Sunday, March 3, 2013

My top 10 most popular posts | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

My top 10 most popular posts | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:


My top 10 most popular posts

I’m going to make a few top 10 lists over the coming weeks since I know from reading other people’s blogs that I don’t often go back and read old posts.  But some of the older posts from me and others are not ‘stale’ in any way.  So in addition to this list, which will be the 10 most viewed posts, I’ll also make some other ones like the 10 that I like the best, or the 10 that generated the most comments, or others.
Top 10 Most Popular Posts On This Blog:
1.  10/31/2011 Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t
2.  1/9/2013 The 50 million dollar lie
3. 2/28/2012 Analyzing Released NYC Value-Added Data Part 2
4. 2/26/2012 Analyzing Released NYC Value-Added Data Part 1
5. 2/10/2012 New York State Tests:  7th Grade Math 2010
6. 12/31/2012 Open Letters To Reformers I Know.  Part 8:  Wendy Kopp
7. 6/12/2012 It Takes A Village
8. 3/6/2011 Same Kids, Same Building, Same Lies
9.  12/29/2012 The Silence Of The (Sacrificial) Lambs
10.  11/14/2012 My Visit To KIPP


Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

For the first 19 years of my 21 year struggle to help TFA improve, my issue with them was quality of the training for the new corps members.  It has been frustrating since sending untrained TFAers into the neediest schools is unfair to the kids and also unfair to the corps members.  As the organization has expanded, the training has actually gotten worse since there are so many trainees and not enough students for those trainees to get a realistic training experience.  So you see institutes where corps members teach for about 12 hours total with classes of ten students or less.
Just as you wouldn’t want to fly in a commercial plane where the pilot had never flown a plane that large before, you wouldn’t want students, particularly the ones who need the most help, to be taught by a teacher who never