Teach For America Protests Too Much....

By reputation, Teach For America has never been particularly good at dealing with its critics, internal and external. A former TFA corps member and manager describes its overall approach as follows:

Instead of engaging in real conversations with critics, and even supporters, about the weaknesses of Teach For America and where it falls short, Teach For America seemed to put a positive spin on everything. During my tenure on staff, we even got a national team, the communications team, whose job it was to get positive press out about Teach For America in our region and to help us quickly and swiftly address any negative stories, press or media. This inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism made me start to see that Teach For America had turned into more of a public relations campaign than an organization truly committed to closing the achievement gap. Unfortunately, the organization seemed to care more about public perception of what the organization was doing than about what the organization was actually doing to improve education for low-income students throughout the United States.

We had a TFA representative stop by here a few years ago, and she refused to clarify TFA's reported policies that bar corps members from criticizing the organization. A corp member attempted to clarify the situation:

When I accepted TFA's offer, I do accurately recall a very lengthy contract we had to sign electronically. And I do remember being very disturbed by a section that dealt with public criticism. In the most PC way possible, the bottom line was that it was extremely frowned upon and consequences could arise. I whole-heartedly remember this part because as a young college grad with a free spirited, libertarian-esque personality, this was a red flag for me.

What I've learned so far in my time with TFA is that public criticism is against the core values. Also, the higher ups tell us public criticism hurts the organization as a whole, and hurts our mission of ultimately helping inner-city, high need students. It's all a guilt trip. And for the record, I have seen TFA corp members severely 'blacklisted'(though not expelled) for public and non-public criticism.

A person who was, at the time, a TFA corps member confirmed to me that TFA retaliates against corps members who publicly criticize the program. The attitude toward criticism seems to start at the top, as evidenced by an editorial authored by TFA founder, chair and former CEO Wendy Kopp, bluntly titled, Criticism toward Teach for America is misplaced. What first caught my eye was Kopp's claim about the subsequent employment history of TFA corps members:

In the 25 years since, Teach for America has enlisted more than 47,000 individuals to commit two years to teaching in some of America’s neediest schools. Long after they finish their commitment, 86 percent of Teach for America alumni still work full time in education or professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities. About 11,000 alumni are teachers; more than 800 are school leaders.

For 11,000 of 47,000 corps members to become teachers isn't bad at all. But what in the world does "education or professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities" mean? I tried to find out from the TFA website, dated September 8, 2014:

For America’s network of more than 37,000 alumni continue to work toward educational equity, with 86 percent working full-time in education or with low-income communities....

Today, 10,600 corps members are teaching in 50 urban and rural regions across the country, while more than 37,000 alumni work across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education.

The first statement makes it appear that there are 37,000 alumni. The second may mean that, for some reason, they were referring to their 37,000 alumni who don't work as teachers separately from the alumni who hold teaching positions. What the positions variably described as "professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities", "working... with low-income communities" and "work[ing] across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education" may be, we can only guess.

And then there's another statement, also from September 8, 2014,

Today, 86% of our alumni work in education and we’re continuously working to expand our partnerships with schools and the district to provide continued mentorship, networking opportunities, and professional development to support our alumni educators.

The claim that 86% of alumni "work in education" is very different, and much more clear, than the other nebulous statements. Meanwhile, back on July 2,

Teaching is the single most popular profession among our alumni, and we’re proud of our 11,000 alumni teachers and the work they do every day. We’re also proud of the 86% of our alumni whose work—inside and outside of education--continues to take on the systemic challenges of poverty and racism and directly or indirectly strengthens our public education system.

So when TFA says that its alumni "work in education" they mean work "inside and outside of education"? As for the 86% whose work "take[s] on the systemic challenges of poverty and racism and directly or indirectly strengthens our public education system", exactly what does that mean? Why do I keep hearing that same hollow number, without its being backed up by any actual data about the actual employment and careers of TFA alumni? Kopp herself writes, "64 percent of alumni now work full time in education and another 22 percent work in jobs that relate to improving education or quality of life in low-income communities." It's not a huge surprise that college graduates who gain several years of experience in the field of education end up employed in fields that relate to their experience, whatever their intent when they enrolled, but it would be very nice to have Kopp break down exactly what she means by "in education". As for the additional 22%, the fact that TFA is inconsistent and nebulous in its description of that group and its activities suggests that they're not being entirely honest. They should release their data and actual information about that work, such that the cloud is lifted.

Kopp acknowledges that some of the criticism of TFA constitutes "valuable feedback". Presumably that feedback includes criticism of TFA's history of low minority representation, inadequate training, the short tenure of corps members, and the like, issues that TFA has attempted to address. But Kopp's not writing her editorial to respond to her critics. By all appearances, she's trying to avoid responding to her critics, and as part of that effort she resorts to the spotlight fallacy:

But some of the criticism is based on misrepresentation and toxic rhetoric. Critics say, for example, that Teach for America “endangers students’ education.” Some characterize our teachers with phrases such as “Ivy League short-term student saviour” and allege that we are “an experiment in ‘resume-padding’ for ambitious young people.” One organization mounted a social media campaign to discourage students from applying.

Looking at Kopp's first example, I don't find it to include the sort of unfair attack she describes. The quote she attacks, in its full context, reads as follows,

Inadequate teacher training: TFA’s summer institute, the minimum training its corps members receive before becoming classroom teachers, lasts only a mere five weeks. Additionally, the practical classroom experience that TFA recruits receive during this training does not give an accurate representation of the everyday tasks of teaching. There already exists an inequality in the teacher quality and experience level between low-income and more affluent communities. TFA’s inadequate training perpetuates this inequality and endangers students’ education by giving them a poorly trained, unprepared instructor.

An honest response to that criticism would involve describing how the five week summer institute constitutes adequate teacher training and thus does not endanger students' education. The article to which Kopp linked is calm, reasoned and raises many valid points. What does it say about Kopp that her response is to pluck a quote out of context and use it to try to dismiss the substance of the author's criticism? Kopp herself implicitly admits that the five week program is problematic,

Most recently, in March, our co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard launched two pilot programs: one to provide a year of upfront training for recruits, and the other to extend our professional development to teachers who remain in the classroom for a third, fourth and fifth year.

With 47,000 alumni, there would be no need for such a pilot program if in fact the organization didn't recognize the deficiencies in its model for training corps members and preparing them for the classroom.

The second criticism, that "Some characterize our teachers with phrases such as “'Ivy League short-term student saviour'", is also interesting, as the actual article accuses TFA of projecting that attitude in its sales pitches to college students:

Many assume the TFA promo of Ivy League Short-term Student Saviour, but not all.

Kopp advances the ungrounded idea that TFA recruits can “close the achievement gap” because they are the “best and brightest”– and that they can do so going into America’s toughest teaching situations in two-year stints. And after “closing the gap,” TFAers can fulfill the nation’s need for their “best and brightest” leadership in key educational roles, including those of district or state superintendent, or charter school/education company “founder.”

The author of the blog post later elaborates,

TFA works hard to promote the image of the “best and brightest” as successfully and altruistically “giving back” by offering their indispensable “talent” to rescue students from achievement gaps that are clearly the fault of those who attended “non-target” institutions in order to earn degrees in what TFA considers a non-profession for its lack of “results.”

