Teach For America Trees And Forests

This talk by Teach For America’s Elisa Villanueva Beard is a good distillation of how TFA sees itself as organization and a good compilation of some demographic data about TFA.  She’s responding to the little battle that has broken out on the blogs and around education where every Teach For America alumnus who wants to talk about their bad or frustrating experience is suddenly held up as representative of why TFA is a lousy idea. What some of these people have to say has merit, TFA is hardly without its flaws. Yet others seem more enamored with just seeing their name in pixels or scoring points. But as a larger issue we would do well to remember that there are more than 30,000 Teach For America alumni now, and TFA operates all over the country.  So it’s not surprising that there are alums with a variety of experiences and perspectives (and arguably more heterogeneous experiences than in the program’s early years when it was smaller).  It’s also worth remembering some more basic axioms about whether the satisfied or unsatisfied are more likely to speak out.

But while anecdotes are colorful, there are data here.  For almost a decade, since there was enough data to do more rigorous analyses and experiments, studies consistently show that Teach For America teachers, on average, do no harm in the classroom.  These include studies by highly reputable firms such as Mathematica and AIR and states like NC, TN, and LA. Those averages obscure, of course, a lot of variance among TFA teachers.  But that variance exists with all new teachers and some evidence indicates that Teach For America’s selection metrics help address it more than some other approaches.

And the ‘all new teachers’ issue matters greatly to this conversation because when you hold the experience of Teach For America teachers up to the experience of other new teachers in similar schools many of the differences melt away.  Overwhelmed? Yes. Under-supported? Yes. Learning on the job. Absolutely. Given classes that more senior teachers don’t want? Often. This doesn’t mean there are not things TFA could do better or that the field doesn’t need to do better.  Only that when you look at this issue overall the differences are not as a great as the combatants would like you to think. Like many education “debates” this one happens absent context.

Beard makes the point that TFA has become a proxy for everything people don’t like about education reform. That seems indisputably true at this point.  In the process a lot of lessons about what works – and doesn’t work – are being ignored.  TFA didn’t get to where it is without a lot of learning and a lot of evolution. Whether you like TFA or not, it’s not a good sign for the field that there is so little interest in learning from an organization that operates at this scale.  The stuff on the blogs is a non-serious symptom, the underlying condition is a serious problem.

My take on a few common TFA myths here.

Activating ED, Barone On Testing, DeMonte On PD, Keller on Bloomberg, & Edujobs

ActivateEd is interviewing some education types to talk about why they think you should get involved in education.  Here’s Tom Vander Ark.  Mary Wells and I have ones coming later in the summer.

Charlie Barone with some seriousness on testing.  CAP’s Jenny DeMonte looks at professional development (pdf).  Bill Keller on Bloomberg.  Ed Week looks at how policymakers are adapting to adaptive testing.

Several job opportunities at Fordham Institute including external relations, development, and research.

Assessing Bloomberg

Bill Keller on Bloomberg in The Times:

Bloomberg’s most consequential and controversial unfinished business is the public school system. He set the schools on a hopeful course: stabilizing the system under mayoral control, raising and enforcing standards, giving parents more options, among them charter schools that actually work. There is much more to do. Schools are the work of a generation, not an administration. Bloomberg’s great achievement was taking on the prevailing defeatist view that urban schools were unfixable.

Waiver Waivers, ESEA & 218, And Vallas!

Michele McNeil looks at what states may or may not take advantage of the new waiver waivers that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has offered as a way to delay consequences from new teacher evaluations. The results so far: Six are in, 14 say no thanks, the remainder of the 34 states that are eligible said something to the effect of, ‘Arne, why did you put us in this spot?’ Two wrinkles here: 34 states are eligible right but now underneath that some have different timelines and some would have to change statutes to make changes so everyone is not in the same place.

While you’re at PoliticsK12 also check out Alyson Klein’s look at how tricky it might be to get to 218 votes in the House for the pending ESEA reauthorization bill. Democrats seem likely to oppose it and some Republicans will want  to vote against it, too. Given the D – R breakdown in the House that doesn’t leave a big margin for error for the majority. Update: The floor schedule for next week has it tentative.

