A Brief Note on the Misapplication of Campbell's Law

I'll make this brief, but I felt compelled to point out the flaw in the way people are applying Campbell's Law to education when I saw Andy Rotherham's latest post on Eduwonk.

Here's what he wrote about Campbell's Law:

if you don’t think public educators can handle real accountability without resorting to cheating (e.g. the constant refrain of “Campbell’s Law) then you have a pretty low opinion of public school educators. In most walks of life there are high-stakes consequences attached to professional and behavioral decisions. And yet most people are able to play by the rules.

Here's what Campbell's Law actually says:

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

I don't know to whom he's referring and what others are actually saying about Campbell's Law, but if he's accurately representing their sentiment then a lot of people are misapplying the lessons of Campbell's Law.

The central insight of Campbell's Law is that it's a really bad idea to make all of our decisions based on any single measure, not that people will always cheat in high-stakes situations (or, for that matter, that tests are inherently bad).  It's not about high-stakes versus low-stakes or accountability versus trust, it's about relying on one measure versus utilizing multiple (or no) measures.

So, in short, what we should learn from Campbell's Law is that we shouldn't use only testing data to make decisions in education.

A Clarification on Respecting Teachers

Last week, I wrote about the dismissive attitude toward teaching Kindergarten on How I Met Your Mother, and I wanted to offer one short clarification based on a personal conversation I had.

In that piece I wrote two things that were meant to make the same argument but may sound like different arguments.

First, I wrote that "Virtually all the reform efforts of the past few years have focused on teacher quality because everybody agrees it's so important; but nobody's willing to actually treat teachers like they're important."

I then concluded by arguing that we couldn't possibly get the school system we want "if quitting is the only way for teachers to reach their potential".

Upon reading the piece, a friend contacted me to point out that he didn't think bad teachers deserved respect, which led to a discussion differentiating respecting teachers from respecting teaching.

The former would mean that people who are currently teaching aren't receiving enough respect from society. While I think this is true in many cases (there are obviously some who don't do much to earn our respect -- though they should still be respected as human beings), it was not the intent of my last piece to argue that being nicer to current teachers would solve our problems (though it wouldn't hurt).

Rather, my intent was to focus on the latter construct -- respect for the act of teaching itself.  The largest policy problem I saw evidenced in the dialogue of the show was that multiple people were dismissing the job of kindergarten teacher as beneath that of any elite person.  Lily leaves her job to work in the art world; Marshall is a lawyer; Ted is an architect/professor; Barney does something vague in finance; and Robin is a newscaster.  And the job of kindergarten teacher simply isn't worthy of any of them.

In the long-run, we flat-out will not be able to recruit or retain the best and the brightest if the status of teaching remains so low.  The billions of dollars, oodles of effort, and reams of policy papers we've recently expended on improving teacher quality will all be for naught if teaching is beneath the elite.

*Just* A Kindergarten Teacher

Tonight's episode of How I Met Your Mother features an argument between Marshall and Lily about her career that speaks volumes about the current state of America's educational system.  (In case you don't watch the show, Marshall and Lily are college sweethearts who are now married thirty-somethings with a baby -- Marshall is a lawyer and Lily is a kindergarten teacher).

Lily is upset because she's told by an acquaintance that she's "just a kindergarten teacher" and the following exchange ensues (video at the bottom):

Marshall: Oh my God! Lily! What is the big deal?  Ok, so what? So he said you were just a kindergarten teacher.  Why do you let that bother you?
Lily: Because he was right; I am just a kindergarten teacher.  And, yes, I have a degree in art history, and I was meant to do something with it -- but I didn't. Somewhere along the line I forgot to pursue my dream and, and now I'm old, and I'm a Mom, and it's just too late for me.

At this point -- particularly knowing the cutesy relationship they have and how much Marshall adores Lily -- I expected Marshall to respond by saying something like "Lily, that's one of my favorite things about you: few people are more important or incredible than kindergarten teachers"

Marshall instead responds by emphatically saying "No, it's not too late. You're going to quit your job, tomorrow, and you're gonna go back and pick up right where you left off with that art stuff . . ."

