Wendy Kopp, TFA, and life in a bubble.
Yesterday the Huffington Post ran an op/ed piece by Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA. The title was In Defense of Optimism. I read it, tweeted it, and moved on, but it has been rattling in my head for 24 hours now, so here are some thoughts in response.
To start, I think the original premise of TFA was not a bad one, and I have no doubt that Ms. Kopp is absolutely genuine in her desire to improve education for the under-served children in America (she mentions inner-city urban and rural in her piece). That is an important and laudable goal, and Ms. Kopp has chosen to devote a large part of her adult life to that goal, which is nothing to sneeze at. Plenty of people say a lot more and do a whole lot less.
As I understand it, the original premise of TFA was that, in a school which lacked teachers (literally, did not have or was not able to hire qualified teachers), a bright, enthusiastic, young person with a college degree and some small amount of preparation would be better than nothing. And I can’t disagree with that. It would be better than nothing.
However, there were two things in the essay which, having reflected, really stand out to me. One is very specific, and one underlies the entirety of Ms. Kopp’s opinion.
The first is her assertion that
A significant body of rigorous research shows that they [TFA teachers] are more effective than other beginning teachers and, on average, equally or more effective than veteran teachers.
This statement is given as accepted fact, and the addition of the word ‘rigorous’ gives the impression of academic certification, without the need for all those pesky citations. At the very least, this statement has been seriously disputed by professionals whose job it is to understand both teacher effectiveness and the methodology by which one might determine teacher Wendy Kopp, TFA, and life in a bubble. | The Paper Graders: