Trouble for the Teaching Fellows?

A new survey by the UFT finds pretty big discrepancies between the perception of training by NYC Teaching Fellows versus traditionally trained teachers.

Just 5 percent of teachers who answered the union’s survey said their training through the city’s Teaching Fellows program was “excellent,” compared to 21 percent of graduates of education schools. And while 18 percent of education school graduates called their training “poor” or “fair,” that figure was nearly 50 percent for Teaching Fellows.

As a former Teaching Fellow, I never thought the training was particularly bad.  Like everything, it could have been better -- but it always seemed to me that there were dozens of much larger issues.  So, I wonder how much of this is driven by the fact that Teaching Fellows were more extensively trained in another field before getting a crash course in education and rushing into difficult positions in troubled schools.  Those people in those circumstances might feel very differently about equally good training than would an ed school graduate who'd been preparing for his/her position for years and landed a less stressful job.

Assuming the survey is representative, though, these stats really don't look good for the program.  Of course, since only 81 out of over 9,000 active Teaching Fellows took part in the survey we can' be sure about this (which doesn't necessarily mean it's not representative, just that we're less confident about its representativeness than if, say, 900 teachers had taken part).  The initial response of the Fellows was to point out the small sample size, but that could backfire if a larger sample size eventually responds similarly.

What I think is even more interesting, though, is the larger context of this survey for the Teaching Fellows.  The article describes The New Teacher Project (TNTP), the fellows' parent organization as "a nonprofit group that also lobbies on teacher quality issues including in favor of evaluations that consider student test scores" (emphasis added) . . . which I think says a lot.

I first wrote about this almost five years ago, but TNTP and TFA seem to keep branching out into areas well beyond filling openings in troubled schools.  TFA has started getting a lot of push-back, and I think that's due more to their policy positions, lobbying, support of school board candidates, etc. than it is their actual day-to-day operations.  If this survey is any indicator, TNTP may soon find itself in a similar position.

In other words, while I'm sure many are concerned about the actual recruitment and training of teachers, I'd wager that fewer people would be as concerned if TNTP weren't also lobbying for all sorts of unpopular changes.

On the one hand, I blame TNTP for branching out too far.  If they'd just focus on recruiting and training teachers, they could do their job a lot better and with less risk of interference.  On the other hand, it would be a shame if TNTP's work mattered less than its lobbying when reviewing its performance.

Why Do Harvard Kids Head to TFA?

James Kwak has an interesting post entitled "Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?"  Most interesting to me is that, at least up until the point where he starts discussing money, one could substitute Teach for America for every mention of Goldman Sachs or McKinsey.

For example:

The typical Harvard undergraduate is someone who: (a) is very good at school; (b) has been very successful by conventional standards for his entire life; (c) has little or no experience of the “real world” outside of school or school-like settings; (d) feels either the ambition or the duty to have a positive impact on the world (not well defined); and (e) is driven more by fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular. (Yes, I know this is a stereotype; that’s why I said “typical.”) Their (our) decisions are motivated by two main decision rules: (1) close down as few options as possible; and (2) only do things that increase the possibility of future overachievement.

followed by:

The recruiting processes of Wall Street firms (and consulting firms, and corporate law firms) exploit these (faulty) decision rules perfectly. The primary selling point of Goldman Sachs or McKinsey is that it leaves open the possibility of future greatness. The main pitch is, “Do this for two years, and afterward you can do anything (like be treasury secretary).”  

and then:

For people who don’t know how to get a job in the open economy, and who have ended each phase of their lives by taking the test to do the most prestigious thing possible in the next phase, all of this comes naturally.

This seems like a pretty good explanation as to why something like 10% of recent Ivy League grads have entered TFA after college.  I didn't to an Ivy League college, but it's not all that dissimilar to the reasons I started teaching after college (for me getting a chance to "make a difference" right away was number one and those other things were next).  Which would lead me to two conclusions:

1.) TFA might be as savvy as Goldman Sachs and McKinsey in some ways
2.) Given that these students are doing society more good at TFA than at those types of firms, maybe we should have more public good-oriented programs that recruit in this manner

Terrible For America?

One of the last things I read last night was this NY Times article about a new research study on the civic engagement of former TFA teachers.  In short, the forthcoming study finds that TFA grads are actually less engaged than are those who drop out early and those who were accepted but didn't enroll.

A number of other bloggers have already commented on the article (including Robert Pondiscio, Debra Viadero, Alexander Russo, and I'm sure many others), but I have yet to see anybody comment on the comparison groups that were chosen.

Without having read the study, that's about the only methodological issue on which one can comment.  I see the merit in the research design -- by comparing TFA grads to TFA dropouts and "non-matriculants," you're controlling for a number of otherwise unobservable characteristics of the people involved -- people accepted by TFA are surely more academically successful than the average recent college grade, for example.

But it's also an extremely limiting study -- what percentage of the population would make the cut for TFA admission?  Maybe 5 or 10%?