Maybe I'm overreacting to a few moments in a sitcom, but this seems indicative of one of the largest problems with our efforts to improve our educational system.  Virtually all the reform efforts of the past few years have focused on teacher quality because everybody agrees it's so important; but nobody's willing to actually treat teachers like they're important.

After all, who's going to want to be just a teacher?  Certainly not the best and the brightest.  And what teacher is going to be empowered or respected enough to change the system if teachers are viewed as second-class citizens?  If we want to recruit, retain, and develop the best teaching corps in the world (like we say we do), we can't keep demeaning and demoralizing them.  If we're going to justify every new pet policy (which always seem to place teachers under even more scrutiny) by talking of teachers' vast importance, we can't then act like they aren't worthy of our attention.

Our teachers deserve better.  Our kids deserve better.  And our country deserves better.  And we won't get it if quitting is the only way for teachers to reach their potential.


Cross-Posted at Blog of the Century

Here's the clip, but the quality is poor -- you'll probably have to turn up your volume to hear anything.

Why Does Massachusetts Rank Highly?

In last week's debate, Mitt Romney took credit for Massachusetts' position atop some education rankings. And, yes, it's generally true that Massachusetts ranks at or near the top.  More specifically, the state has frequently had the highest average score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

But the more important question is why Massachusetts ranks so highly.  Was it something that Romney did while Governor, or are there other factors at play?

The second question is really quite easy to answer.  It's almost certainly something other than Romney's actions.  For two reasons:

1.) Children in Massachusetts earned really high test scores both before and after Romney was Governor:

	2002	2011
1.)	Vermont (272)	Massachusetts (275)
2.)	Massachusetts (271)	New Jersey (275)
3.)	Montana (270)	Connecticut (275)
4.)	Nebraska (270)	Vermont (274)
5.)	Maine (270)	Montana (273)

2.) We know from decades of research that non-school factors influence achievement far more than in-school factors.  So it's exceedingly unlikely that a few state-level policy tweaks, implemented for a mere four years, could impact student performance dramatically enough to boost Massachusetts to the top of the nation.

We can also argue to what extent the high test scores mean the state's schools are a success.  We could certainly measure student and school performance in myriad other ways.  And even if we look only at test scores, we can go beyond the averages.  Massachusetts has one of the largest gaps in achievement between upper- and lower-income students, for example.  Though, again, that likely has little to do with Romney -- the state ranked 5th in 2002 and 6th in 2011 (measured as the average 8th grade reading score of those not eligible for free/reduced price lunch minus the average score of eligible students).

That said, I wanted to explore this a little more in-depth, so I went to the NAEP website and delved into the 8th grade reading scores.  The first thing you'll notice on the site is the map of state results (below) which shows striking regional disparities in test scores.  If we assume that Governors are almost solely responsible for the average test scores in their states, we could only conclude that virtually all Northern governors are education geniuses and almost all Southern Governors education dunces.  Which, of course, is preposterous -- there are clearly larger issues at play here (issues out of the hands of the various Governors).

What are these issues?  The socio-economic status of the states' residents would be at the top of the list (certainly, a Governor would have some power to influence that over the course of one or more terms -- but that change would be both slight and slow).  To examine this, I downloaded the state NAEP scores from the NAEP data webpage and demographic data from census website so that I could compare the two.

Unsurprisingly, a fairly strong correlation exists between a state's average 8th grade reading score and a state's median household income (r = .43).  When we plot all the states' average test scores and median household incomes on the graph below, we see a few outliers -- Montana, Kentucky, and Vermont score much higher than we'd expect given their average incomes while California, Hawaii, Nevada, and Alaska score much lower -- but Massachusetts is right about where we'd expect it to be (note that the best fit line would run right through Massachusetts if we deleted the outliers).  Massachusetts has relatively wealthy residents and high-scoring students.  Not a surprise.

Massachusetts stands out even more if we look at the education levels of the population.  The percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree in a state is very strongly correlated (r = .65) with the average NAEP score in that state, and Massachusetts ranks at the top of both categories.  Once again, we see some outliers -- both positive (Kentucky, Wyoming, and Montana stick out) and negative (Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, California, and Hawaii don't look too good), but find Massachusetts right about where we'd expect.

