[UPDATED]
Thanks to several good researchers (and friends!), I have been reviewing an independent evaluation of the efficacy of the Teach for America teachers that the board heard a recommendation for on October 11th. My initial assessment of the presentation, unlike that of the board, was that paying Teach for America $550,000 to hire 110 uncertified teachers (especially when the system just finished laying off 154 teachers in the spring), was not worth the money.
Yet because we’re living in a time when teachers are insulted, mocked, and dismissed as incapable of doing anything at all other than “stealing money from the public,” it’s important to evaluate the performance of the Teach for America teachers as well. (Yes, there are actually people who believe that paying teachers $36,144 a year to educate our children is too much. Paying a teacher one dollar an hour, per child is too much. But I digress.) As such, a more extensive evaluation of how Teach for America teachers perform compared with certified teachers is an important comparison.
Luckily, the Education Policy Research Unit of Arizona State and the Education and the Public Interest Center of the University of Colorado at Boulder (Wardynski’s old stomping grounds–well, for about eleven months anyway) have done the actual research that I, frankly, don’t have time to do.
Education and research provides countless benefits to a community, doesn’t it?
Mr. Carpenter, Executive Director of Teach for America, Alabama, offered his opinion to the board on the 11th claiming that Teach for America attracts “new leaders for low income kids.” According to his website, he claims:
we are bringing in talented leaders, forming a critical mass of dedicated, committed people who will fight at every level – as teachers, as school leaders, in politics and in leadership roles all over Alabama – for equal opportunity in education.
His assessment is that the teachers that Teach for America brings to a system are of a higher quality than the teachers that our local and regional colleges and universities can provide.
This assessment of the quality of Teach for America teachers went unquestioned by the board. As the Huntsville Times reported, Mr. Blair said, “I guess one of the things Teach for America really buys us, (is that) they’ve done all of the recruiting beforehand, which saves us time and money.”
So, since the board didn’t see fit to ask if teachers that Teach for America would provide were actually as effective as a traditionally trained teacher (you know, those silly people who decided while they were in college to dedicate their lives and careers to educating our kids as opposed to being a banker or lawyer), I thought it might be a good idea to review the work of those who did ask such questions. Thankfully, Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Su Jin Jez of the California State University asked these questions in June 2010.
I highly encourage you to download and read their findings for yourself. You may download the study from the National Education Policy Center’s website.
The covers three main questions:
- Do TFA teachers perform as well as non-certified or emergency hired teachers?
- Do TFA teachers perform as well as certified or traditionally trained teachers?
- Does experience make a difference in the performance of TFA teachers?
Again, I encourage you to download and read their study for yourself, but here’s a quick summary of their peer-reviewed findings.
Do TFA teachers perform as well as non-certified or emergency hired teachers?
Yes. Typically TFA teachers perform on about the same level as a non-certified or emergency hired teachers. They raised reading scores and mathematics scores at equivalent levels as non-certified teachers.
As both groups have at least college degrees, this is to be expected. But since TFA teachers aren’t only replacing non-certified teachers, but are replacing certified teachers as well, a comparison between those groups would be useful.
Do TFA teachers perform as well as certified or traditionally trained teachers?
No. Typically, TFA teachers do not perform on the same level as a certified teacher with equivalent experience. Heilig and Jez found that, “studies indicate that the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers.”
Does experience make a difference in the performance of TFA teachers?
Yes. Experience, and completion of the certification process (which typically takes two-years), causes students of TFA teachers and traditionally trained teachers to perform on an equivalent level. Their scores in reading are equivalent to traditional teachers in reading, and at times better in mathematics.
So experience for both groups makes a difference in their performance. Students of experienced teachers perform better than students of non-experienced teachers. The issue then becomes how do we keep our teachers past the first two years of employment?
This is a major issue for TFA teachers who make only a two-year commitment to teaching before they return to their field of choice. More than 50% of TFA teachers leave teaching after the two year commitment is completed. After three years, that number jumps to 80% or more.
In other words, TFA teachers don’t see teaching as a career, and the overwhelming majority of their teachers leave after three years (or right about the time the deficiencies in their training have been overcome by experience).
Thus, TFA has developed a system of funneling teachers into systems that works extremely well for TFA. After all, if we hire 30 TFA teachers next year, by the time the proposed TFA contract of three years, 110 teachers and $550,000 dollars has come to an end, 80% of those teachers will then need to be replaced.
Which will initiate a renewal or likely expansion of the TFA contract for an additional three years, or longer.
Students of TFA teachers do not perform as well as students of traditionally trained teachers. TFA teachers cost more to recruit and train than traditionally trained teachers. TFA teachers overwhelmingly leave the teaching field before these deficiencies are negated by experience.
So, why are we thinking of hiring 110 new TFA teachers over the next three years when we just this spring laid off 154 certified teachers with at least a year of experience?
It’s as inconceivable as most of the superintendent’s recommendations and board decisions of late. Hopefully the board will ask these questions before they approve this contract with TFA, but if history is any indication, they won’t.