However, based upon the above discussion threads, some more astute TFAers realize that Kopp’s promotions are little more than selfish, strategically-endorsed, well-funded fiction.

An honest response by Kopp would not involve accusing the author of making the statement, but by explaining how that's not a fair characterization of how TFA pitches itself to college students or how college students perceive its outreach. It might also acknowledge that the comments by prospective TFA corps members, to which the critic links, support the impression that many corps members see TFA as offering to help pave their path into highly paid careers. For example, from 2011,

So for those of you who are unaware, Teach for America and Goldman Sachs firmly cemented their partnership this year. Goldman will be offering (at least) 20 minorities in the incoming Teach for America class summer internships.

The Godlman Sachs announcement prominently features the TFA logo, and states,

Through this program, Goldman Sachs will offer up to twenty paid summer internships to eligible African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans who have also been accepted to the incoming Teach For America corps. The internship with Goldman Sachs takes place between the first and second years of teaching. At the end of the summer, qualified participants may receive an offer to join Goldman Sachs full-time at the conclusion of their Teach For America commitment.

While it's easy to see how that type of partnership could help recruit TFA corps members who were interested in using TFA as a stepping stone to a career in finance, it doesn't do much to undermine the impression many hold that many TFA corps members view their participation as a short-term exercise to build their résumés, not as part of a longer-term commitment to education.

The third quote is presented in a similarly dishonest manner. In context,

Several years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was: “use teaching in high-poverty areas as a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it effectively advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.

Once again, this is a comment about TFA's recruitment efforts, and the message TFA itself sends to prospective corps members. It would have been nice if Kopp had been able to deny that the incident occurred, particularly given her organization's umbrage over the idea that it markets itself as an opportunity for students to pad their résumés. Being unable to deny the incident, it would have been nice if Kopp had sought to set the record straight, and to clarify how despite the recruiter's message the organization takes great pains to in fact exclude students whose primary interest is in attending an elite graduate program, and strives to ensure that every corps member is fully equipped to manage a classroom from day one. Frankly, Kopp's attack on the messenger does little more than suggest that she cannot defend her own program.

As for the social media campaign? A Twitter hashtag, "#ResistTFA", from a small student-led organization. And do you know where you end up if you look up that organization to try to find out why it is asking that students resist TFA? Right back on the first page to which Kopp linked. That is, even with her out-of-context cherry-picking, two of Kopp's examples of supposedly unfair criticism were part of the same criticism. Let's take a quick look at the criticisms Kopp chose to disregard while painting her critic as unfair:

• Inadequate teacher training: TFA’s summer institute, the minimum training its corps members receive before becoming classroom teachers, lasts only a mere five weeks [and includes inadequate practical classroom experience]....

• Promotion of teacher turnover: TFA only requires a two-year commitment to teaching, and as a result, over 80% of corps members leave the classroom after four years [and the organization emphasizes producing "'leaders' rather than career educators"....

• Conflict with traditionally-trained career teachers: A further effect of the two-year commitment is that most TFA corps members will not teach long enough to be entitled to the higher salaries and benefits that come with increased experience [positioning them as a low-cost alternative to traditionally certified teachers]....

• Charter schools: TFA has been found to be a key player in the charter school expansion movement as many of these privately-run, publicly-funded schools are mainly staffed by TFA corps members.... however, charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools and offer little in terms of creative approaches to pedagogy....

• Standardized tests: TFA often claims to foster educational excellence because its teachers effectively boost their students scores on standardized tests [and in some cases that appears to be accurate].... However, we resist the notion that standardized tests are on the whole educationally beneficial....

• Degradation of the teaching profession: The more TFA recruits committed to teaching for only two years come to replace traditionally-certified educators, the more the teaching profession as a whole becomes a temporary job rather than a profession....

There's plenty there to which Kopp could respond, giving a substantive reply to the valid criticisms and explaining why TFA holds a different opinion on matters such as the importance and impact of high stakes standardized testing. What is she waiting for? Kopp claims, "It is crucial that we have an honest, open-minded conversation about what it will take to improve educational — and ultimately life — outcomes for kids", but it's her approach to TFA's critics, not the actual statements and positions of TFA's critics, that is preventing the discussion from proceeding.

Kopp argues,

In the communities where we’ve been providing teachers for 15 years or more, the impact of Teach for America is clear. Twelve years ago, D.C. students were scoring at the bottom compared with their peers in other large cities. Today, although there is still much to be done, schools in the nation’s capital are improving faster than any other urban district’s. This change is the result of the efforts of many people, but without Teach for America alumni, we’d lose much of the energy behind it.

The energy we might lose being a handful of TFA alumni who are working in the DC school system. Except, even assuming that the TFA alumni bring something special to the table, if TFA is recruiting people who are committed to education why should we assume that those people would not have ended up in education but for TFA? If TFA is taking the position that it attracts people who aren't inclined to go into education and then, through training and classroom experience, transforms them into people committed to the future of education in our society, perhaps that's a case they can make -- but as long as they choose to insist that they are trying to recruit students who are committed to education, not simply looking to build their résumés, they undermine any argument that they could make that their program is transformative.

Kopp asks the question,

Would the United States really be better off if thousands of outstanding and committed people did not apply to Teach for America?

But that's not the right question. TFA's critics don't seem bothered by the idea of a teacher corps that steps in to fill a void, providing classroom teachers where there would otherwise be a teacher shortage. TFA's critics appear to be bothered by the suggestion that any random Iy League graduate, following a five-week training course, is as good or better than a traditionally trained classroom teacher, and thus that TFA corps members should displace traditionally certified teachers in schools and districts where no teacher shortage exists.

Some corps members turn out to be great classroom teachers, while others have nothing but problems -- but one pretty constant criticism I hear from corps members and alumni is that they were out-of-their-depths during their first year of teaching. TFA appears to be belatedly responding to that problem with its pilot project for more complete teacher training, but it is fair for critics of TFA to point out that its teacher preparation program is often insufficient, and that wealthier school districts would not even consider employing TFA corps members in lieu of traditionally certified applicants for teacher positions.

It is also fair to point out that under Kopp's leadership, TFA came to be associated with attacks on the professionalism and competence of traditionally trained teachers as part of its desire for growth, and as part of its effort to maintain contracts to provide corps members to districts that didn't have or were no longer experiencing a teacher shortage. It is more than fair to point out that poor kids don't deserve schools that are inferior to those available in middle class communities, including competent teachers -- and that, whatever qualified candidates TFA brings into the inner cities, it is at best a band-aid solution and at worst an impediment to the hiring and retention of long-term, qualified classroom teachers.

Kopp closes by arguing,

This country is failing our kids, and the conversation we’re having is not helping. It’s not elevating the teaching profession. It isn’t changing kids’ lives or giving them the best chance to fulfill their potential. It’s undermining trust in the efforts of so many to improve education, and driving away what we need most: The energy and attention of every person willing to work for our children.

To me, that seems like a fair criticism of Kopp's own approach to the discussion. It doesn't appear to bother her at all that attacks on the teaching profession over recent decades, with associated efforts to reduce teacher compensation and benefits and to remove job protections, have decreased teacher satisfaction and have caused many teachers and prospective teachers to choose other career options. It only seems to bother her that people are criticizing TFA. Perhaps I'm wrong -- Kopp has been around for a long time. Perhaps she has made a statement in defense of career teachers, or in response to attacks on the teaching profession, that I haven't seen. Can anybody help me out?

