TFA LIFO Afterthoughts -Part 1- and Response to Gotham Report

 I got pretty hot (angry) reading this Gotham School piece on the TFA LIFO panel (see my live blogs At TFA LIFO Panel Part 1, TFA LIFO Panel Part 2).

I left this comment. Go leave your own.

Can you ask Willoughby if by "those teachers who are not working with students" he means coaches and all the people assigned to DOE headquarters or networks? I bet if you search schools you will find people acting as assitants to the principals who do little or no teaching. How about all those bloated networks? And Tweed bureaucrats?

And what does this mean: "While some do work in classrooms teaching students, others are marginally employed doing administrative tasks, and all of them remain on salary."

Based on what facts? Using the words "some" and "others" is more than ambiguous. And dangerously misleading.

And why not make the point that Leonie made that 90% of the ATRs are teaching full-time programs (not "some" and "others") and the rest are doing day-to-day sub work in the schools (which is why so many schools don't have to call subs every day)? Do you think people are just sitting around? The DOE and E4E attempt to create a link in people's minds between the rubber room and ATRs is intentional.

And by the way, a sidelight of this is that one of the more difficult things to do in the system is cover different classes every day but doing it in the same school makes that process work better. (I did it for a year and a half). As a matter of fact reformers in years gone by (me) used to call for each school to have an ATR to do just subbing work and do necessary admin work when no one was absent. Yes it costs more but no one seems to be subtracting the costs of the subs saved.

Administratative work? How much paperwork has been dumped on schools that just can't get done. The DOE is not giving schools people to do it and it's getting dumped on teachers who teach regular programs or they are relieved from full-loads to do that (how much does that cost?) In fact school secretaries are so overloaded. How much does loads of paperwork dumped on teachers impact on learning conditions for kids? (How well would an actor do in a play if he had to run off the stage and rewrite the play?)

Making full use of ATRs helps the system, not hurts it.

So while I know this is not an article about ATRs but the fact that a major focus of the E4E asault on LIFO is based on the ATRs the lack of nuanced reporting - and I also blame the moderator Lyndsey Christ for not delving into these issues - and also the UFT's Leo Casey who touched on the issue but did not really nail it.

And yes, why not touch on at least some of the issues raised by Julie Cavanagh in a 2000 word defense of LIFO which I handed out at the meeting - which I know Christ had printed but never raised even one point?

You can find Julie's defense at ed notes: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/julie-cavanagh-defends-lifo-in-response.html

 See Chaz' School Daze: My Response To Principal, Matt Willoughby's So Called Compromise On "First In, Last Out" (LIFO) To Terminate The ATRs.

---------
This post below was supposed to get posted yesterday but I raced out without hitting the send button.

Wed., Apr. 13

Now that I have some time to talk about last night - make sure to read my 2 live blogging reports - I will have a lot more to report, especially on my discussions with Sydney and  Patrick from E4E, discussions that went long into the night - until we were surrounded by TFA and E4E staffers who wanted to go home. I left my staff at home. We parted with Sydney asking if I were going to be nicer to E4E. I said I would always be nice in person but don't count on the blog. But more on that conversation later tonight.

I actually went up and congratulated Leo Casey last night as he won the day with the mostly TFA audience. He did a good job presenting the UFT position in a rational way. He was calm and fairly charming - I know, I know, but not the often shrill Leo.

I thought he still seemed to resist (as predicted) any out and out defense of LIFO until the end when NY1's Lindsey Christ (also a TFA alum by the way) pushed him and he said - somewhat sheepishly?- that it was still currently the only objective way. But he was very strong in essence defending LIFO by bringing up abusive principals, discrimination against gay and lesbians and sexual harassment - smart move with this audience which was mostly women.

I still think Julie would have been stronger - she would have really connected with that audience in age, gender and fact that she is in the classroom - but in fact would have liked to have seen them both on the panel. Look at the lineup - E4E and Michelle Rhee get 2 slots. Julie and Leo would have made a good tandem.

The Rhee slug was useless and Sydney was contradicting herself and tossing off inaccurate info.

The emergency replacement for Noguera (TFA staffers claimed they were told it was a family emegency but 2 ladies coming in told me they just saw him at AERO conf in New Orleans and there was no way he would have been there- Question: What did TFA know and when did they know it?)

Well, off to the city  - I might stop by the delegate assembly later and the Teachers Unite bar mixer afterwards. Maybe try some live blogging again - need to practice using thumbs.

----------
Coming soon: Part 4 - Conversations with E4E at the post event bar mixer (where I got free food courtesy of TFA - Thanks Wendy Kopp).

A chat with the oligarchy of corporate education reform

Check out this from "Aunty Broad", one of our friends in Seattle: the education oligarchy (Rhee, Broad, Bloomberg, KIPP and Kopp) "should be cloned because they are so smart." More brilliant exposes from Aunty Broad are here.

Positive Effects of Comprehensive Teacher Induction

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 deviations in the induction study), but found no impact on reading test scores (versus 0.11 standard deviations in the induction study).

In another recent Mathematica report (boy, these folks are busy!), the authors note that "The achievement effects of class-size reduction are often used as a benchmark for other educational interventions. After three years of treatment (grades K-2) in classes one-third smaller than typical, average student gains amounted to 0.20 standard deviations in math and 0.23 standard deviations in reading (U.S. Department of Education, 1998)." In that report -- an evaluation of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Mathematica researchers found a very powerful impact from KIPP: "For the vast majority of KIPP schools studied, impacts on students’ state assessment scores in mathematics and reading are positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial.... By year three, half of the KIPP schools in our sample are producing math impacts of 0.48 standard deviations or more, equivalent to the effect of moving a student from the 30th percentile to the 48th percentile on a typical test distribution..... Half of the KIPP schools in our sample show three-year reading effects of 0.28 standard deviations or more."

Is it appropriate to compare effect sizes among RCTs or, for that matter, among research in general? I am told that it is, although certainly considerations such as cost effectiveness and scalability have to enter into the conversation. Implementation issues also must be attended to. With regard to teacher induction, the issue of cost effectiveness was addressed in a 2007 cost-benefit study published in the Education Research Service's Spectrum journal and summarized in this New Teacher Center (NTC) policy brief.

Disclosure: I am employed by the NTC which participated in the induction RCT, and I helped to coordinate NTC's statement on the study.

The NTC is "encouraged" by the study. However, NTC believes that "it does not reflect the even more significant outcomes that can be achieved when districts have the time, capacity and willingness to focus on an in-depth, universal implementation of comprehensive, high-quality induction. It speaks volumes about the quality of induction and mentoring provided and the necessity of new teacher support that student achievement gains were documented despite [design and implementation] limitations to the study."

UPDATE: Read the Education Week story by Stephen Sawchuk here. And the Mathematica press release here.

TFA 'Set Aside'

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 direct federal funding and forces these other organizations to exclaim, "We're not worthy!"?

Frankly, I like the Administration's competitive approach. Let the cream rise to the top. That's a very American concept.

-----------

UPDATE: Here's more on the TFA funding issue from Eduwonk.