Once again, those who are in need of the highest qualified teachers get the least qualified.
__________
Although they still haven’t posted an agenda for tomorrow night’s meeting on the website, the School Board should be meeting tomorrow evening at 5:30pm at the Merts Building, 200 White Street, North. So the agenda has now been posted. The board will be asked to vote on the Teach for America contract tomorrow night. I have shared this study with the board; it will be interesting to see if anyone raises questions based on it. With the decision to rename the new Lee High School something else, and to relieve the current Lee High School principal of his duties as principal once the school is occupied next year, I expect the meeting will be crowded. I will be in attendance. As always, the meeting will be broadcast on ETV (Comcast 17, Knology 99), and at the Huntsville City Schools website. I will also be live-tweeting the meeting @russwinn. You can follow on Twitter or on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page.
Great job Russ and Company! Here are the “money” quotes and my translations;
Mr. Blair said, “I guess one of the things Teach for America really buys us, (is that) they’ve done all of the recruiting beforehand, which saves us time and money.”
Translation: It saves us money we can spend on Wardinskyi, his staff funnel to the Broad Foundation.
“studies indicate that the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers.”
Translation-Don’t worry about improving performance in reading and math because we are going to put TFA teachers in the poor/minority schools where the student can’t and don’t want to learn anyway.
, TFA has developed a system of funneling teachers into systems that works extremely well for TFA. After all, if we hire 30 TFA teachers next year, by the time the proposed TFA contract of three years, 110 teachers and $550,000 dollars has come to an end, 80% of those teachers will then need to be replaced.
Translation-They HCS system would rather give half a million plus to the Broad Foundation than raise teacher pay for AEA members, or provide additional training, or implement programs with proven successful results.
Once again, those who are in need of the highest qualified teachers get the least qualified.
Translation-We don’t what poor/black/brown students need.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/if-football-coaches-used-teach-for-america-logic/2011/10/28/gIQALXCOSM_blog.html
Using the logic of the Huntsville City Board of Education, University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban should only use his youngest, most inexperienced players when his team plays a Top Ten opponent.
Anyone who pays attention to education knows that the most persistently poor-performing schools are those in impoverished neighborhoods. For example, there are nine schools in the Huntsville system where more than 90 percent of students receive free-reduced lunches. According to an analysis by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, none of these schools have reading and math scores where all grades (three through eight) are equal to or above state average.
By comparison, of the five schools where all grades are above state average, free-reduced lunches range from 4 to 25 percent.
But in spite of this, the Board of Education plans to hire 110 Teach for America teachers over the next three years and put them in schools in poor neighborhoods.
Should read;
It saves us money we can spend on Wardinskyi and his high paid staff to funnel to the Broad Foundation.
The HCS system would rather give half a million plus to the Broad Foundation than raise teacher pay for AEA members, or provide additional training, or implement programs with proven successful results.
Once again, those who are in need of the highest qualified teachers get the least qualified.
Translation-We don’t give a damn what poor/black/brown students need.
Looks like the proposed Lee High School name change has awakened the silent majority.
http://redeyesfrontpage.blogspot.com/2011/11/whats-in-name.html
We’ll see. I thought the same thing when the demographer’s report was released on the same night they hired Wardynski. After the meetings were over in June, the furor died down immediately when Wardynski said he’s not closing schools.
Then when he closed Providence Middle, nothing was said. When he proposed merging (and effectively closing) Mt. Gap Elementary/Middle, Whitesburg Elementary/Middle, Chapman Elementary/Middle, and now again, New Century and Lee.
By my count we’re up to 9 closures/merges again.
I think the fair comparison then is the value that each individual hire generates for the children over the period he or she works for HCS. Since many TforA teachers go on to careers in law and business, it is likely that HCS would get more years per hire out of people they recruit locally. I guess what I don’t know is the quality of the local hires and whether they are as good as the sample in the studies you cite. Perhaps the board has data or an opinion about that which would shed light on their decision.
I’m not against TforA in order to get a sprinkling of outside talent. I think that’s got value on diversity grounds alone, but am not sure about doing it on this scale.
Jim,
I agree that we need to do the comparison on as fair a basis as possible. This is why the study is quick to point out that if TFA teachers and traditional teachers stay in a position for 3 or more years, the difference in their students’ test scores becomes statistically insignificant. The problem is that when you compare TFA teachers and traditional teachers for the time that a TFA teacher typically remains, the comparison shows that a traditionally certified teacher significantly out performs a TFA teacher.
I agree that if I were on the school board that I would want to see a comparison between a Huntsville traditionally trained teacher and a TFA teacher, but in so far as I am aware, none of them have requested this information. Nothing like it has been shared publicly if it has. If they do have such data, I believe that they would have been quick to share it, but they didn’t. Perhaps something like that will be shared tonight.
