Why TFA?

The Wall St. Journal has an editorial today extolling the virtues of Teach For America. I think TFA does far more good than harm, but I can't help but notice at least two glaring errors.

1.) Near the end they cite the problematic Urban Institute study as iron-clad proof that TFA teachers are better than regular teachers. Citing one study as definitive proof of anything will continue to annoy me, no matter what the circumstances. A handful of studies with larger sample sizes have been conducted, and they should have mentioned them.

2.) They seem to imply that the only reason people apply to TFA is because they can cut through the red tape. Here's the part of the editorial I'm talking about so that you can judge for yourself:

Unions keep saying the best people won't go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What's going on?

It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy.

The chance to be put right in a classroom is certainly part of the allure of TFA and similar programs (without that opportunity I never would have applied to any of these programs), but it seems somewhat disingenuous to suggest that it's the only reason. I'm not sure if any studies have been done on the topic (please let me know if you've seen any), but I'm willing to bet that TFA applicants apply for all of the following reasons:

-the chance to "make the world a better place"
-the chance to move directly to the classroom without going through certification
-it looks darn good on a resume
-it's a good transition from college to the working world
-gives people two years to decide what they really want to do
-not a long-term commitment
-it's the cool thing to do

Additionally, TFA puts a lot of effort into recruiting people.

In conclusion: I hardly think that the fact that TFA attracts talented people proves that schools would have no problem attracting talented people if certification didn't exist.

New Role for TFA

I was intrigued by an interesting suggestion that Robert Pondiscio made over at the Core Knowledge blog the other day, and the discussion surrounding it has me thinking. Here's a rundown for those of you who haven't been following along:

1.) Pondiscio writes that Wendy Kopp should consider a different tact for Teach For America (TFA) -- putting the new teachers they recruit in wealthy schools as fill-ins and taking some experienced teachers from these wealthy schools and putting them in poor urban/rural schools that TFA currently helps staff. This way the kids in these schools would be getting experienced teachers instead of recent college grads.

2.) Kopp takes the time to reply to Pondiscio's post and basically argues that the people she recruits are at least as good as the experienced teachers in wealthy schools.

3.) Eduwonkette calls out Kopp for some weak arguments and encourages Pondiscio to run with the idea.

The way I see it, everybody's points have some merit. Let me start with the fatal flaw of the idea and then make some suggestions on how it could be slightly modified into a one that even Kopp might like.

There are two reasons why Pondiscio's current idea will never work (other than the fact that Kopp, the head of TFA, doesn't want to implement it):

1.) Very few of the people who currently apply to TFA will volunteer to go serve in a wealthy suburban school as a placeholder while the experienced teacher from that school spends two years in a high-poverty school. I might be wrong about this, but I think the biggest draw of TFA and similar programs is the chance to make the world a better place. I'm willing to bet that almost every new TFA enrollee plans on transforming their class (if not the school) ala "Dangerous Minds," "Stand and Deliver," "Freedom Writers," etc. Serving in the suburbs for two years just doesn't have the same allure or romanticism.

2.) Wealthy suburban schools wouldn't hire uncertified TFA enrollees with no classroom experience. Many of these schools get hundreds of applicants for each open position and very few would have any problem finding a teacher they find qualified, motivated, and experienced to fill in for their teacher who's jaunting off to help save the world for a couple years.

That said, I still like the idea. I think Kopp was wrong to, essentially, summarily dismiss it. I'm maybe most disappointed in the fact that she cited a flawed study as definitive evidence that TFA shouldn't make any changes. Here are the tweaks I would make to the idea:

1.) For the reasons above I'd scrap the exchange part of the program. Why not recruit both recent college grads and experienced teachers to serve in underprivileged schools?

2.) I'd create a separate branch of TFA for experienced teachers. Similar to the Jennifer Steinberger Pease's idea of an "urban teaching corps" that I discussed earlier.

3.) I'd find some sort of incentive to draw these teachers into serving in these schools for 2+ years. TFA is quite adept at fundraising, so maybe they could raise some money for bonuses or something. I have little doubt that they could find a few thousand mid-career teachers to sign up to spend 2 years doing some community service if they pitched it correctly, could somehow guarantee them a job in their home district when/if they finished, and had some sort of incentive to boot.

TFA prides itself on its ability to select and train high-quality individuals and teachers. I see no reason why they couldn't do this with experienced teachers as well as recent college grads. If TFA is serious about upgrading high-poverty schools I think this is an idea they need to get behind.

Teaching and Barriers to Entry

Depending on whom you ask, there may or may not be a teacher shortage. I think everybody would agree, however, that there is a shortage of quality teachers and that there are certain positions that go unfilled each year. My school, for example, was short 2 science teachers, a special ed. teacher, and a Spanish teacher my second year -- and a Chorus teacher (after the original teacher and her replacement both quit in the first two months) for most of the year during the second year I taught.

So, in some way, shape, or form, more teachers are needed. What's interesting is how this problem has been addressed. A variety of strategies have been tried: bonuses, fellowships, cutting red tape on hiring, etc. But the most prevalent one seems to be simply lowering the barriers to entry. In other words, making it easier to become a teacher.

