Re: [xmca] Teach for America

[Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

Below are some passages From the Atlantic Monthly article Philip  
provided
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching

My question: is this the kind of approach to teacher evaluation that  
teachers may be facing in coming years?  Being measured against  
"phenomenal" results?  Being blamed for school and social system  
failures when they are not rated as "superstars"?


from Atlantic Monthly Jan-Feb 2010, What Makes a Great Teacher?  by  
Amanda Ripley

... Farr went to law school, as planned. He came back to Teach for  
America in 2001—this time in charge of training and support. By then,  
the organization’s founder, Wendy Kopp, had begun to notice something  
puzzling when she visited classrooms: many Teach for America teachers  
were doing good work. But a small number were getting phenomenal  
results—and it was not clear why.

Farr was tasked with finding out.  Starting in 2002, Teach for America  
began using student test-score progress data to put teachers into one  
of three categories: those who move their students one and a half or  
more years ahead in one year; those who achieve one to one and a half  
years of growth; and those who yield less than one year of gains. ...

As Teach for America began to identify exceptional teachers using this  
data, Farr began to watch them. He observed their classes, read their  
lesson plans, and talked to them about their teaching methods and  
beliefs. ...

Right away, certain patterns emerged. ... Great teachers, he  
concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.
Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly  
recruited students and their families into the process; they  
maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to  
student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the  
next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired  
outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the  
combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

“Strong teachers insist that effective teaching is neither mysterious  
nor magical. It is neither a function of dynamic personality nor  
dramatic performance,” Farr writes in Teaching as Leadership, a book  
coming out in February from Farr and his colleagues. The model the  
book lays out, Farr is careful to say, is not the only path to  
success. But he is convinced it can improve teaching—and already has.  
In 2007, 24 percent of Teach for America teachers moved their students  
one and a half or more years ahead, according to the organization’s  
internal reports. In 2009, that number was up to 44 percent. That data  
relies largely on school tests, which vary in quality from state to  
state ...

- Steve




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