When is an Unlicensed, Inexperienced, Untested Rookie "Highly Qualified"?

When the organization behind that rookie's placement has immense lobbying power.

Last week, an "anomaly amendment" was inserted into Congress's Continuing Resolution (a stop-gap that allows the government to continue functioning in the absence of an official budget.) The amendment in question allows teachers who are in an alternative certification program, regardless of the amount of time they've been teaching or whether or not they've obtained licensure in their respective states, to be considered "highly qualified" under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) regulations. It comes as no surprise that the amendment received a major push from Teach for America, a program whose mission is to place inexperienced teachers, most of whom are fresh out of college, in high needs schools across the country.

Is the goal here actually to staff troubled schools with highly qualified teachers? Or is it to maximize the size and budget of organizations like Teach For America, even if it diminishes overall teacher quality? (Via Schools Matter.)

Assumptions About Top Graduates and Education

The Washington Post editorializes that, as "Teacher quality is the single most important in-school determinant of student achievement", "this country... has to figure out how to attract its most accomplished graduates to teaching." Sorry, if by "most accomplished graduates" the Post means students who excel in fields outside of teaching, or the graduates of top colleges, it's not going to happen. With all due respect for "Teach for America", that organization focuses on shifting its corps members out of the classroom and into administration and policy jobs because, at least in my opinion, it recognizes that few are going to want to remain in classroom positions. Why? Because even among those who find that they want to pursue a career in education, those who are from top universities with six figures in student loan debt want to make more money than teachers are paid - they would have a great deal of difficulty servicing their debt on a standard teacher salary. And guess what? Our nation is not willing to pay teachers more money - in fact, the emphasis is on "taking away" - how can we "take away" their generous health benefits, retirement benefits, tenure, etc.

Further, I've been taught at the college level by some professors, grad students, and recent "brilliant" graduates who wheedled adjunct positions, and... brilliant as many of these people are, teaching is not something that comes naturally to all of them. Or most of them. And of those who like to teach, you often hear grousing about how college students aren't sufficiently interested in learning, aren't prepared, aren't motivated, don't contribute enough in class... These aren't people who are going to have fun teaching K-12, nor are K-12 students likely to find it at all fun to be in their classes. Teaching involves a lot more than a brilliant mind and mastery of subject matter.

Further, is it always sensible to get true subject matter experts to teach K-12 subjects? Let's be honest for a moment. You don't need a Ph.D. or even a masters degree to have ample subject matter knowledge to teach middle school math or English. It's not necessary to overstate the academic credentials required of teachers, nor is it necessary to suggest that the bulk of the nation's teachers aren't qualified to teach their subjects.

The Post sugests,

As the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. reported this fall, fewer than one in four of U.S. teachers are coming from the top one-third of college graduates, while the world's top performing systems recruit 100 percent of their teacher corps from the top third.

Sure, part of that may be attributable to those other nations being willing to treat teachers better and accord them better pay and more respect. But I suspect if you look at both the quality of their colleges versus the quality of U.S. colleges, or the range of opportunities available to college graduates who want to stay in the nation, you'll find additional reasons why a significant subset of their top graduates go into teaching. Also, the nations referenced in the article to which the Post links are "Singapore, Finland, and South Korea" - relatively culturally homogeneous nations with positive cultural attitudes toward education. As that article notes, there's reason to doubt the measures applied to determine if, in fact, the claim is true.

There's nothing wrong with wanting top performing college students to become K-12 teachers. Perhaps improved compensation would improve recruiting numbers among those who have desire to teach - I don't think we're going to get teacher salaries up to the level that we truly lure top graduates away from the professional fields. But I think it's a mistake to assume that achievement in college translates into teaching aptitude, or that merely because the top third of graduates tend to focus on other avocations there aren't large numbers of qualified, competent, capable teachers emerging from our nation's colleges.

Education Reform - The Hunt for a Magic Bullet

A few days ago Michael Gerson shared his thoughts on education reform. I'm left suspecting that Gerson has never attended a public school. I'll admit, criticizing a Gerson's column is fairly criticized as going after the low-hanging fruit - easy picking - but at the same time, given its prominent publication in the Op-Ed section of the Washington Post, I don't think that Gerson's witch's brew of ignorance and contempt for the profession of teaching should be left unchallenged.

One of the most obvious flaws in Gerson's commentary is his eagerness to attribute students' academic successes to rookie teachers from Teach For America, while criticizing the prior state of the school and suggesting that the school has only recently been rescued from chaos and failure:

Public school students here [in D.C.] perform two grade levels behind their peers in New York City. Last year, Smith taught some children who were "nonreaders" -- meaning they had somehow reached the fifth grade with the reading skills of kindergartners.

Nobody is disputing that the situation is atrocious.

Trinidad's local elementary school reflected the chaos around it. "Students ran the school," says Scott Cartland, the principal of the Wheatley Education Campus. "The kids were running down the halls, roaming."

Certainly, that's something that can be said to be a failing of prior administrators.

[TFA corps member and fifth grade teacher Amber Smith] teaches a boy named I'Kareem, who sits in the front row, raising his hand at every question and sometimes in the lulls between questions, just to get a head start. He is a handful. No thought goes unexpressed. He has some social challenges. But he reads at the eighth-grade level, and he told me that in chess club, "I'm always winning." In Smith's classroom, I'Kareem gets extra time and attention. In a chaotic classroom, he would be lost.

But wait a minute. First, we're talking about a child who has presumably been at this school for going on six years, with Gerson telling us that the school has had order in the halls only for the most recent two years. Whether in terms of Smith's teaching, order in the halls, or any other change in the school, Gerson tells us that it's "still too early" to see any improvement in student performance. Smith makes no claim that she's responsible for I'Kareem's above-grade reading skills in a school where on the whole his peers lag significantly behind him. So, quite plainly, I'Kareem was not lost before the changes were implemented and, despite having acknowledged "social challenges" (whatever that means), he was not lost. I expect that Gerson was introduced to I'Kareem as an example of the good the reforms can do, but he should have had the perception to realize that there was a lot more at play in I'Kareem's above-grade reading skill than a couple of years with more orderly hallways and the attention of his fifth grade teacher.

Gerson's lecture that "I'Kareem gets extra time and attention" being duly noted, what's his basis for suggesting that I'Kareem gets time and attention in his fifth grade class that he did not get in prior classrooms? Believe me, I am fully aware that some teachers will ignore kids who are working at or above grade level in favor of focusing on the kids who are lagging behind, and to a large degree programs like "No Child Left Behind" force teachers and schools to focus on lower performers - there are only so many hours in the school day, and hours of teaching time must be divided between all students. But we shouldn't simply assume that he didn't receive "extra time and attention" from prior teachers.

Also, if the prior context involved teachers giving "extra time and attention" to students other than I'Kareem, to try to bring them up to grade level, its' fair to ask what is happening with those kids in Smith's classroom. We're dealing with a zero sum game - there are only so many minutes in an hour, and even the most dedicated TFA corps member can't add extras. If Gerson weren't slurping up the Kool-Aid, he could as easily criticize Smith for diverting her attention away from "those who need it the most" in order to engage in the more rewarding task of teaching a student who is already ahead of the curve. That might be completely unfair to Smith - I don't know how she divides up her classroom time or what motivates her decisions - but when you take a "facts be damned" approach to analysis the data you skim off the surface can often support any number of divergent, even mutually inconsistent hypotheses.