So, yes, Romney was correct when he said that Massachusetts ranks at the top.  But it's exceedingly unlikely he had much to do with that.  Massachusetts' residents were and are wealthy and highly educated relative to the residents of other states, and that mostly explains why their children perform so well on tests.


cross-posted on Blog of the Century

It's All About Vocabulary?

The edusphere is abuzz about this NY Times piece on early vocabulary growth that ran over the weekend. Though the piece focuses on the current controversy surrounding test-based admissions to the top high schools in NYC, it's mostly based on the famous Hart and Risley book in which the authors conclude that children from families on welfare hear 32 million fewer words and 560,000 fewer encouragements than children of professional families between birth and age 4 -- and that these differences lead to subsequent differences in vocabulary and achievement.

To reinforce the importance of this early vocabulary growth, the article quotes a charter school principal saying that the "word deficit" is the greatest challenge the school faces and quotes E.D. Hirsch saying that "there is strong evidence that increasing the general knowledge and vocabulary of a child before age six is the single highest correlate with later success".

This all leads Robert Pondiscio to write that "Demography isn't destiny. Vocabulary is destiny".

Ok, stop.  Just stop.

Yes.  Vocabulary is important.  And vocabulary growth in the early years is crucially important.  Every person or organization responsible for raising young kids should aim to use and explain as many words words and concepts as possible.

But, c'mon.  Let's not get carried away.

The second we identify something -- anything -- as the "single" most important, we do ourselves and our nation's children a disservice.  I understand the allure of boiling everything down to the simplest solution possible, but life just doesn't work that way.

And arguing that vocabulary -- rather than demography -- is destiny?  That's just silly.

For starters, we have what economists would call an "endogeneity problem" in that statement.  An awful lot of what's driving the vocabulary of a child entering kindergarten is also driving the success of that kid later in school: parenting, myriad environmental conditions and social factors in the child's home and neighborhood, health, peers, genetics, and a thousand other things.  In other words: a child with a large vocabulary at age 4 is likely to succeed in school partly b/c of that vocabulary, but more so because the conditions that created that vocabulary will almost certainly continue to foster intellectual growth and social development throughout his/her school years.

Second, an awful lot of what drives vocabulary growth is demography.  The education level of one's parent(s) and other adult supervisors, the amount of stimulation available in one's surroundings (including the number of different objects one can learn about), the noise level inside and outside of one's home, the levels of stress to which a child and his/her family are exposed, the number of books available, and hundreds of other home, neighborhood, and family factors correlated with socio-economic status all result in a child learning more or fewer words.  So arguing that vocabulary is more important than demography in school is like arguing that strength is more important than weightlifting in football.

So, please, let's stop trying to reduce everything to the one, most important factor (which is surely more important than the factor the last person discussed).  The fewer things we focus on, the more distorted those measures become.  And the simpler we make the problem seem, the more simplistic our solutions.  Vocabulary certainly deserves some of our attention.  Now let's discuss what else deserves our attention instead of how much less they deserve it.

The Differences Between High- and Low-Performing Schools: Not What You Might Expect

Last Thursday, the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (a research center led by Vanderbilt's Peabody College with partners at UNC-Chapel Hill, Florida State, Wisconsin-Madison, Georgia State, and the Educational Development Center, funded by a five-year, $13.6 million federal grant, which aims to identify and then explore ways to scale up, characteristics of effective high schools) released a new report examining the differences between high-and low-performing high schools in Broward County, Florida.

As only one small piece of the puzzle, we shouldn't get carried away with the findings.  But I was struck with what was -- and was not -- included in their list of differences between the schools.  Below is the Executive Summary's list of differences:

We identified one major theme that cut across all ten components: personalization for academic and social learning. In the area of personalization, our findings show that the higher value-added (VA) schools made deliberate efforts through systematic structures to promote strong relationships between adults and students as well as to personalize the learning experience of students. In addition, the higher VA schools maintained strong and reliable disciplinary systems that, in turn, engendered feelings of caring and, implicitly, trust among both students and teachers. Leaders at the higher VA schools talked explicitly about looking for student engagement in classroom walkthroughs as well as in their interactions with students. Teachers at the higher VA schools were more likely to discuss instructional activities that drew on students’ experiences and interests. The higher VA schools also encouraged stronger linkages with parents (p. 5).

