oflovefaithhopedream

The Answer Sheet over at the Washington Post recently ran an editorial by a professor at Fordham University about his reasons for not allowing Teach for America to recruit in his college classroom.  Mainly, he objects because TFA focuses on short-term rather than long-term commitments to teaching and as a result, he claims, “an organization which began by promoting idealism and educational equity has become, to all too many of its recruits, a vehicle for profiting from the misery of America’s poor.” Like this professor, I don’t allow TFA to recruit in my classrooms at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Apparently, many of my colleagues feel the same way. When I noted this on Twitter and Facebook, the response was substantial.  Faculty from across the country said “me too,” “me too,” though only a few elaborated on why. Those that did expound on their practices revealed that TFA’s strategy of in-classroom recruitment may have unintended consequences. ...

Today, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. released the final report of its IES/U.S Department of Education -funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) of comprehensive teacher induction. It shows a statistically significant and sizeable impact on student achievement in mathematics (0.20 standard deviations) and reading (0.11 standard deviations) of third-year teachers who received two years of robust induction support. That's the equivalent of moving students from the 50th to 54th percentile in reading achievement and from the 50th to 58th percentile in math achievement. As a basis of comparison, I note that in 2004, Mathematica conducted a RCT of Teach for America (TFA). In that study , it compared the gains in reading and math achievement made by students randomly assigned to TFA teachers or other teachers in the same school. The results showed that, on average, students with TFA teachers raised their mathematics test scores by 0.15 standard deviations (versus 0.20 standard d...

The Washington Post 's Nick Anderson reports that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was grilled by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) yesterday about why he proposed eliminating the set aside for Teach for America in the Administration FY2011 federal budget. "We made some tough calls. And what we did is we simply eliminated all the earmarks. We increased the chance for competition," Duncan said. "Teach for America is an earmark?" Doggett asked. "It was a set-aside," Duncan clarified. The organization, he said, would have "every opportunity to compete and get, frankly, significantly more money." My question is: Why should TFA receive such a set aside while other high-quality education non-profits do not? What about KIPP , Urban Teacher Residency United , The New Teacher Project ? How about the nonprofit I work for, the New Teacher Center ? All of these nonprofits are national in scope. Is there something special about TFA that merits direc...