Rick Hess takes a smart look at the Vallas fiasco in CT.  The whole episode points up the absurdity of education’s credentialing fetish but at the same time, the law is the law.

Spitzer & Pensions

Elliot Spitzer’s return to public life is not surprisingly having its bumps.  He got roughed up on Morning Joe today and in both major NYC tabloid papers. But here’s a reason to welcome his return to the arena: Pensions.  The office he’s running for, while somewhat obscure, is high-leverage when it comes to public pensions – and nationally public sector pensions face a variety of problems and in education sometimes work at cross-purposes with what is good for teachers.  Right now the focus is on how Spitzer’s politics will be complicated, especially given the “frenemies” relationship between public sector pensions and hedge funds, private equity, and Wall Street and Spitzer’s complicated history with these players and desire to use pensions to drive social goals.

But he could be important in a different way – on the issue of sustainability and retirement system design going forward.  Spitzer clearly gets that the pension issue is more complicated than simply putting workers into 401(k)-style defined contribution plans.  But he’s also not a shill for the teachers unions and gets that the current system is not sustainable.  In Rhode Island Democratic state treasurer (and current gubernatorial candidate) Gina Raimondo was confronted with the same issue and made some tough calls and attracted the ire of the unions.  Places like San Jose have also undertaken some reforms. Spitzer could end up being a useful addition to the small cadre of public officials willing to take this issue on and one who isn’t beholden to any interest in this debate.  Whatever his other faults, we need more of those.

Waivers: Is The Answer More (But Better) Not Less?

As you might imagine there is a lively set of conversations going on among policy types about the new round of federal policy waiver waivers – and in particular some questions about how people – like me – could say that (a) although a moratorium wasn’t the best course there (b) was some merit in what people like AFT President Randi Weingarten were saying about Common Core implementation and (c) the new waiver waivers were nonetheless not a good policy.  And a lot of people are also wondering if the Department of Education has any strategy here or is just tossing shovels into an already deep hole.

My take is that the policy environment is fluid right now and states are all over the place. Despite the rhetoric about how Race to the Top was just a continuation of No Child Left Behind, they’re actually different policies.  No Child was about prodding laggards and trying to create some sort of floor for underserved kids. Via the waivers it’s awfully hard to argue the Obama Administration has continued that floor. Race to the Top, conversely, was about rewarding leaders and creating incentives for change by focusing on leaders.  And it’s likewise hard to argue that in terms of driving changes in policy the Administration hasn’t been pretty successful with that approach.

So the result of the last decade or so is that states are now all over the place on policy and so some sort of waiver process in federal policy is defensible and necessary (it’s worth remembering that Arne Duncan’s predecessor, Margaret Spellings, faced a similar though smaller-scale situation about how to allow states to use growth models they had developed during the No Child years and decided to use waivers). The problem is that current approaches to waivers don’t lead to a lot of quality. Spellings, for instance, set a high bar initially but states later were able to get weaker plans through. Duncan pledged a high-bar for his No Child waivers but all sorts of things slipped through and the general consensus is that those waivers lessened rather than increased accountability for underserved students.

But is the answer not to have waivers? I don’t think so.  Rather, it’s to acknowledge that there is now so much variance that a more state-by-state policy within the context of some bright lines is probably necessary. But also to acknowledge at the same time that the current way we implement waivers doesn’t fit the bill. It’s routinized, blunt, and leads to confusion more than quality. (And, of course, Congress has some culpability because of its inability to pass reauthorizing legislation for NCLB.)  In other words, if we’re going to have a state-by-state approach and a lot of reliance on waivers then a more robust waiver process with more meaningful peer review is needed. Using an old approach in this new environment, however, is leading to very muddled and ad hoc federal policy and why there is so much concern.

Edujobs – @ Bellwether, EP, DOD, And Broad Foundation

We’ve gotten loads of resumes for this position at Bellwether, if you’re interested and haven’t sent yours, do it asap.

Education Pioneers is hiring a Texas director, based in Houston.  Chance to step on a rocketship as they say.  Want access to real rockets? Department of Defense schools are implementing Common Core and they need someone to lead the effort.

The Broad Foundation is hiring a senior analyst for research and evaluation.