Included: "soft" factors like trust and relationships.

Not included: virtually everything currently discussed in ed policy circles (school choice, teacher evaluations, merit pay, data-driven decision-making,  etc.)

Now, to be fair, many of factors were off the table because the study examined four schools located in the same county which had much in common (no differences in merit pay or district leadership, for example).  And there's always the possibility that implementing some of these reforms could change the factors included in the list even if they're not currently present in the schools.

Nonetheless, even when the measuring stick is value-added scores -- the latest, greatest measure being pushed on schools -- many of the factors emphasized by those pushing for its use don't seem to be drivers of the differences.

Most interestingly, the two low-scoring schools had higher scores on some measures of teaching practices and instructional quality than the two high-scoring schools.  Here's the summary from the research team on this topic:

Taken together, our indicators of the quality and nature of instruction across the schools -- CLASS-S*, course matrices, student shadowing, and interviews with multiple school stakeholders -- reveals no major differences in instructional quality across the four schools.  We cannot turn to evidence in the area of Quality Instruction to explain the differences in value-added achievement between our high- and low-VA schools" (p. 32).

While we certainly shouldn't base our policy decisions on one study examining four schools in one county, I do think it's fair to say that this confirms what we should've known all along -- that high-quality instruction (like every aspect of schools) is not sufficient when trying to create high-performing schools.  I should also note that, in many areas, larger differences existed between the honors and regular tracks within the schools than between the high- and low-scoring schools themselves.

Again, I don't want to get carried away with the results of one small-scale study (and I'll refrain from addressing the other 50 or so topics covered by the report at the moment), but I do think that, at this point, we can take two important lessons from this ongoing research:

1.) Regardless of the amount of press coverage, foundation money, or policy directed toward a particular aspect of school reform, not a single factor is sufficient to create a high-quality school.

2.) Even though it's easy (and, arguably, practical) to focus on the simplest, starkest issues, the most subtle, nuanced, and complicated ones are often at least as important.

From a 10,000 foot vantage point, the potential benefits of creating more charter schools, or implementing a merit pay plan or new curriculum are easy to see.  But, on the ground, it probably matters more how than whether those things are implemented -- without strong relationships, trust, and commitment, it's unlikely any reform will turn around a school or district.

That fact is really difficult for policymakers to swallow because there's no easy way to change those types of things: what is Congress supposed to do in order to make make teachers at the local elementary school get along better with their students?  The relationship between policy and the factors discussed in the report is so indirect that it's easy to just ignore them and focus on simpler solutions.  We should all try to resist that temptation.



*"the Classroom Assessment Scoring System for Secondary classrooms (CLASS-S), [is] an observational tool developed by researchers at the University of Virginia, to observe and assess the quality of teacher-student interactions in classrooms. Based on development theory and research suggesting that interactions between students and adults are the primary mechanism of student development and learning (Greenberg, Domitrovich, & Bumbarger, 2001; Hamre & Pianta, 2006; Morrison & Connor, 2002; Pianta, 2006; Rutter & Maughan, 2002), the CLASS-S focuses not on the presence of materials, the physical environment, or the adoption of a specific curriculum but on what teachers do with the materials they have and on the interactions teachers have with their students. The observation tool looks specifically at interactions between teachers and students across four domains: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, Instructional Support, and Student Engagement" (p. 12).

Schools Rallying Communities

I have strongly mixed feelings about charter schools, but my biggest concern is one I almost never see mentioned by charter proponents, detractors, or neutral observers.  We hear a lot about how communities affect schools, but almost nothing about the reverse.

I grew up in a suburban district where people routinely headed to the local high school for football games, basketball games, school plays, and scads of other events.  And, to a lesser extent, the elementary and junior high schools brought in community members for fairs, concerts, etc.  All in all, the schools brought the community together quite often for various reasons.  And that's not uncommon.  Or at least, historically, it hasn't been uncommon.

