach in struggling urban schools.

Listen Now [30 min 19 sec]

Donna Foote followed four elite college graduates in the Teach For America program. They were assigned to one of the worst schools in one of the toughest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and Relentless Pursuit is their story.

TFA recruits are a remarkable group, and the program is an incredibly popular destination for new college grads. In 2008, roughly 10% of Georgetown, Harvard and Yale's graduating seniors applied.