Amanda Ripley’s recent article in The Atlantic ( http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching ) wildly exaggerates the supposed positive benefits of having a Teach for America (TFA) teacher in the classroom. After reading the article, you might come away believing that TFA teachers regularly work miracles in their classroom, just like Michelle Rhee pretends she did, while their do-nothing veteran colleagues just sit and read the newspaper in class. (Although, funny thing: the super-achieving teacher described in the article was NOT a TFA-er!)

However, if you read the published data that Ripley refers to, they show that both TFA teachers and other teachers in high-poverty schools are having a hard time getting any positive results at all.

In English/reading, the results are as follows (the blue, thick line represents the scores of the TFA teachers’ students). I cut-and-pasted the following two graphs directly from the study; they are on page xiv.

If you ask me, there is essentially no difference between the 13th, 14th, and 15th percentiles. These are all very low scores! The reason that the TFA students had slightly higher initial and final scores is almost undoubtedly because of random variation.

In math, the results are as follows, and again, the thick, blue line shows the scores of the TFA teachers’ students. This the area in which TFA teachers supposedly did so well:

Ripley, and the Mathematica authors, claim that the differences in the math scores are statistically significant. Keep in mind, however, that significance in reality and in statistics are two different things. To me, if you are at the 14th, 15th, or 17th percentiles, you are in very bad shape. Neither the TFA teachers, nor their veteran or novice counterparts, were in fact able to work miracles. My own opinion is that any differences here are due to random variation.

You can read the whole statistical study here if you like:

http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/teach.pdf

The study looked at a fairly small number of classes (100) taught by TFA teachers and their non-TFA colleagues, spread out over the following cities or regions: Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles/Compton, the Mississippi delta, and New Orleans. They looked at a total of 17 schools, and about 1,765 students. I have no way of knowing – and neither does just about anybody else – whether these students are in fact representative of all schools serving disadvantaged students. My suspicion is that a different selection of classes might have yielded quite different results. Here is the description of the sample, which I cut-and-pasted from page 9:

I would like to finish by quoting a few passages from a teacher who is blogging from some (unnamed) high school here in Washington, DC: ( http://filthyteaching.blogspot.com/ )

“…TFAers, and for that matter, first-year teachers in general, have ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS working in these kinds of systems. [meaning, systems like DC, Baltimore, Chicago, etc.] And if we were to really get serious about boosting student achievement, I’d say five years should probably be the minimum number of years experience required to apply in these districts (with some exceptions).

“The children of DCPS, New Orleans, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, Memphis, and any other severely challenged district across the US that one might think of, do not have the luxury of being guinea pigs for a legion of completely incompetent, albeit well-intentioned, college graduates. Anyone who’s taught for more than a few years can tell you that the vast majority of teachers (I’d say all, but I suppose there’s a small possibility that there are one or two out there who are miracles) have virtually no idea what they’re doing in the classroom in their first year (I know that was certainly the case for me).

“Your first few years are spent learning that almost everything you thought teaching was supposed to be was completely wrong. You’re overwhelmed by classroom management and discipline struggles. You have no idea how to plan a unit or an effective lesson. You don’t recognize the importance of constant quality assessment, and you sure as hell don’t have a clue as to how to go about creating one. You don’t yet know how exactly to build relationships with kids (even though you thought you did), nor do you quite realize how critically important they are to the children who are almost completely deprived of positive relationships. You don’t realize that in addition to teaching your subject matter, you desperately need to teach your kids how to read, but you don’t have a clue how to. You can’t see through the bullshit that the administration throws at you or the petty bickering that some of your colleagues may do around you. And on the day that you think your lesson actually went okay, you don’t realize that not a single one of your students will be able to demonstrate that they learned what you thought they did the next day.

…

“These are things that teachers learn over years of experience. You don’t get them in a summer training, or even in your first year of teaching. They come slowly. … I don’t blame the TFAers themselves. I was like them not very long ago. I did my first year teaching in a socio-economically disadvantaged school in Knoxville, TN, and then wanted desperately to try my hand in DC or NYC. I wanted to go out and save the world. I thought I could do it. I found out how ridiculously wrong I was. Luckily I couldn’t find a job in DC or NYC, and I’m so glad that I began teaching in a school that, while not perfect in supporting new teachers, at least offered me an environment in which I could make mistakes and learn from them.

“I would not recommend ANYONE try their hand at their first year teaching in a district like DC or New Orleans. It will make you believe that education is something that it’s not, that to be a teacher is to be a martyr, that getting through a school year is like running a marathon EVERY DAMN DAY, and that you deserve no rights or respect from your administration or district. It’s a run through a gauntlet, and it’s no wonder so many new teachers leave the profession when this is how we treat them.”



