The Evolution of Teach for America

Slander of ellen of DC by Rocky of NC

I stand by my comments - "there is no evidence of it" - hearsay is not evidence. I provided those links so anyone could check and see that for themselves. To make such a specific claim and have a couple only a couple of colleagues making vague comments is pretty weak. Rhee continued to make her specific comments of 13 to 90% long after she knew her only evidence was hearsay.

Is this how you would handle a question about your resume?

Slander of Ms Michelle Rhee by Ellen of DC

Ellen of DC provided a link to an article in the Washington Post as "evidence" to cooroborate her charge that Ms. Rhee was lying when she claimed her students went from 13% to the 90th percentile range. I checked out the site and found this:

Harlem Park's school-level standardized test scores, although not proving or disproving Rhee's assertions, show significant gains collectively among all three second-grade classes in 1993-94 and the three third-grade classes in 1994-95, the years she taught those grades. Three people who worked closely with her at the school and a student say the scores rose in the range Rhee suggested.

Linda Carter, who served as principal of Harlem Park when Rhee was there, said the jump in the achievement level was "dramatic" and the scores were "pretty high."

Michele Jacobs, 38, who taught in a combined third-grade class with Rhee in 1994-95, said: "I honestly would go with what [Rhee] says. . . . She probably is correct. I know it was high gains. It definitely was high gains."

Deonne Medley, who was Rhee's teaching intern, recalled students' scores increasing from roughly the 15th percentile to about the 80th or 90th percentile.

Ellen of DC wrote "There is no evidence for it (Ms Rhee's claim), which Rhee herself was forced to admit when she was questioned about it by the DC City Council over a year ago." That accusation was flatly contradicted by the link Ellen of DC herself provided - as evidenced by the above quotations found in that very article - published, by the way, in the Washington Post, not US News and World Report.

If anyone still has any doubt about the efficacy of Teach for America, do what I do: volunteer to tutor at a KIPP charter school staffed by Teach for American alums. One of my students told me when he first started at KIPP a year ago he was two grades behind and now he is at his grade level - and, I noticed, very proud of his achievement. I was allowed to attend the Christmas award ceremony recently and the first award went to a little girl who had advanced one year in three months. Other students achieved six months work in three. Not everyone got an award but everyone shared in their achievement as a member of the pride (as in lions) - it was a very cute ceremony.

AS far as I am concerned, Teach for America has demonstrated to my satisfaction that ending educational inequality is an idea whose time has come and KIPP is leading the way. I invite everyone to join in and do whatever you can to make that happen, do the research, challenge the nay sayers, write letters of support to KIPP and their ilk. Personally, I am going back to school to get my teaching certificate. If I get good enough, maybe someday they will let me teach at KIPP.

Not enough control, or support, and too many

When I grew up there was close to 30 in a class, and California was known for good schools. Teachers had control of their classrooms, as well as support from their superiors. Though rarely used, discipline, paddling, and suspension were real options. Today due to numbers, there is no way most communities can pay a decent wage to their teachers. I can understand a union promoting an increase in members, but not at expense of their member's standard of living. For the past 15 years schools certainly have not attracted the best and brightest. Presently the few stellar examples of teachers past are like my niece. There is no way her husband would allow her to work in a bad neighborhood. He considers her income usefull for vacations and the occassional new car, but certainly nothing to live off of.

Not enough control, or support, and too many

When I grew up there was close to 30 in a class, and California was known for good schools. Teachers had control of their classrooms, as well as support from their superiors. Though rarely used, discipline, paddling, and suspension were real options. Today due to numbers, there is no way most communities can pay a decent wage to their teachers. I can understand a union promoting an increase in members, but not at expense of their member's standard of living. For the past 15 years schools certainly have not attracted the best and brightest. Presently the few stellar examples of teachers past are like my niece. There is no way her husband would allow her to work in a bad neighborhood. He considers her income usefull for vacations and the occassional new car, but certainly nothing to live off of.

Misguide 3

Teachers don't meet in a secret, dark basement, rub or hands together and figure out ways to retain bad teachers. No respectable profession does that, and never does education. The concerns over merit of TFA have already been posted by other people; no need to restate them here. The concern I have with what the potential, and likely, outcome of what Rhee is doing in DC is that there will be a frequent, and perpetual turnover of teachers. The students will have to work twice as hard to acclimate to a new teacher and their teaching style (for good or for bad); for most students (even the ones who are not failing) need to have a consistent teacher in their life. Rhee’s approach leaves too much room for subjective firing based on whether an administrator likes or dislikes a particular teacher. There is a misguided perception in this nation that schools are a business, and should be run like one. This model is a terrible and flawed analogy. The two fields, at the employee level, are nothing alike. Quality, professional teachers don't need merit pay to motivate them. I’m sorry if you’ve experienced a poor teacher in you life or the life of your student. Did you ever take the time to sit down with that teacher or teachers to see why they were the way they were? Did you get their viewpoint, or just assumed out-right that they were poor? Are you sure your son or daughter failed their class because it was the teacher’s fault, and not your fault or your child’s. I'm going to stop writing now; I'm sure you're tired of reading this if you've made it this far, and I have grading to do tonight—which is on my own time, and I'm not being paid for, but I'm doing to do it anyway because I love my students and I love and admire my profession.