If we assume that I'Kareem did not receive "extra time and attention" during his earlier schooling, to what do we attribute his above-grade reading level. If he went to the same classes with the same teachers as the rest of his peer group, but ended up reading at the eighth grade level while they (on average) read at the third grade level, shouldn't we be asking "What makes him, or his experience, different?" Also, if we assume that I'Kareem was reading well above grade level before Principal Cartland took over the school, as I expect was the case, would Gerson be still be holding him out as an example of "evidence of success"? Whether then or now, the exception doesn't prove the rule.

We've had pundits who were in love with the idea of rigid disciplinarians "turning around" inner city schools for... how many decades, now? Yes, we want safe, secure schools that can provide a decent learning environment for students. But if we're going to pretend that there is nothing special about the inner city school, that the kids there are no harder to teach than kids anywhere else, why the intense focus on behavior codes and rules that often go way outside of what would be tolerated by parents in a middle class school. Some of the practices of successful inner city school programs seem designed to make up for shortfalls in the children's home environment, even as lip service is paid to the notion that kids are the same everywhere and that the teaching staff is at the root of all problems.

Gerson implicitly concedes that discipline, of itself, does not bring about automatic gains in academic performance. Two years into Wheatland's reform under principal Scott Cartland, "It is still too early... to see dramatically rising test scores". For that matter, the school's performance has bounced about a bit and has not appreciably changed during Cartland's first two years of service - that's not an indictment of him or school discipline, but highlights how you need to be careful about "magic bullet" solutions. Toting a baseball bat as you patrol the newly pacified halls of your high school (and here I describe Joe Clark, not elementary school principal Scott Cartland) may inspire a hagiographic motion picture about your life, but it won't of itself significantly improve the school's academic performance.

As for the only specific detail Gerson offers, a fifth grade classroom in which "disruption is confronted immediately, with a note of the infraction put up on the white board", substitute putting a child's name on a chalkboard and you could be describing a scene from the one room schoolhouse in Little House on the Prairie. Gerson believes this to be innovation? (Strangely, during my tenure as a substitute teacher - the person who often gets the worst from even the best kids in a class - that wasn't a tactic I found necessary to maintaining classroom order. What's the point of the list? The teacher knows who has misbehaved, so do the students, and if you're going to write somebody up (or not) the only thing that counts is that action.)

Gerson also effuses about Teach For America, with little indication that he's done more than read their promotional literature. His first comment wouldn't strike most people as praise, but that's before you recognize that he's contemptuous of the teaching profession as a whole:

Smith is a Teach for America corps member, meaning that fresh out of college, with five weeks of training, she was thrown into the deep end of the teaching profession in a low-income school.

More accurately, she graduated from a college with decent grades, applied to Teach for America, was admitted into its ranks, and was treated like pretty much any other rookie teacher entering an inner city classroom - with the exception that TFA corp membership is a short-term commitment. With due respect to Gerson's suggestion that 65% of TFA corp members pursue a career in education, the crucial question is how many of them stay in the classroom? (The answer appears to be "less than 20%".) Becoming a principal, administrator or policy maker has value, but TFA sometimes sends the message that those are the only roles that matter, and that teachers are fungible. I'll commend the teacher profiled in the piece for choosing to stay in the classroom beyond the end of her two-year commitment, but heck - if the next teacher to come through the door is every bit as good as her, why does that matter?

Gerson fictionalizes,

Teach for America has become a revolutionary force in education reform because it has taken a rigorous, scientific approach to teaching. Contrary to the mythology of the profession, successful teaching is not a matter of inspiration or credentials. In the exhaustive study of its own outcomes, Teach for America has isolated some common characteristics of good teachers: perseverance, high expectations and the constant adjustment of methods to achieve ambitious outcomes.

First, where can I find any evidence that TFA "has taken a rigorous, scientific approach to teaching"? Which of the "insights" Gerson attributes to TFA represent this "scientific" approach? Perseverance? High expectations? Adjusting your methods when they don't work? Um... yeah. And they care so much about all of this "science" that they cram it all into a five week summer course?

During my aforementioned days as a substitute teacher, I spoke with another teacher and commented how it would have been helpful to have had some of the formal training that I assumed to be part of a standard education degree on teaching technique, classroom management and behavior issues. The response? "To tell you the truth, we had a single, one semester class on teaching and managing the classroom, and it wasn't very helpful." To me, that reflects a contemptuousness of a "scientific approach to teaching" akin to that displayed by TFA's five week summer course - the rough equivalent of a one semester course on actual teaching technique. (Granted, an experienced teacher could probably give me the rudiments of what I wanted to know - principally, techniques to manage disruptive behaviors and the testing of limits, inside of an hour.) There's nothing magical about TFA's five week course - not surprisingly, it results in the bright graduates of elite colleges performing at roughly the same level as any other rookie teacher:

Studies have found that, when the comparison group is other teachers in the same schools who are less likely to be certified or traditionally prepared, novice TFA teachers perform equivalently, and experienced TFA teachers perform comparably in raising reading scores and a bit better in raising math scores.

The question for most districts, however, is whether TFA teachers do as well as or better than credentialed non-TFA teachers with whom school districts aim to staff their schools. On this question, studies indicate that the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers.

TFA corps members who become credentialed and stay in the classroom "do about as well as other similarly experienced credentialed teachers in teaching reading; they do as well as, and sometimes better than, that comparison group in teaching mathematics." In other words, as should come as no surprise, teachers get better over time. Even Michelle Rhee admits she was a disaster as a first year TFA teacher - due to the fact that she had not yet learned to manage a classroom. So what's with the contempt for teaching as a profession?

Some interesting facts about teacher performance: teachers tend to perform better when they're in schools with other high-performing teachers. Also, a teacher's high performance in one school does not automatically mean that the teacher will be equally effective in another. Beyond that, an absurd number of teachers, sometimes exceeding 50%, teach out of field. I recall a high school computer science class in which a math teacher substituted for the regular teacher - the first thing he did was try to turn on an Apple II computer (remember those) by hitting the power light (the actual power switch was on the back of the machine) and declaring "This computer doesn't work." Teachers will be less effective if they don't know the subjects they are teaching.

If I were to extract a one-word takeaway from what makes a great TFA corps member great, or what sets high performing teachers apart from the crowd, the word would be "enthusiasm" - or in a few more words, enthusiasm for teaching coupled with the firm belief that you can make a difference and that your students can perform, translated into action to make your beliefs a reality. What do we call somebody without enthusiasm? Burned out. Talk to teachers in inner city schools and what do you hear of as a serious problem? Teacher burnout. Have you ever worked in a context in which your peers were energized and enthusiastic about their jobs? Or a workplace full of clock watchers? Both enthusiasm and burnout are contagious, and it's in no way surprising that students pick up on a teacher's or school's enthusiasm (or lack thereof).

How do you make a teacher "better" coming out of the gate? There's of course the school of thought that if you pay teachers better, you'll attract better candidates. That may be true to some degree, but in our society it's a moot point - save for in a handful of elite public schools and in a few experimental programs around the nation, we're not going to pay teachers appreciably better - and when hard budget choices are to be made, teaching jobs will remain among the first to go on the chopping block. Meanwhile we have people like Charles Lane saying that teacher layoffs are no big deal because "300,000 is the upper end of a range that could be as low as 100,000" - about nine percent of our nation's teachers being laid off versus a "mere" 3% - and suggesting that the only people who think that's a big deal are those beholden to teacher's unions. He also pretends that layoffs will only marginally affect classroom size, as if the layoffs will primarily hit regular classroom teachers as opposed to those with specialized skills - art, music, physical education, foreign languages, etc.

But more to the point, who are we trying to draw into teaching? If we're trying to attract people who are presently drawn by high salaries, buying into our nation's mythology that the highest earners are invariably "the best and the brightest", we're going to be both investing a phenomenal amount of money in teacher salaries and disappointed in the outcome. I know some really great trial lawyers who are very smart people, but would hate every minute of their lives if they were accountants. And the opposite is true. Even if you assume that teaching is a job that "anybody can do", there's a legitimate question of whether it's a job anybody would want to do.

Raising salaries does make a difference within the current pool of candidates - school districts that offer better pay and working conditions will, on the whole, get more applicants for their jobs than those that do not, and will generally have more high quality candidates to choose from for any job opening. And salary competition isn't enough - many "failing" school districts pay well, but people don't want to work in the schools. That is in no small part why TFA dresses itself up as a "corps" of teachers providing a form of public service, with a commitment short enough that its recruits can see a clear end date to their service. A new teacher applying for the same job is doing so with no similar short-term commitment. With some that represents a level of commitment to a cause far above and beyond what TFA asks of its corps members. With others it's because they can't find a job elsewhere. Particularly in this economy, TFA is displacing some certified teachers who are applying for jobs that are going to corps members, but by the same token they're allowing struggling school districts to be more selective in who they hire.

Related to increased salary is the issue of "merit pay", something that seems to be advocated by those who place the most faith in standardized tests and a means of measuring teacher and student performance. But when I talk to good educators, they speak of how "No Child Left Behind" and its emphasis on standardized test scores takes away from the time they can spend educating their students, and sucks the joy out of teaching. Helping kids prep for a test is different than helping them learn. I can't think of a single person, ever, who has praised the teacher who taught a test prep course as "inspirational" or as "having made a difference in my life." I guess it's a way to be objective, forcing teachers to comport to the role of fungible drones, but it seems inapposite to what I think of as quality education. And frankly, I'm skeptical that standardized test scores are a good measure of student performance. Practicing for a test will raise your performance for that test, but without necessarily providing any other benefit.

There's a valid question of whether colleges of education do a good enough job educating teachers. Should more time be spent focusing on pedagogy, the principles and methods of classroom instruction? Should teachers be held to higher academic standards than is often presently the case - one college I know of doesn't require calculus for its undergraduate economics classes because they're heavily populated with students from the college of education; many offer less rigorous classes for non-majors that may be sufficient for a teacher's subject matter certification. A teaching college should be trying to prepare highly qualified teachers, not tiptoeing around the possibility that academic rigor will scare off applicants and leave its classrooms with empty seats. But... let's just say that problem is far from unique to colleges of education. Note also, the cost of an education at a top college is far beyond the investment justified by a $30-$40K starting salary. Absent a subsidy, students who pay for an elite college through loans can't afford to take an entry level teaching job.

On the other hand, some view teaching more as an art. You could add more classes on pedagogy to a teaching program, but they're not going to make much difference - what matters most are the skills you learn on the job. Most likely there's actually a balance to be reached, with college classes providing a foundation. New teachers are likely to benefit from strong support, mentoring, and instruction on pedagogy once they're in the classroom - and may be better able to retain and implement what they learn within that real world context. Students are also less likely to encounter classes on the theory of the theory of teaching - classes taught by people who are far removed from their classroom experience, or who have never taught in a classroom, but are still "qualified" to teach new teachers how to teach. (The epitome of the cliché, "Those who can do; those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers.")

One way or another, with due respect to TFA's ability to market itself and the commitment and good work of its corps members, an approach that appears both better for teachers and (in the longer run) students and schools is that of The University of Chicago's Urban Teaching Education Program (UTEP):

UTEP, a two-year master’s program in education that focuses on urban education in Chicago, drastically differs from TFA, which provides only five weeks of summer training for teachers before dropping them, often alone and unsupported, into these extremely difficult environments. What results is a 61 percent retention rate for teachers after five years. Comparably, after the initial two years of training that gives graduates a master’s in education, UTEP teachers have cohort supervision and support for three years after they begin teaching. UTEP has a 95 percent retention rate for teachers after five years, and 91 percent are still teaching in Chicago. These high levels of commitment can be attributed to the significant training and support networks that Huang says are necessary to teach effectively in urban schools.

TFA cannot adopt a UTEP-style model. It has to stay sufficiently light to scale to the large number of corps members it recruits, and it's not positioned to provide the type of training or support that UTEP can offer. By the same token, UTEP can't produce enough graduates to serve the nation's need. The proper criticism of TFA is not that it provides limited education to college graduates, pats them on the behind and puts them in inner city schools - the proper criticism is of those in its ranks who deliberately advance the line that a five week course is all it takes to be an effective classroom teacher, who cherry-pick pro-TFA research to suggest that corps members outperform other teachers (whatever the facts), and who scorn teaching as a profession - and, of course, with credulous columnists like Michael Gerson who eagerly lap up and regurgitate that tripe. At this time we have about twenty years of TFA alums to look at - twenty years that firmly establish that TFA no magic bullet.

UTEP should not be an exception, nor should its focus on teacher support and skills development be limited to the inner cities. Colleges of education should start doing a better job researching and teaching educational technique. Most seem content to produce graduating class after graduating class of teachers "qualified" to get an entry level position in a conventional school environment - but why not engage in research that challenges some of the conventions? We've had how many decades of "sit quietly in rows of desks while the teacher lectures you", and our biggest "innovations" are along the lines of mandatory homework policies? Surely we can do better.

The Importance of High Expectations

Quite a few years ago I represented a young man who had been arrested for selling crack cocaine. He had been raised by his grandmother who was too old for the job of raising a troubled teen, but his parents were lost to addiction. During his sentencing, I described him (accurately) as "intelligent". Of all the things people said about him in court, including the prosecutor and probation officer, that was the only one that got a reaction out of him - he did a double-take. I suspect that it was the first time he'd heard himself described in that manner. (Ask anybody who knows me, or read this blog and judge for yourself - "intelligent" is not a word I apply to people who don't deserve it.)

I had a similar sense of some of the kids when I was substitute teaching. That some kids, perhaps most noticeably at twelve or thirteen, were internalizing very negative self-perceptions - that they're trouble-makers, stupid, lazy, etc. - but that they could be steered toward being both more positive about themselves and, as a related consequence, better students. I'm not going to start advocating mindless self-esteem exercises, used in some schools; that's not what I'm talking about. But an aware teacher backed up by some school and community tools (tutoring, a decent school counselor, mentoring programs) could make a big difference for some of those kids.

A while back I discussed the experiences of two Teach for America teachers - where two TFA corps members in the same school had very different experiences. One was quick to blame his students, other teachers, and school administrators for the fact that he was unable to motivate his students, unable to motivate himself, and unable to make a difference. The other was in full-blown TFA mode, a beacon of positivity, fully convinced that if he went into the classroom with high expectations they would be met.