But that might be changing.  If we imagine a world where schools and neighborhoods are completely decoupled and people from one town go to scads of different schools all over the place, that relationship almost ceases to exist.  We won't read stories like this piece in the NY Times about a small-town HS football team that's rallying the community.

Granted, it might be worth the trade-off if the new non-neighborhood schools dramatically outperformed our traditional school system, but it's important to recognize that there is a trade-off involved here.  And that schools have larger ripple effects on society beyond the academic performance of their current students.

Frustrating Work Conditions and Schools

It seems like a growing number of people give lip service to working conditions in school, but without many specifics.  If teachers are frustrated by the working conditions in their schools, how would we expect their behavior to change?

We're using Bolman and Deal's textbook in the Organizational Theory course I'm teaching this semester, which includes a large section on human resources in organizations.  Part of that section discusses Chris Argyris' work on the differences between human personality and management practices.  Argyris contends that workers have six options when trying to escape frustrating working conditions (pp. 128-130).  See how many of these seem familiar to you when thinking about schools:

They withdraw -- through chronic absenteeism or simply by quitting
This certainly happened at my school -- working conditions were so bad that the vast majority of teachers took all 10 of their sick/personal days each year (which compounded the problem, since we usually couldn't find any subs to come into the building).  I'm not sure what's been published on the topic, but I do know that if one looks through the NYC School Report cards that a lot of schools average a lot fewer teacher absences.

They stay on the job but withdraw psychologically, becoming indifferent, passive, and apathetic
This is the quintessential "bad teacher" right here.  The tenured burn-out who can't be bothered to do much of anything anymore.

They resist by restricting output, deception, featherbedding*, or sabotage
Sounds just like the legion of obstinate teachers who refuse to implement the latest, greatest curriculum or other reform handed down to them from above.

They try to climb the hierarchy to better jobs
As teachers in my school used to say: "those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, become principals" (I should note that there's some emerging evidence that many principals had above-average VAM scores when they were teaching).  Either way, it's pretty clear that a lot of teachers try to escape the classroom to become coaches, coordinators, and administrators of all types.  In my school, the most veteran teachers who hadn't moved into one of those types of positions all taught in positions that got them out of the classroom (e.g. "resource room," in which they'd pull out a couple kids at a time).

They form alliances (such as labor unions) to redress the power imbalance
Unions certainly play a large role in many schools.  What we often forget, though, is why the unions came about.  If teachers aren't frustrated and don't distrust their supervisors, they don't usually form (or utilize) unions.

They teach their children to believe that work is unrewarding and hopes for advancement are slim
I haven't seen any evidence of this happening with teachers . . . hopefully it doesn't get that bad.


I definitely see evidence of five out of these six behaviors, though it's unclear whether any of these are currently increasing.  I'd argue, though, that ameliorating the conditions that lead to these types of behavior should be one important goal in our quest to raise teacher quality and turn around low-performing schools.

If we instead go the opposite direction (sterner management, scripted curricula, etc.), we risk turning our schools into highly organized, poorly performing factories.  Taken to the extreme, teachers essentially become mindless drones.  The authors quote Ben Hamper (a former factory worker who then wrote about his experiences) saying that "Working the Rivet Line was like being paid to flunk high school the rest of your life" (p. 131).  Work like that certainly won't inspire anybody to become the high-quality teachers we all agree we need.


*"Featherbedding is a colloquial term for giving people jobs that involve little or no work" (p. 138).

Guest Post: Teacher Opposition to VAM

by Kerri Tobin, PhD

Teacher opposition to value-added modeling gets portrayed in the media as teachers refusing to take any kind of responsibility for student learning or academic growth. But most teachers do not balk at the idea that they should be accountable for advancing their students’ knowledge. What they oppose is value-added modeling, or VAM, the highly-imprecise tool that is being used to measure teachers' impact on students' learning.. When the New York Times won the right to publishteacher VAM scores this spring, only the tiny print noted the inaccuracy of the data, including some standard errors larger than the purported effect sizes. Researchers familiar with value-added modeling have repeatedly voiced their concern about its use in high-stakes decisions like teacher evaluations (for example: here, here, and here).