I, personally, would not have started teaching if the policy hadn't been in place. Even though I had no training in education, I was allowed to spend one intense summer (supposedly) learning the basics and then jump right into a classroom. Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, and who knows how many other local, regional, and national programs have popped up as alternative routes to certification.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with this strategy, you have to admit that it's interesting. And I wonder what it says about the field of teaching. What if we had a shortage of doctors; would we address that by lowering barriers to entry? I can't imagine we would b/c nobody wants a doctor operating on them who is smart but knows little about the human body. What if there was a shortage of lawyers; would we shorten law school? If we had a shortage of bus drivers, would we let them finish the training courses while driving routes full-time? If we had a shortage of police officers, would we give people temporary badges while they figure out how to do their job?

I don't know the answers to above questions. I guess people used to be temporarily deputized in order to form posses to track outlaws in the old days (at least in books and movies anyway), so maybe there is some precedent for this. But I wonder which fields we'd be willing to lower entry requirements for and which we wouldn't. And why.

American Citizens First

An article in the Times yesterday discussed some actions that districts and schools have taken to immerse their students in more international knowledge. The article has some interesting parts -- it's worth reading -- but what really caught my attention was this:

Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, cautioned that American schools were already giving short shrift to American history and government and could not afford to layer global studies on top of already stretched curriculum.

“In some of these trendy schools, there is an ethos that we are all citizens of the world, and that’s all that matters,” he said. “Students need to be taught to be American citizens first.”

I've read a number of Petrilli's posts over the last month, and I don't usually find him that reactionary or anti-world. I'd like to hear more from him about the context of the quote.

Maybe he didn't realize he was playing right into the hands of these Dutch cartoonists:


source: http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.aspx?id=656c268e-ff70-43a3-9e52-b4923c42e1f2


Update: Thanks for providing some context

Is This What I Signed Up For?

When I signed up for the New York City Teaching Fellows, I was a young, idealistic college student. I wanted to make a difference in the world, and NYCTF offered me that opportunity.

NYCTF is one of a number of local organizations run under the umbrella of The New Teacher Project, a sister organization of Teach For America. I'm not sure how the programs are run in other cities, but in NYC they focus on recruiting idealistic college students, young professionals, and mid-career switchers to fill some of the hardest to fill teaching jobs in the city (i.e. positions that certified teachers have chosen not to take). They do so through ads that emphasize how applicants can make the world a better place. Here are some of the slogans with which they cover subway cars and put on their website:

"What will New York be like in 20 years? Pick up the chalk and decide."

"Picture their eyes lighting up when you explain electricity."

"There are a million kids in NYC who could use your talents. Think outside the cubicle."

"Don’t think you can change the world? Spark the minds that will."

"You remember your first grade teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?"

So, when I signed up for NYCTF I had every reason to believe it was an organization similar to TFA -- one devoted to social change. Nothing in my training while in the organization indicated that I should think of it any differently. When I decided that I should pursue a different career path in education, I was still under this impression. And then I read their research reports.

Regardless of whether you think that their research is good, bad, valuable, worthless, or whatever, it strikes an odd chord with me. Their first research reports focused on the hiring systems in big cities -- more specifically, that too many teachers are hired too late. Their latest report, which is getting an awful lot of attention (see here, here, here, here, and here among others) focuses on the cost of NYC teachers who have been "excessed" (lost their job when a school shrunk or was closed) and remain on the payroll despite not having found another job.

I don't want to minimize the size of these problems, but is this really what TNTP is about? I thought they were an organization devoted to social change. That's what I signed up for. These reports, however, strongly indicate that they are a consulting firm devoted to streamlining bureaucracy, especially around hiring, in big-city school districts. Something about it strikes me as incongruous. This is not to say that you can't be in favor of both making the world a better place and dislike bureaucracy but, rather, that their research department and recruitment departments seem to be on different pages. And I can't help but wonder if I was duped. I'm no longer sure whether TNTP is a social organization or a business firm. In other words; do they really believe all those subway slogans, or is it just more efficient to hire talented idealists that way?

How Good are Teach for America Teachers?

This was the question asked by a team of researchers at the Urban Institute. I happened to see the article presented at AERA, and have since read the full version.

A number of previous studies have found that TFA members were somewhere between just as good and slightly better at teaching math and between just as good and slightly worse at teaching English as regular teachers (based on test scores). One of the differences between this paper and others was that it included only high schoolers. To make a long story short, the authors found that students taught by TFA teachers slightly outperformed students taught by regular teachers -- even experienced ones. I previously alluded to coverage of this paper here.

I debated whether to discuss this further, but I've now seen discussion of it here, here, and here.