It's not that I think everything can be overcome by teacher expectations, or that every personality type is suited to becoming a teacher of that second variety. But I do think that TFA is correct that a teacher with a positive attitude who is convinced that her teachers can excel is much more likely to achieve that result than a peer who is negative and cynical - or an experienced teacher who is negative, cynical or burned out. Students do pick up on what their teachers think, and I believe a majority will ultimately live up or down to their teachers collective - and often also individual - expectations. The type of drive and positivity TFA demands is most important in troubled schools, as they've become context where low expectations, negativity and fatalism have often become the larger school culture. Really, the first time a smart kid hears somebody say that should be in school, not criminal court.

Nobody Wants To Know The Truth

I'm an advocate of premising social policy on sound research and analysis. You try to find out what's working in other places, and build on those ideas. You monitor your own implementations of those ideas to be sure that your policies are, in fact, working. Ideally, you can build on working ideas, revise or eliminate ideas that aren't working, and make things better.

But what happens when those who implement policies, and those who are affected by those policies or by potential changes in those policies, either don't care about implementing the best public policy solutions or are afraid of what they will uncover if they shine a spotlight on existing policies or the alternatives? One of the most obvious contexts where you can see this phenomenon at work is in K-12 education. When "reforms" come, they're often ad hoc, seat-of-the-pants, "this sounds good"-type reforms, that may or may not last. But most of the time, there appears to be little to no interest in achieving actual reform or improvement. Sometimes you get the worst of both worlds - a reform agenda that doesn't appear to be concerned with quality, and which may in fact be rooted in a political agenda that is something quite apart from ensuring quality public education.

For example, advocates of charter schools are often strong advocates of standardized testing of children in public schools, but they often seek to exempt charter schools from those testing requirements. That prevents a direct, side-by-side evaluation of charter schools and public schools in the same district. Ideally you would be able to track individual student performance, year by year, through their entire progress through the grades. That allows you to compare schools and classes not only by the performance of students at the end of a year, but also to compare the quality of students going in. If schools accept public funding, why shouldn't they have at least that much accountability? For that matter, shouldn't we be taking a similarly hard view at this type of data that already should be available in public school settings?

It isn't just the supporters of charter schools who don't get behind mandating across-the-board testing. It's also many proponents of the status quo. When you don't have the data that supports a side-by-side comparison, it's easier to argue that the status quo is better than (or at least as good as) the alternative. Teaching schools don't appear interested in collecting and analyzing data that might suggest that teaching certificates aren't superior to accelerated or alternative certification programs, or even in comparison to uncertified teachers. Teacher's unions don't necessarily want to see data that suggests that contract standards for hiring, promotion, and assignment to schools and classrooms aren't optimal or may impede good classroom learning.

A related example of this phenomenon in action comes from Teach for America. TFA has been around for about two decades, so there's been ample opportunity to develop good data. To some degree that could be done internally - TFA could develop performance tests to be administered at the start and end of the school year, to help gauge student needs, performance, and improvement in performance over the course of a school year. A school district interested in comparing general teacher performance to TFA corps member performance could administer those tests in its regular classes - or, conversely, it could develop or license tests and require their use across the district. Instead, even when students are being tested and it appears that performance could easily be tracked down to an individual level, that seems to be regarded as something to avoid.

Thus, TFA can announce on its website that a study "confirms... that corps members have a positive effect on student achievement relative to other teachers, including experienced teachers, traditionally prepared teachers, and those fully certified in their field", based on weak data from a single state, North Carolina. Skeptics can point to the amount of guesswork involved, trying to connect students to classroom teachers by who proctored an exam, trying to gauge what happened in a classroom based upon a year-end test with no start-of-year data, the exceptionally small sample size of TFA teachers, the omission of any schools below the high school level, the differences between North Carolina's demographics and those of the most vexing school districts, such as DC or New Orleans....

My point here is not to criticize TFA or corps members. With the résumé of a corps member, not a certified teacher, I've substitute taught in public schools. I've seen some terrific teachers, and others who (despite "years of experience") sleepwalk through their workday. I've seen how different a classroom experience can be between schools, and the role SES, parental involvement, and administrative competence can make. I've also seen how much easier it can be to teach high school than to teach middle school. With no wish to make this an excessively broad generalization, as some schools have severe order and discipline problems that continue through high school, I found teaching grades 10-12 to be a relative cakewalk as compared to teaching middle school, with ninth grade being something of a transition.

I found it to be at times quite difficult to explain what, to me, was an elementary math concept to a seventh grader. I didn't have a similar problem communicating with kids in tenth or eleventh grade. That is to say, when I was out of the context where teaching skills were most crucial, where I had lesser concerns about maintaining classroom order, where the kids understood their lessons at a more adult level, I could be highly effective. I didn't necessarily feel ineffective at other grade levels, but there were times when it was obvious that I lacked the skill set necessary to be more effective. Ideally, had I been a professional teacher, I would have learned some of those skills during my coursework and teacher training. (I say "ideally" because I've had certified teachers tell that, at least in the programs they attended, training in classroom management came almost as an afterthought.) Oh, sure, I would likely have also developed my own set of skills "on the job", had I continued to teach in a classroom for the next few years, but I have no illusions that, for me, it would have been a particularly easy or natural process. Given my druthers, I would have stuck with grades 10-12.

So again, here, I see TFA demonstrating a strong interest in claiming credit based upon weak data and analysis, but not trying to collect strong data or facilitate compelling analysis. I see school districts employing TFA corps members doing nothing to evaluate how the corps members compare to certified teachers. I see advocates of teacher certification and tenure suggesting that reliance upon TFA results a high level of churn among entry level teachers, causing harm to students who would benefit from having experienced teachers. But I don't see anybody advocating the type of study that would sort out and answer some of the persistent questions about TFA, teacher certification, and teacher effectiveness.

It really does amaze me sometimes that, with all of the money this nation pours into education (not to mention the combined spending of the world's other nations), there's so little apparent interest in determining which curricula, classroom management techniques, and approaches to teaching particular subjects (e.g., reading, foreign language, math) are the most effective. I once crazily hoped that having teacher colleges sponsor charter schools might provide a laboratory for education innovation and reform. Oh well.

A Teach for America Ambush Interview

At an Easter gathering, having read this exchange and seeing a Teach for America corps member across the room, somebody I know initiated a brief interrogation:

Q. Are you allowed to criticize Teach for America?

A. You mean, to you, here in this room? Sure.

Q. What about if you make critical blog posts about it, or similar public statements?

A. Somebody I know got kicked out of the program for doing that.

Q. A TFA spokesperson said that they want corps members to speak out about the program and talk about their experiences, and that they even support a blogging platform for that. She said that no organization encourages criticism of itself, but....

A. [Eyeroll]

I wasn't seeking out confirmation of my skeptical views; somebody else did that for me. I sympathize with Lysia's assertion that no company has a policy that "Public criticism of our company is encouraged and welcome", but I think a healthy organization should be able to deal with criticism in a constructive manner when it (inevitably) happens.