So what does this study really tell us?  Assuming that everything else is perfect with the data and methods (which, of course, is never the case), what would it mean that people who complete two years with TFA are less engaged than are other TFA admitees who either dropped out or declined to enroll?  It could be the case that people with broader interests are choosing not to stay in TFA for multiple years, or it could be the case that staying in TFA for longer is narrowing the interests of grads.

Either way, it's entirely plausible that applying to TFA makes one much more civic-minded than not -- which, in many ways, is a more important question.  The people that TFA admits are a tiny and unique sub-section of the adult population of our country, so differences within that population are only somewhat meaningful.

That said, the study seems to raise a number of important questions that are worth exploring further.  I'll be interested to see how some of these are addressed when I can get my hands on a copy of the actual article.

How Do We Determine if Certification and Credentialing are Effective?

The importance (or lack thereof) of certification and credentialing seems to be a popular topic these days.  We have plenty of evidence that little to no difference exists (in terms of impact on student achievement scores) between teachers that are certified, have a master's degree, etc. versus those who are not.  So we can conclude that certification and credentialing are ineffective, right?  I heard that conclusion drawn at a presentation I recently attended, and I've read similar statements countless times in news reports and on blogs.

But hold on a minute.  To say something like "certification (or credentialing) is ineffective" is a strong statement.  Before you say something like this, or believe others who do, let's take a look at what we'd need to know in order to justify making such a statement.

1.) What are the purposes of certification and credentialing?  Historically, I believe certification has been designed to ensure that completely unqualified people don't enter a field.  For example, hiring a certified electrician means they probably won't burn your house down.  I'm sure there are plenty of self-taught electricians who would do the same, but by not hiring a certified electrician you also run the risk of hiring somebody like me who would create more problems than they would solve.  Many seem to assume that when somebody is certified it means they're better at it, so I think it's fair to assume -- at least based on the reaction to certification -- that it should also increase the mean quality (or at least indicate that certified workers are better than uncertified ones).

2.) How do those who completed certification and credentialing processes compare to those who didn't?  This is what most people try to measure.  In terms of education, they usually look at the mean value-added score for certified versus uncertified teachers, controlling for other factors.  We can also examine the mean change in performance as teachers complete various credentialing processes.  This partially answers the question, but we also need to know how the distribution of quality changed as a result of the process -- including whether there would be more really bad teachers if certification didn't exist.

3.) How do certification and credentialing processes change the make-up of the field?  Lastly, comparisons between certified and uncertified teachers, for example, may fall short if only certain types of people are allowed to enter the field without certification (e.g. high-achieving TFA and TNTP members).  In this sense, we're really answering whether certified teachers are measurably different from a select group of uncertified teachers -- not how the field would differ if we abolished certification.  In the case of the latter, we might see a completely different group of people who decide to enter and remain in the field.

So before we draw any hasty and uninformed conclusions about the efficacy of teacher certification, let's make sure that we're asking and answering the right questions.  We need to know both about changes in mean scores and changes in distribution of performance before we reach a conclusion.  And we need to make sure we don't assume that ending certification won't change the field in ways we don't anticipate.

TFA Alone Cannot Save Us

Dan Brown wrote yesterday that more than 99.8% of all teachers are not members of Teach For America. Chad Alderman writes a "yes, but . . ." piece today over at The Quick and the Ed. Yes, Alderman makes some good points, but . . .

First, the good:

While TFA currently represents only .16% of the teaching workforce, they're bigger than that because:

1.) They're mostly new teachers
2.) They partner with TNTP
3.) They're growing

All good points -- the .16% figure is a tad bit misleading. Alderman concludes by saying that "we should be careful not to underestimate its growing impact.

At the same time, Alderman's arguments are probably even more misleading:

1.) Sure, a greater percentage of new teachers are TFA members, but it's still only 2%. And, more importantly, they leave at rates much higher than other teachers. So if 2% of new teachers are recruited through TFA each year, 30 years from now we'd still see less a teaching force comprised of less than 1% TFAers

2.) Yes, TFA has sort of branched out into TNTP programs. But they're not one and the same -- they recruit somewhat different applicants (TNTP recruits a lot more mid-career people and has a stated goal of turning their recruits into career teachers, TFA recruits mostly fresh-out-of-college youngsters and encourages people to go make a difference in the world after their two years). Furthermore, most of the studies that people like to reference finding that TFA teachers are about as good as, or a little better than, other teachers do not inclue estimates of TNTP teachers.

3.) Yes, TFA has grown rapidly. But in its current form, it can never make up more than a tiny fraction of the teaching force. They already receive applicants from 5-15% of the graduating class of many of the top 100 colleges and universities in the country. Unless they morph into an organization that recruits people from less selective colleges, which might mean they recruit less effective teachers, their potential for growth is extremely limited.

4.) Alderman cites a recent study with a "large" sample size that finds TFA teachers are better than all others. I've already pointed out a number of limitations and shortcomings in that paper, so I'm not going to repeat myself. But I will say that the sample included only 98 TFA teachers from North Carolina -- which is certainly not a large sample when trying to generalize to all teachers in the United States.

5.) It's odd that Alderman mostly argues that TFA might make a bigger impact down the road, and then warns us not to underestimate its current impact. I don't think many people underestimate the current impact of TFA (probably more people overestimate it), but underestimating the future impact of TFA is easy to do.

I still think that the largest impact of TFA is going to be the what its alums do -- from research to leading schools to running government. In other words, I think TFA will have a big impact on education -- but through ripple effects, not through the few thousand teachers it hires it each year. So I think Alderman is mistaken when he tries to argue that TFA can hire enough teachers to make a difference in our education system. It its current form, TFA alone cannot save our classrooms -- but 20 years from now I think we'll have seen a huge impact in many other ways.

Does TFA Raise the Status of Teaching?

During a class discussion today, a student made an interesting claim -- that Teach for America raises the status of the teaching profession. The rationale was that TFA attracts students from Ivy League and other prestigious colleges and universities to the field -- graduates that, by and large, would not otherwise enter teaching.

To some extent, I buy the rationale -- TFA certainly raises the prestige level of the current teaching force in districts where they're present. But, after some thought, I have to disagree with the claim. TFA attracts academic stars into teaching, but I don't think they raise the prestige of the teaching profession as a whole; if anything, TFA lowers it.

When I applied to TFA my plan was to teach in an urban school for a couple years or so, help some kids, gain some experience, and then move on to bigger and better things. And TFA very much sells itself that way to prospective applicants; promotional materials discuss how many TFA alums enroll in law school or business school, for example. And current TFA corps members have access to an online jobs portal where they are recruited by some of the top firms in the country.

I don't know the precise figures, but the vast majority of TFA members do not make a career out of teaching. I believe somewhere around half stick around for a third year, and the numbers decline for every year after that.

I have a hard time believing that convincing people to teach for a few years and then move on to bigger and better things raises the status of the teaching profession. If anything, it lowers it. Teaching with TFA is akin to joining the peace corps -- it looks great on your resume and you have the opportunity to make a difference in the world, but for most people it's not a permanent career. In other words, teaching is a stepping stone. And making a profession a stepping stone doesn't exactly encourage the best and the brightest to pursue it as their lifetime occupation.

So, upon further reflection, I'd have to say I'm pretty sure that TFA reduces the status of the teaching profession in America. Now, this is not to say that TFA is evil or that, on net, they do more harm than good. Indeed, many TFA alums go on to bigger and better things within the field of education. In the long run, I think the biggest impact of the program will be the alums who ascend to positions of power in government, business, and school management. It's a pretty safe bet that TFA provides some of the poorest students in the country with better teachers than they would've otherwise had and also exposes some of the best and brightest young college graduates to the realities of high-poverty schools -- two very valuable things. But, at the same time, it lowers the level of prestige associated with a career in teaching -- and I'm not sure which one is more important.

Are TFA Teachers Better? Update

Last year around this time a new study released by the Urban Institute looking at the effectiveness of Teach for America teachers was all the rage. In the paper, the researchers found that high school TFA teachers in NC were slightly more effective than other teachers -- a finding that has been trumpeted who knows how many times since.

I pointed out at the the time that the study, though well executed, was far from perfect. Well, the researchers recently released an updated version of the study -- something that, surprisingly, I've only seen Debra Viadero blog about (hat tip: GothamSchools).

If I have time, I might do a full evaluation at a later date. But until then, here are a few things to keep in mind when you read about the results:

-It's only high school teachers and it's only in NC. Who knows how it would play out if it were elementary or middle school students in other states.

-In the data, there was no absolutely conclusive way to determine which students were assigned to which teachers. Usually, the teacher that proctored the test was also the teacher for the students, but not always. Using some sophisticated methods, the researchers decided they were pretty sure which students belonged to 84% of the teachers and moved on from there. When analyzing a smaller sample of teachers about whom they were more sure, the results differed slightly -- indicating that figuring out which students had which teacher is somewhat problematic for their estimates.

-The sample consists of 98 teachers from 23 school districts observed 150 times over the course of 7 years. Which means that the mean number of teachers analyzed per district in a given year was 0.93.

-The return to TFA teachers in most models is about .1-.18 standard deviations -- a very modest effect size. The authors argue that this is significant because the return to a teacher with 3-5 years of experience compared to one with 0-3 years of experience is about .05 SD -- in other words, they argue thata TFA teacher is many times better than an experienced teacher.

-But my main worry about the study is that they have too large a sample in the comparison group (as far as I can tell it's every teacher from those 23 districts that they could match to students). I maintain that not every teacher does the same job -- teaching an AP class in a wealthy school is very different from teaching a low-track class in a high-poverty school. In the latest version of the paper the authors sort of make an attempt to look at this and compare TFA teachers to other teachers teaching students with similar test scores. TFA teachers who taught students in the top quartile did quite well. But those teaching students in the bottom quartile (which, I assume, is most of them (they don't provide a number for this)) did not. When narrowing the sample to teachers who taught kids in the bottom quartile, TFA teachers had an advantage of .061 standard deviations -- virtually identical to the advantage of .054 SD that teachers with 3-5 years of experience had. Given that the main goal of TFA is to help the neediest, I find this troubling.

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.