Everyody except for eduwonkette seems to just accept the findings and move on. The study was well done in a lot of ways, so I have no desire to trash it, but I've found the coverage really lacking. As with any study, there were significant weaknesses. Among these:

-there was no definitive way to match students to teachers -- they were pretty sure they had it right for 84% of the students and threw out the rest
-they only had one test per subject for each student, meaning they couldn't measure their growth over a year
-they compare TFA teachers to all teachers despite the fact that they teach very different students in very different schools -- I'd argue that they're doing jobs that aren't really comparable
-the number of TFA teachers was very small -- a total of 69 over the years, meaning that it was probably about 30-50 actual people

So what does this prove? It seems like a pretty good bet that TFA teachers are outperforming other high school teachers in North Carolina, but it's not a sure thing. Even less of a sure thing is if this is true in other states, grades, and subjects. Conclusion #1: saying that this study found that TFA teachers are better than others and leaving it at that is misleading at best. Conclusion #2: it almost always takes a number of similar studies to prove anything.

update: more write-ups here and here, and eduwonkette is still the only one to point out any limitations of the study

What Does Alternative Certification Say About the Value of Traditional Certification?

In my last post I mentioned debate over alt cert programs. Allow me to elaborate on one strand of the debate.

It is my impression that alt cert programs were originally started as a way to fill vacancies in hard to staff schools. To generalize, the problem was that not enough certified teachers were willing to teach in certain places, but prospective (uncertified) teachers were -- but, at the same time, were not willing to go through the whole certification process. "Alternative Certification," then, allowed competent but uncertified individuals a different, more acceptable, route to certification and also enabled districts and schools to fill vacancies. It's a rational compromise.

Both academia and the press frequently discuss the pluses and minuses of these programs. One of the most frequent arguments against (at least some of) them is that, though they are better than the status quo, they are not the ideal solution -- with some saying they're really more of a band-aid. On the opposite side, many argue that alternatively teachers are just as effective as regularly certified teachers (research has usually found either small or no benefits to certification depending on how it's defined) and sometimes take the opportunity to impugn certification programs and schools of education.

A number of students in my program (including myself) taught through alt cert programs, so they often come up in conversation. One issue that's raised is the effect that alt cert programs have on regular certification programs and public perception of them.

I am wholly unsure to what degree the people who run alt cert programs (and I'm sure there is a lot of difference on this) are out to prove that regular certification is useless. I get the feeling that most programs do not explicitly make this case. It seems to me that the programs are more focused on attracting qualified individuals than making political statements. But whether or not they explicitly criticize schools of education, the mere presence of these programs ultimately implies that certification is not important. In other words, they might not be trying to offend teachers who went through regular certification, but it's understandable if these teachers are offended.

For example, the NYC Teaching Fellows (my former program) regularly blankets subway cars with idealistic ads in order to attract applicants. The ads imply (whether or not they are intended to) that anybody who is smart and works hard can be a good teacher no matter their background and, therefore, that work ethic and intelligence matter more than training.

I'm not saying that there isn't some merit to the statement, but imagine if there was an alternative med school program and anybody who was smart and willing to work hard could be in the operating room after one summer of training. Regardless of whether the program fails or succeeds, its mere presence implies that it's not hard to gain the same expertise as doctors who went to regular medical school.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily good or bad (like most things, it's probably some of each), but I've noticed that this part often escapes people and I find it interesting.

An Urban Teaching Corps?

I was all set to go to bed when I noticed this post on the eduwonkette blog. Given that I was less than satisfied with my last two posts (I was too busy to do much more than regurgitate what happened in those sessions) I felt pressured to write something a little better for anybody clicking here for the first time. So I clicked on the other link provided in that posting and found an interesting idea that Jennifer Steinberger Pease wrote about in EdWeek.

She writes about an acquaintance who wants to apply to Teach For America (TFA), but will already be certified and have a master's degree and, therefore, is not really TFA material (I checked TFA's website to see if they would accept such a candidate, but their description didn't answer the question in either direction). She feels that this teacher-to-be would benefit enormously from, and be ideal for, TFA, but sees no other comparable option available for certified teachers. She, therefore, proposes an urban teaching corps similar to TFA -- but for certified teachers.

I've thought (and debated) a lot about the pluses and minuses of TFA and other alternative certification programs but, honestly, such a scenario had never occurred to me (nor had such a solution). Jennifer does seem to have found quite the gap in the current system. I've had many discussions about whether TFA and other programs imply that teacher certification is meaningless, but never really thought about the TFA-quality people who are already certified. I'm not sure that there are quite as many people who want to teach in high-poverty schools but are unable to as she seems to believe, but I don't doubt that more would teach in these schools if they could enter a TFA-like program.

I can see only two major holes in her plan:

1. TFA may, in fact, take certified teachers -- I simply don't know. And if not them, many other similar programs might (The New Teacher Project runs a number of sister programs). I taught with the NYC Teaching Fellows (one of those sister programs) and I know that other people in the program had previous teaching experience (though I'm unsure if any were certified).

2. High-Poverty schools are not only in urban areas. Accordingly, TFA is not only in urban areas (I know two former TFA members that taught in rural areas in the Mississippi Delta and along the Texas border). So I would propose either changing "urban" to "high-poverty" or adding a "rural" teaching corps as well.

Normally new ideas for education have to be taken with a large grain of salt -- it seems that there's always a strong reason that they'll never happen and/or a large downside. I see neither of these with this idea. The easiest solution (but not necessarily the best), of course, would be for alt cert programs to simply start accepting certified teachers. Either way, this idea makes sense to me.