Telling Tales Out of School

I stumbled across some pro-"tort reform" pablum from George Will - a pretty standard, "I read a book, accepted its allegations without question, and here's what it said"-type analysis typical of far too many columnists coming up on a deadline. The column opens with the usual array of anecdotes that's supposed to scream out for "reform":

Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self. In a Solomonic compromise, schools in Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. Long Beach, N.J., removed signs warning swimmers about riptides, although the oblivious tides continued. The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says "Safety goggle recommended."

This sounds like pretty standard tort-reform propaganda - take anecdotes from around the nation (and, in the case of "funky warning labels" actually the world), strip them of context, provide no dates, and pretend that they're typical. It's what I've characterized as Readers Digest reasoning, as it's the "biased sample" approach many of that publication's columns have historically taken to convincing its audience of some great wrong that must be righted. I'll get to the school example later, as Will references a couple of others in his next paragraph.

• In a Solomonic compromise, schools in Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess - Apparently in 2005, Broward County posted signs around playground equipment stating "no running" but according to Safety Director Jerry Graziose, the Broward County official who ordered the signs, the issue was that "It's too tight around the equipment to be running."

  Had Will done his homework, he would be pointing out that the rule was short-lived, and Broward County's published rules do not have anything even slightly resembling a "no running at recess" rule for any grade level. (See, e.g., the 2007-2008 Playground Handbook (PDF).¹) But you know, that would involve checking the school district's website or picking up a phone and calling them - way too much work.

• Long Beach, N.J., removed signs warning swimmers about riptides - This was apparently recommended by their lawyer in 2004, based upon the theory that they did not have to warn of natural dangers and that providing an inadequate warning could create liability where none otherwise existed. There's no indication I can find that there was ever any actual litigation over the adequacy or inadequacies of the warnings. I can find no indication that this is a trend, or that it got much of any notice outside of the community of pro-tort reform propagandists.

• The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says "Safety goggle recommended" - So what? Most likely, the guy assigned to making warning labels was sitting at a desk in China, had no clue about western law, and ended up writing a silly label - or copied one from another product because it was easy, or because he didn't understand enough English to compose his own (the author of the label didn't know enough English to pluralize "goggles"). If the suggestion is that lawyers made those labels necessary, quite the contrary - had the manufacturer consulted a lawyer, it would have been told that they were not.

  The fishing lure story appears to date back to 2004, when a story about it first appeared on a pro-tort reform propaganda website. Outside of pro-tort reform websites and credulous columns like Will's, I can't actually find evidence that these labels exist. They probably did exist at one time, but they're anomalies.

So a policy from 2004 in one New Jersey Township that may or may not still be in effect, a playground policy from a single school district in 2005 that appears long-abandoned, and a couple of wacky warning labels that date back many years, haven't been adopted by any products currently on the market, and can't be independently verified.... What an overwhelming case for "tort reform".

Will continues,

No official at the Florida school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was, for $20 million (the school settled for $90,000), because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom. Another teacher's career was ruined by accusations arising from her having positioned a child's fingers on a flute.

The first anecdote is true, dating back to 2006 - it may be that under the school's policies, no teacher could touch the child and thus nobody would do so. But that's not because of the law - it's because of rules imposed by school administrators. The first issue is legislative - when legislatures wish, they can authorize corporal punishment in schools, to the point of severe beatings, with none of the teachers or staff involved needing to be in any fear of being disciplined or sued. The second problem is that, when addressing this type of issue, school administrators tend to be lazy cowards. They implement policies that make it less likely that they will have to make decisions or deal with angry parents, then they blame fear of litigation for their own fecklessness. But one way or another, Will's again referring to a years-old example, an exceptional anecdote that in no way represents either common practice or a trend.

The "flute" story, I suspect to be fiction - or so far divorced from the facts as to amount to fiction. No details are provided, no names, no locations, so it's impossible to even attempt verification.

The remaining story, that of the Teach for America corps member who was sued for allegedly striking a student, caught my eye. Will is again going back quite a few years, to 2001. The TFA member, Joshua Kaplowitz, gives his version of events from his second grade classroom here:

The afternoon of June 13 started with the usual mixture of disorder and disrespect. This time, a boy named Raynard, a particularly difficult child, whom I had seen punch other students and throw things in the past, was repeating over and over, “I got to go to the bathroom. I need some water.” The rest of the class tittered as I told him in my sternest teacher voice that we would be having a class bathroom break once everyone was quiet and in his seat.

“I got to go to the bathroom. I need some water.”

Frustrated, I led him to the classroom door with my hand on the small of his back. I nudged him into the hall and closed the door. He would probably spend the remainder of the day roaming the halls with the rest of the troublemakers at Emery, but at least he would be out of sight, so I could get the rest of my class under control. I had given up on teaching for the rest of the day; my class was slated to watch a movie with Ms. Perkins’s first-graders across the hall.

Once Raynard left, I guided my students through a characteristically raucous bathroom break and filed them into Ms. Perkins’s room, where they lapsed into a rare TV-induced calm.

After 15 minutes, the school security guard appeared at the door and beckoned for me. My stomach hit the floor, as I guessed what this meant: yet another corporal-punishment charge. But this time was different. Chaos reigned in the main entranceway as police officers swarmed into the building. Raynard’s mother, I was told, had been in school for a meeting to place her son in a class for emotionally disturbed children. Raynard had told her that I had violently shoved him in the chest out the door of my classroom, injuring his head and back. His mother had dialed 911 and summoned the cops and the fire department. The police hustled me into the principal’s office, where I sat in bewilderment and desperately denied I had hurt Raynard in any way.

He ended up being charged with misdemeanor assault, and the school settled the lawsuit filed over the incident. A part of me wants to sympathize with Mr. Kaplowitz, but a larger part of me can't get past the self-serving, self-justifying tone of his essay. It's what psychologists call "external locus of responsibility" - everything that goes wrong is somebody else's fault - but his bad attitude toward teaching, his colleagues, his sponsoring organization, and his students oozes out of every word.² Could that have influenced the decision to settle?

What sort of witness testimony might have come up in a civil suit against Mr. Kaplowitz. Calling to the witness stand, Mr. Nick Ehrmann, a fellow TFA corps member who taught in a nearby classroom. Yes, things were difficult at the school:

We all faced incredible challenges throughout our first year - administrative turnover, lack of school discipline, and the resulting transfer of power to disruptive students who exploited this vacuum of administrative accountability. My classroom was frequently a stage for fistfights and tears. The difficulties that Josh describes were painfully real, and we all experienced them in similar degrees.

Despite the difficulties, which include frequent, false accusations of corporal punishment against teachers, and which appear quite extraordinary, Mr. Ehrmann found ways to work with his students and parents. Back to Mr. Ehrmann:

So why was Room 308, just two doors down, the scene of almost constant chaos?

I can’t pretend to know what happened inside those four walls. But I did witness moments that Josh does not mention in his article. I did witness Josh argue with and interrupt our principal during one of our first faculty meetings of the year. I did witness Josh berate a lone student in the hallway, his anger clearly uncontrolled. I did witness Josh place his hands upon this student’s shoulders and shove him against the wall while yelling in his face. Good intentions should not be an excuse for bad decisions.

Cross-examination, Mr. Kaplowitz?

Nick’s creativity is evidenced by the dramatic license with which he describes a hallway incident I omitted from my article - far more exciting in his retelling than in reality.

That's it? "Dramatic license"? The implication that there's more to the story? But no explanation of how Mr. Ehrmann's statement is inaccurate, misleading, or mischaracterizes a flagrant violation of the school's rules against corporal punishment?