Often, opponents of current uses of standardized testing fall back on attempts to draw parallels between teaching and medicine: “It’s like grading doctors on how many of their patients die!” But these analogies are imprecise; they do not do the problem justice. John Ewing’s fertilizer analogy is fascinating but perhaps too long for the common person. What we need is an “elevator speech” – one that can be delivered in the time it takes to get from the ground to the 3rd floor – to explain why teachers oppose VAM. A better analogy is this: using VAM to evaluate teachers is akin to evaluating chemotherapists based on how much their patients’ tumors shrink every year. The expected rate of tumor shrinkage is calculated based on patients’ race and socioeconomic status. So if a patient’s tumor shrinks more, over that year, than expected, the doctor gets a positive score. If it shrinks less than it “should,” the doctor gets a negative score. The average of these patients’ scores becomes the doctor’s overall VAM score. Sound reasonable? Maybe, until you consider that a) different kinds of tumors respond differently to chemotherapy; b) the doctor has no control over what patients do outside the office (for example, lung cancer sufferers who continue to smoke); c) his patients saw a different chemotherapist last year and will see another one next year; and, perhaps most importantly, d) the doctor is not allowed to treat any co-morbid conditions (for example, a cancer patient with diabetes gets no treatment to manage his blood sugar) – even if he wanted to, and even in cases where the patient or his family might prefer that other conditions be treated instead of the cancer (e.g., when parents value social or self-confidence issues more than test scores), there simply aren’t enough hours in his day. Factors like the overall health of the patient, his lifestyle, eating habits, substance use, weight, and blood pressure might impact the effectiveness of the chemo. But the doctor cannot control these, in much the same way teachers cannot control where students live, if they have enough to eat and get regular medical care, whether anyone reads to them at home, how much TV they watch, or what time they go to bed at night. And in the same way our VAM-assessed doctor would be powerless to decide that a patient dying of AIDS needs antiretroviral therapy before he can tolerate chemo for a concurrent cancer, teachers have neither the time, resources, nor training to solve the problems in their students’ lives – emotional problems, health challenges, family issues, etc. – that impact their academic growth. This is how VAM works, and why teachers oppose it.

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Kerri Tobin is Assistant Professor of Education at Marywood University in Scranton, PA, where she researches the educational needs of students living in poverty and prepares teachers and school leaders to meet those needs.

The Two Types of TFA Alums

Almost ten years ago now (where has the time gone?), I figured out what I wanted to do after college: I wanted to join Teach For America.  Eight years ago, I began teaching in The Bronx through a sister program, the NYC Teaching Fellows (one of many organizations under the umbrella of The New Teacher Project, started by a TFA alum -- the interviews for TFA and the three TNTP programs I applied to were almost exactly identical).  While in NYC, many of my closest friends were NYCTF or TFA members and I left for grad school with a rosy picture in my mind of how we would change the world.

I think it's precisely because these types of programs are so near and dear to my heart that I've grown so frustrated with TFA.  For over 20 years now, they've done a world of good in countless ways.  But I've always believed that their greatest impact would be the actions of their alumni.  The recruitment materials I pored over my junior year in college told us that we could see how the system was failing from the inside and then go out and fix it -- whether that be by remaining in the field of education or as a lawyer, politician, school board member, concerned citizen, or whatever other route we chose.  The idea was that, over time, an army of active citizens with elite credentials and experience in our failing inner-city and rural schools would wield enough influence to finally fix what ails our educational system.

That's starting to come true.  Countless TFA alums have become principals, begun charter schools, and so on.  One became the head of the whole DC school system.  And now we're beginning to see TFA alums entering politics (my local school board race in Nashville, for example, featured two TFA alums both vying to unseat the chair of the board).

For most of the past decade I've waited for this day with bated breath.  Finally, I thought, we'd start to see some change.  The conditions that I couldn't believe our society would tolerate while I was teaching would finally start to be addressed.  But now I'm worried.

While I don't doubt that TFA alums will have an outsized influence on our educational policy in the coming decades, I'm no longer convinced that the results of this influence will be all good.

Why?  Because too many TFA alums took the wrong lesson from their experiences in the classroom.  I've interacted with (both personally and professionally), heard, and read countless TFA alums over the past decade, and I now generally lump them into one of two groups: the humbled and the hubristic.  It's a crass generalization, and many alums I know don't neatly fall into one group or the other, but I still think it's helpful in thinking through what changes we should expect as TFAers gain clout.  So, without further ado, here are the two types of TFA alums:

1.) The Humbled - If I chose one word to describe my classroom experience, it would be "humbling" ("frustrating" would be a close second).  I went in believing that I could change the world in one fell swoop, that I would surely be the world's greatest teacher, and that we could easily fix most of our problems if only we could find more miracle workers like myself.  By day two I realized that I wasn't the world's greatest teacher on that day.  And by day five I started to think it might not happen for at least a couple more weeks.  What followed was two years in which I valiantly fought losing battle after losing battle until I was utterly exhausted.  During those two years, I saw the underbelly of one of the lowest performing middle schools in NYC (its closure was announced the spring of my second year), and formed quite a few opinions regarding its failure.

But one notable item missing from my list was the quality of the veteran teachers in the building.  I knew I was smarter than some of them.  I knew I worked harder than all of them.  But I'll be damned if most didn't teach circles around me -- and many found a way to do it for decades while I lasted all of two years before I became a statistic.

My major takeaway from that experience was that fixing the problems that look so simple from the outside is really hard.

And I know a lot of TFA and TNTP alums who will tell you something similar.  Some are disillusioned.  Some are frustrated.  Some are neither.  But all came to realize that they can't do this on their own, and that it's not going to be easy.

This group of humbled alums are more likely to push for educational and societal reforms and policies that change the context in which schools operate.  They know that if you can address poverty at the family and neighborhood level, then school will go a lot smoother; that if you can change the attitudes and outlooks of students they'll learn a heck of a lot more regardless of the teacher; that if teachers are treated as professionals they'll rise to the occasion; that if teachers are given resources and support they'll both stick around longer and teach more effectively while they're there; and that schools, in general, need our help.

2.) The Hubristic - Many TFAers had very different experiences than I.  Research on TFA generally finds that their teachers' students make gains equivalent to or slightly higher than other teachers (sometimes even higher than veteran teachers).  Which means that a lot of corps members receive results each year telling them that they are the world's greatest teacher (or at least one of the best in their school).  Some of these are flat-out better teachers than I, some simply found the right fit, landed a position at a top-performing school, or received oodles of support.

Some, though not all, of these teachers see their school -- and its veteran teachers -- very differently from how I saw mine (or, in the case of TFA members who teach at high-flying charters, see other schools and their veteran teachers differently).  They think to themselves "this isn't so hard; if we could find more people like me, we could lick this problem in no time".  I hear stories from them of how mind blowingly lazy, stupid, and/or incompetent the veteran teachers at their school were.  And they leave their school with a distinct sense that they could fix our schools if somebody would let them -- and if everybody would listen to them.

As a result, hubristic alums are more likely to push for educational reforms and policies that aim to separate the wheat from the chaff.  They know that if we can recruit better people into teaching, get rid of the dead weight (or at least get them to fall in line), stop making excuses, and give the superstars the reins that our schools will shine in no time; in short, that schools need to be shaken up.

It's good that different people bring different perspectives and ideas to the table, but I get the distinct sense right now that the latter group is winning in a rout.  And I'm not sure that's going to be good for our schools down the road.  I don't doubt that improving teacher quality would yield positive results, but I do worry that our narrow focus on such a nebulous trait will prevent us from addressing other, more serious problems.

If we focus solely on the human capital of our teaching force, we will fail to address the home lives or emotions of our students, the competence of our school leaders, the quality of our curriculum, or any number of other challenges our system faces on any given day.

Where will that leave us?  Best case scenario, we're left with a whole bunch of superteachers who miraculously and dramatically raise achievement regardless of any outside challenges or distractions.  Worst-case scenario, we're left with a crumbling system full of disenfranchised teachers who are unable to overcome the shortcomings of their school context, school leaders, curriculum, and other factors and either give up or leave rather than take the blame (or just get fired).

I don't doubt that TFA alums are well intentioned, earnest, and sincere, but right now we're closer to the latter than the former.  And they're not helping.


cross-posted on Blog of the Century