Teacher quality is extremely difficult to evaluate, but in my limited experience, with the teachers/aides/therapists that my kids have had, I would put their quality and commitment to education up against teachers I’ve known from anywhere else in the nation. Perhaps we’ve been lucky, but the teachers we’ve had here, who were trained at UAH, Bama, Athens State and yes even Auburn (sorry, couldn’t resist) have been outstanding teachers.
I know that AAMU often gets a bad rap at times, but I know a significant number of teachers from there as well who are also excellent teachers.
No, that’s not scientific, but I have known thousands of teachers in my lifetime, and I would absolutely put the teachers my kids have had here in Huntsville up against any of them in terms of quality and commitment to education. Perhaps that explains why I’m convinced that the quality of our teachers is not suffering sufficiently to justify the additional cost of hiring TFA teachers.
Concerning the argument for diversity: this is Huntsville. It’s easily the most diverse city in the state. It has already pulled people from across the nation into the city, and it has pulled teachers (up until recently with the budget cuts) from across the nation as well. I’ve not seen any evidence that the city is having significant difficulty pulling in people from other parts of the nation.
If the school system were to prioritize teachers again, rather than paying them the state minimum, this system shouldn’t have a problem recruiting on a national level.
My primary concern with TFA isn’t that I think non-traditionally trained teachers are bad teachers. I’m a non-traditionally trained teacher myself. My issue is that the Superintendent and the board have not made a convincing case that TFA’s services are necessary at this time. And unless they do, I have a difficult time seeing how they can justify paying more to recruit teacher who typically do not perform at the same level as traditional teachers.
Thanks for the post, and for reading. I like it when things I post are challenged!
r
Russell,
Thanks for an excellent analysis of another proposed change within HCS.
Dr. Wardynski has said many times that a student only has one chance at a good education. Yet, he wants to hire a large number of TFA teachers to teach in our Title I schools.
Why is he willing to take a chance on those students’ “one chance”?
I wish I had an answer for that question, Carolyn. I really do. Every time he says it, I think of my boy. Ever since his diagnosis, I’ve had this feeling that we’re racing against the clock with him. That’s a big part of the reason why I’m so harsh on the system for their decisions concerning special education.
With SPED students, that “one chance” is often reduced to about one-third of one chance.
I have just come into reading this blog and I think it is wonderful. The concern I have for the TFA teachers is I really would not like a half trained “teacher” going into my daughters special education class with no clue how to work with those children. I am here due to a military move and I have had to do nothing but fight since I have been here to ensure my child has what is required for classes/support. It is unbelievable to me what a technological superior location (engineers, NASA, etc.) has such a poor functioning school district.
Spypilot58D:
Welcome to Huntsville, and thank you for your service to our country. Despite what you’ve experienced so far with your fight for your daughter, this really is a wonderful place to live and raise children: especially special education children. There’s an amazing support network (at least in my experience) here.
I sad to say that I share your unbelief with the condition of the school system, but I remain hopeful (well, most days) that it will get better.
Thanks for reading, and your post.
Thank you for the welcome but we have been here two years and it has been nothing but painful. We never had any issues like this where we were before. I love my daughter’s teacher, she is phenominal but trying to get things done for the classroom (aides, technology, IEP, etc.) is like pully teeth. They would rather fight about it than do what is right for these children. And until they understand what it is like to live with a special needs child 24/7 they will not change. Anyone’s child or adult is just an accident or incident away from being in a situation where they are special needs. I have read some posts that are truly disheartening about the education of our children. They deserve the ability to excel just like everyone else!!
Three Stooges and one Great Lady
As you may or may nor know the Board president does not vote unless to break a tie among other Board members. Pity, because Mrs. McCaulley frequently shows herself to be a thoughtful supporter of local teachers.
Two minority/majority teacher colleges in Huntsville, but we need Teach for America to teach us how to work with poverty and/or minority students?!
Hats off to Ms Alta Morrison for voting no to this contract!
Remember next time you get to vote for your school board member that Mr. Blair, Mr. Birney, and (apparently) “star-struck” jennie continue their robot-like support of anything Dr. Wardynski proposes.
Heaven help Huntsville!
Three Stooges and one Great Lady
Heaven help Huntsville!
Amen and Amen.
From someone who has done a tremendous amount of research on TFA and has worked with a university in my local area, many of the TFAers attitudes is disheartening! We have TFA corps members who only want to take one class a year towards their certification because they already know they are not staying in past their two year committment! They do not complete assignments, reflect on their practice, show up for class…. It is o.k. for them to just get by. TFA’s philosophy may be to help children, but it is not always the same for the corps members. However, I will say I have met some very dedicated, passionate corps members who do care about kids and want to do everything possible to be great teachers! I just don’t get with all the research out there why the federal government and local urban governments want to continue funding TFA!
Thanks for this insight. This is why it’s important that we not blindly follow any system for improving student achievement. We must look at the evidence available to us as objectively as possible and make the best decision we can based on the best data we have.
Claims by those in power that we should simply trust them to make good decisions are not sufficient. If they have what they consider to be evidence, they should share it with everyone.
Those not willing to be questioned and challenged have no place in education.