Are you beginning to sense why the case settled?

Yet even as the lawsuit dragged on and the legal cloud over me caused me to lose a job opportunity I really wanted, I refused to entertain Raynard’s mother’s offers to settle the case by my paying her $200,000 - a demand that ultimately diminished to $40,000. The school system had no such scruples; it settled the mother’s tort claim in October 2002 for $75,000 (plus $15,000 from the teachers’ union’s insurance company—chump change compared with the cost of defending the litigation).

George Will says that translates into the case settling for $90K. But it sounds like, despite his scruples, Mr. Kaplowitz may have chipped in an additional $40K.

That was a long digression from Will's editorial, but it is illustrative of the problem. To hold the Kaplowitz story up as an example of a trend, or something that makes tort reform necessary, is absurd. Faced with unsympathetic facts, school administrators and teachers who were aware of Mr. Kapolowitz's difficulties with his classroom and students, and at least one known incident of inappropriate, angry physical contact with a student, it wasn't a good case to take to trial. And like every one of the stories in Will's parade of horribles, it occurred many years ago.

The sad part is, this is what you routinely get from tort reform advocates, and those like Will who choose to repeat their claims without care, thought, or investigation. If there's such a compelling case to be made for tort reform, why is it so hard to find a "tort reform advocate" who will approach the subject with so much as a whit of honesty?³
___________

1. Note to Broward County: "Helmit" is not an acceptable alternative spelling of "helmet".

2. The biggest problems Mr. Kaplowitz faced in the classroom appear to be that he was completely aware of what teaching actually involves, had no classroom management skills, and was placed in a "sink or swim" environment. His story's old, but it probably merits a more thorough and sympathetic examination in a future post.

3. Will's editorial continues with more "horribles", some of which are, well, judge for yourself:

In Indiana, a boy did what boys do: He went down a slide headfirst -- and broke his femur. The school district was sued for inadequate supervision. Because of fears of such liabilities, playgrounds all over America have been stripped of the equipment that made them fun.

So... how exactly can you break your leg by going down a slide head-first? Do you suspect that, if the story has any relation to the truth, Will's again leaving out some crucial facts and context? And where, exactly, can I find school playgrounds where they've removed the slides?

Polishing the Résumé

A recent visitor comments,

I find that TFA attracts those who want to polish their resume. Most of them aren't really passionate and care about inner-city/urban issues. Most of them BS the interview process and just cause they're from "Harvard", they get into TFA!

I have had that thought, actually, having read a variety of stories and commentary by participants. It reminds me of how back in my college days (and possibly through the present) certain students, graduating from elite universities but without the academic credentials necessary to get into the graduate programs of their choice, would spend a couple of years in the Peace Corps. Whatever the motivation for participating, the de facto "quid pro quo" can be a win-win for the public service group and the student. Whether it benefits the targeted community? I expect that on the whole it does, although I'm sure there are some notable exceptions that, I would hope, get weeded out.

Stifling TFA's Critics?

I have heard an account that I find credible, that participants in Teach for America are not permitted to publicly criticize the program, at the potential peril of their being expelled from the program. Given TFA's apparent emphasis on its program as résumé fodder, this seems to be part of an interesting set of techniques that TFA uses to minimize criticism:

• If you're in the program, you're required to keep negative opinions to yourself;
• If you are kicked out or drop out, criticism is seen as "sour grapes";
• If you complete the program, you have an incentive to defend it as otherwise its value as résumé fodder is diminished;
• If you're an education professional who criticizes the program, it seems to me that you're depicted as a defender of a failed status quo, as shilling for unions, or both.

I'm personally wary of any program that bars participants from publicly commenting on the negative aspects of their experience. I would be interested to hear any verification or rebuttal in relation to that alleged policy.

Does "Teach for America" Suck?

Given the fury directed at Linda Darling-Hammond, who has dared to question the effectiveness of "Teach for America", I thought it was worth looking under the hood. Teach for America's website led me to this article from the Hoover Institute's publication, Education Next - in lauding itself, Teach for America presents only the graphic, and not the text of the article. The commentary by Arthur Wise, a proponent of the professionalization of the teaching profession, is what you should expect. He gives a pretty good synopsis of why Teach for America "works" - and what that actually means for students:

At least five studies include data on TFA. The 2004 Mathematica study says that “TFA teachers did not have an impact on average reading achievement. Students in TFA and control classrooms experienced the same growth rate in reading achievement—an increase equivalent to one percentile” [from the 14th to the 15th percentile]. In addition, many of the TFA teachers were actually more prepared than over half in the novice control group: “All TFA teachers had at least 4 weeks of student teaching, while many of the control teachers (and over half the novice control teachers) had no student teaching experience at all.” The abysmally low percentage of students at the proficiency level in both reading and math in this study demonstrates the results of the current policy of having inexperienced, untrained recruits teaching the most-needy students.

Is it truly possible for a certified teacher to be dumped into the most difficult inner city classroom with absolutely no student teaching experience? That's appalling. I wasn't aware that any states permitted teachers to be fully certified without any student teaching experience.

As a group, the studies tend to show that the students of uncertified TFA recruits underachieve when compared to students of new certified teachers, but this gap tends to disappear as the TFA recruits obtain professional knowledge through coursework and certification. Like similar studies in other areas of educational controversy, however, these results are indicative but not uniformly regarded as conclusive.

Thus, as you would expect, as TFA participants get to the point of having two years of experience and benefit from additional training, they are better able to control their classrooms and to teach their students as compared to newly certified teachers. Then, for the most part, they quit.

Whatever the relative performance of the two groups of new teachers, I know of no school or district that has made a conscious choice to hire TFA recruits instead of certified teachers. And the districts do not retain any substantial number of them long enough for the recruits to catch up to their peers. TFA recruits are placeholders in troubled schools where an adult must staff the classroom and no one else volunteers. They are hired because of the lack of certified applicants, not because they are considered more desirable.

At the same time,

Whether TFA has in fact “improved the caliber of candidates,” however, depends on the criterion used to make the judgment. TFA was designed to help solve the “teacher shortage” in “under-resourced” urban and rural schools and should be measured against this objective.

I agree. And within that context, I find Teach for America's exaggeration and triumphalism off-putting. TFA appears to be marketing itself as résumé fodder, and seems to believe that the best way to do so is to diminish the profession of teaching. It may well introduce future policy makers to the genuine problems of inner city schools, and it may well inspire a modest number of its alumni to remain in teaching professions or become school administrators. But it's not comfortable admitting that its most important service is helping to overcome teacher shortages with what, by the design of its program, amount to a succession of temps - intelligent, motivated temps, for the most part, but temps nonetheless. I expect that a lot of TFA participants get a rude awakening their first day of class.

If TFA tried to pitch itself to my local school board, it would be told that its services weren't needed. If TFA tried to convince parents in my town that they should happily have their children taught by one of its participants instead of a certified, experienced teacher, they would be laughed out of the room. If TFA tried to pitch its programs to private schools, it might be told to send over its graduates - but not its novices. It's exceptionally important that enough teachers be available to serve inner city kids, and it's wonderful that TFA helps that happen, but please, let's not pretend that this is the ideal, or even on par with having those same schools staffed with qualified, dedicated, experienced, professional teachers.