Misguide 2

All schools have teachers that have seen better days and probably need to be put out to pasture, but parents and politicians, who, by the way, have little to no background in education, are quick to lump all teachers in with the one or two bad apples. Teachers are continually bound and shackled by terribly written policies at the state and federal level. In the state of Michigan where I teach, it seems like every couple of years "reformers" come along and change policy, mandating unconscionably stupid requirements based on ideology, not sound, researched pedagogy. When will the direction of education in the nation be left to professional educators? Despite popular sentiment, teaching IS actually rocket science (to shoplift a phrase by Professor Richard Lemons). It is complex and multi-layered. It is a profession, and most teachers work tirelessly planning, preparing, implementing, collaborating, and goal setting to honor this profession. Case in point, out of approximately 280 teachers in our district, 230 have advanced degrees. How lazy and incompetent does that sound? To address comments about teacher pay, when you compare our salaries to jobs in the private sector, with employees that hold equivalent or similar degrees, teachers still earn less than their peers (even when figuring in the monetary cost of our benefits, which are admittedly unmatched, but deserved), (http://www.weac.org/News/2004-05/august04/teacherpay.htm, http://www.huliq.com/55706/us-flunks-teacher-pay-compared-other-countries). Now if you are wearing the spectacles of, "but teachers don't work that many hours and they have the summers off,” then our pay may seem too high. The layman has no idea the amount of work we take home, do on the weekends, and yes, even in the summer (which many teachers use to seek higher degrees or to take professional development courses to better their profession). In regard to teacher unions, we protect the integrity of our profession and its members by negotiating contracts that are fare to our members and that leave districts financially solvent. No teacher in their right mind wants a district to go belly up, where is the logic in that? Districts run out of money for students and supplies when their administration is over compensated for low performing work, they sit on fund equities that are above 8% and refuse to spend it, and they have incompetent business managers who mishandle finances; all of which are not the fault of teachers. I challenge people to obtain the financial records of their district through FOIA, and I can almost guarantee that the amount the district spends on wages for their teachers has not drastically changed in the last 20 years. Worker unions built our nation; they are the backbone of our country. The teacher union works to protect our members from the greedy, self-serving politics of many administrators and politicians.

Misguided Parents

Charles Dana said, "Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth."

This being stated, I will venture forth with my perspective as an educator and vice president of a local teachers union on the matter of "education reform," since ultimately, this is the national issue which this article addresses. First and foremost, the nation does not need "education reform" as much as "parenting reform." The students that perform the poorest, the majority of the time, are the ones that come from dysfunctional homes. Suffice to say, that these students come to us (teachers) not remotely prepared or equipped to learn the content we teach them. I welcome all advice on how a teacher is going to fix these students' home lives! We can shower them with love and attention while they are at school. And for those specific hours between 8:00—3:00 the attention and care probably makes a difference for some, and lingers for a handful more when they leave the school campus to go home.

Allow me to use some real life, extreme scenarios to illustrate my point. How can we mend a student who has been verbally or physically abused at home? Do you think the student can come to school, take and pass a test in geometry when they are worried if they will get beaten for no particular reason sometime during the night? What about the student who comes to school on an empty stomach because their parents are too lazy to get a job and feed them properly? Let's not leave out the middle and upper class families who have children that fail. How are teachers going to teach a student who is left alone, forging their independence and world view with the help of X-Box, MTV and unsupervised internet use, while both parents are prioritize career climbing over quality time with their kids?

Terrible parenting unravels everything that we as teachers do, day in and day out, to get their hearts and minds ready to accept knowledge and content. I feel that parents who have students failing or performing below adequate yearly progress should be penalized or held accountable, since they are the ones failing their students, not the teachers. How about increasing taxes for these failing parents? Why can’t benefits be frozen or cut for families that siphon off the social welfare system, and refuse to take an active role in their students’ life? Since money seems to motivate Americans, this seems like a great motivational tool, does it not? And when their student still willingly refuses to come to school or learn, then they can be the ones to blame. Why can't a person collecting welfare drag their butt to school and volunteer? No, it is just easier to lay the fault entirely on the teacher's shoulders. Great plan, failing parents!

Regina Chagolla of CA asks: "When will this county respect teaching as a profession and not something anyone can do after five-week teacher training?"

The issue is not whether I respect teaching as a profession, but whether I respect those in the profession in this country. While I certainly agree that teaching is difficult and that extensive training, education and experience are necessary to attain skill, I think that the general quality of teachers in U.S. public schools is so low that we might as well give TFA a chance: they can't possibly do any worse, and will probably do better.

Bravo to Ms. Rhee

For too long, teachers have had it both ways. They claim credit when one of their former students succeed, but it's never their fault when the student fails. And regardless, their salaries continue to rise.

Name any other profession where your compensation goes up just because you show up. Really? Is that all we demand of our teachers? Attendance? No wonder our schoolchildren aren't motivated to succeed, when they see their teachers being rewarded for doing so little.

I'm all for paying good teachers the salaries they deserve. But lets face it: the majority of them don't deserve anything at all. Personally, out of maybe 30 teachers I had from grades 7 to 12, only five could be considered competent, and only three could be considered good.

The bulk of most public school budgets goes to teacher salaries. We spend more (inflation-adjusted) on a per-student basis now than we did 40 years ago. That means teachers are getting paid more for doing the same work at a lower level than their predecessors.

No wonder the unions oppose it. They have the best deal out there.

“Her students went from the 13th percentile on standardized national tests to the 90th percentile within two years' time.”

It's hard to believe that Michelle Rhee is still making that claim and that US News is reporting it. Did she actually say that during the interview, or did you lift it, without checking, from her resume or the many national news stories over the past year where it’s repeated? There is no evidence for it, which Rhee herself was forced to admit when she was questioned about it by the DC City Council over a year ago. Here is my evidence: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/29/AR2007062902190.html