Is USATs Greg Toppo source greasing in pursuit of something else or just looking for a way out of journalism and into a job flacking for the NEA? Today’s story about Teach For America really abuses the research and seems to generalize from a few anecdotes. Just because the NEA says veteran teachers are being laid off for TFA teachers, is there really any evidence it’s happening systemically? Toppo’s two examples and secondhand heresay from teachers’ union leaders fail to convince*…NEA officials can’t be trusted to relay the research accurately so probably worth verifying this, too, no? Obviously, I happen to think TFA matters and find the backlash against it unsurprising…still c’mon…
*For instance the issue in Charlotte, NC is that they’re going to only use seniority as a tie-breaker in layoffs using quality as the primary driver…that’s what has the teachers’ unions all in a bundle…
Update: This is easy! The blogosphere does Toppo’s work for him. Within ten minutes of posting, key Boston anecdote and assertion from the story debunked: According to a source close to HR in BPS, there are more than 100 posted openings, no veterans let go for TFA’ers despite Toppo’s relaying claims to the contrary…oops! Maybe USAT can save money by just covering education via Twitter? Improved accuracy a nice byproduct!
Update II: This is ugly! Here’s more information (than you wanted to know!) on the errors in the story, people can whine, Greg’s a nice guy, but this one is still a lemon and would, it seems, rise to the level of needing a correction and/or clarification. Bottom line, there are not two sides to everything, sometimes there are facts.
In Boston no teachers have been fired to make room for TFA. Period. Teach For America will bring in 20 teachers, into a system that has more than 4,000 teachers. Earlier this year, BPS removed a number of provisionally certified (the non-tenured) teachers – which they do every year; and they announced plans to fire some fully licensed teachers from non high-needs subject areas and schools. The Boston teachers’ union leader, Stutman, is fixating on Teach For America because it is an easy way to draw attention to the firings. But BPS is hiring new teachers the way they do every year. They have already hired dozens of new teachers. As of Wednesday, there were more than 100 openings in the system. The Boston Teacher Residency has about 75 people in its cohort annually. The district hires from all the local universities. And Teach For America is bringing in 20 people and they have to interview for jobs just like all the other graduates of universities or teachers coming from other cities. Principals and schools will decide who they want to hire. Again, no teachers have been fired so they can be replaced with Teach For America Corps members. Toppo obviously took this assertion at face value. Did he check its veracity with either BPS HR officials or with Teach for America? I don’t know, but I sure doubt it since it made it into the paper and so far no counter-evidence forthcoming…
Second, contra the article’s assertion there are not 18 districts (that’s even 18 districts, leave aside this alleged national trend) that are firing teachers to “make room” for Teach For America corps members. The article in fact quotes an authority figure asserting that, “I don’t think you’ll find a city that isn’t laying off people to accommodate Teach For America.” That is simply untrue. (More generally, to be blunt, based on what we know from the research, one can wish this were so…) In any event, if there were examples the NEA would be bringing evidence rather than making wild claims that only the gullible would take at face value. Charlotte, NC, is the most interesting quasi-exception. There, the superintendent, Dr. Gorman, decided to lay teachers of based partially on performance rather than just seniority, and he still wanted to bring in new corps members as part of an overall strategy for reform. That move, which based on the research makes sense anyway, is sadly unusual. But there and elsewhere they are still hiring new teachers from a variety of routes. To make the case, as the NEA has and Toppo relays, that all this amounts to making room for Teach For America teachers is akin to saying districts are making room for new graduates of teacher ed programs, transfers from other cities, and so forth. It’s worth remembering the scale of the personnel systems in many of our larger districts (the kind TFA mostly serves) and the numbers of teachers moving in and out even during a downturn like this. Toppo failed to check the 18 district assertion, the more general claim, and didn’t put any of this into a larger analytic context for readers.
And, again, absent a lot more evidence, the whole idea that there is a trend here is flimsy. In fact, it seems like a caricature of the old joke among reporters, one example is a happening, two is a trend!
In both these cases Toppo’s defense could be, well I didn’t say it, they said it. Sure. But when you more or less uncritically relay assertions from people presumably in positions of responsibility, they carry weight. And I’d like to think that if a lobbyist for the hamburger industry were to tell Toppo that burgers are really good for you at least twice a day, for instance, he’d take a minute to check that out and not just relay it followed by a quote from someone saying, no, no they’re not! Reporters on other beats check things like this. This is no different, the union leaders are self-interested here and trying to use the downturn to skewer TFA. The situation calls for skepticism and some authoritative analysis by the reporter.
Finally, speaking of authoritative analysis, Toppo gives the debate on the research the old “on the one hand, on the other hand” treatment when at this point there are really not two hands but some actual evidence. The NEA can say there is no research supporting Teach for America teachers, but all the serious studies (Mathematica, Calder, NY) show the same thing: Teach For America teachers are – on average – as good or better relative to other teachers including veterans. At an absolute minimum they do no harm. That’s pretty essential for readers to understand in a news story about veterans and TFA teachers especially because people naturally, and understandably, think veterans are always better.
It’s also essential context if you’re going to let the guy who runs the NEA say that Teach For America is committing “educational malpractice” an assertion that leaving aside its complete irony and shamelessness, is demonstrably false based on the evidence today. If the American Medical Association abused research the way the National Education Association does it would be a national scandal. But in our field they are aided and abetted by reporting like this. [By the way though, when you stop and think about the human capital system in education, these research findings are hardly surprising. In fact, what I think surprises is that the Teach For America effect is not stronger than it is, that needs more research but has some sobering implications for some contemporary education debates.] Regardless, Toppo not only doesn’t give readers a sense of the body of research or what it actually says but mixes anecdotal impressions with a discussion of aggregate evidence. Research like this can be confusing, it can be hard to report, some researchers are less helpful on transparency than others, but none of that is an excuse when it’s your job to parse it.
Only in education do stories often turn on opinions about the research rather than a discussion of the implications of the research. Maybe Toppo will write a story soon where we can all offer our opinions on gravity and whether objects float around here on earth? If there are two sides to everything then there must be two sides to this pesky debate about gravity allegedly holding things down.
So Merrow, not ad hom, those are the facts. If you have data on this to the contrary, please bring it. Otherwise…
Update III: This is avoidable! Apparently the NEA has been selling this story for a few weeks,
since this, and other news outlets passed
after looking into the claims and finding them not credible…
*Apparently a few readers thought I was serious about Toppo looking for a job at the NEA, that hed was a joke! Why would they pay for the cow when they can get the milk…OK, that’s a joke, too. Anyway, sorry for any confusion.
