The Head of TFA Can’t Connect the Dots…….But I Can.

Wendy Kopp gave a fascinating interview to Cornell West and Tavis Smiley on Pacifica Radio this morning.    She was shocked, shocked I say that “after 20 years, we have not been able to close the achievement gap!”  This may have been an older show as the interview was preceded by an interview with Diane Ravitch and Jonathon Kozol who has a new book out.   Kozol had strong condemnation for Teach For America, claiming that the organization sends “glamorous young people” with five weeks of training into the neediest schools. The kids naturally fall in love with these hip young Harvard grads but then the students are- as Kozol puts it – “abandoned” in two years when the TFA’ers have paid off their student loans.    It was the strongest anti-TFA language I have heard but also the most accurate.

Next up in the interview queue was Kopp, who copiously praised all the education “reformers” and her own Teach for America as doing important work.  She then lashed out in frustration at no one in particular that “after 20 years we haven’t closed the achievement gap at all.”   But instead of reflection or a reevaluation of privatizing education and demonizing veteran educators she confidently claimed she had the solution which she declared is working in a small number of “model, transformational schools.”    She claimed that high expectations with a high achieving school culture and extra  help for those students in “difficult circumstances” (did she mean poverty?) are working in these “transformational schools.”

I keep coming back to why it is that certain miracle reformers and teachers claim to have the answers but yet can’t seem to broaden their successes.   It is because the real evidence and real stats tell the tale.  As Diane Ravitch stated in her earlier interview students from “comfortable homes” who do not live in poverty always outperform those students living in crime-ravaged, poor areas.    When you dig into the “successes” you discover certain exceptions, such as in the case of  Geoffrey Canada and his supposed over the top  graduation rate,  who is able to send under- performing students from his school  to the local public schools he so despises which then are demonized as failing.  His school does however, have a medical clinic, preschool and 1:1 tutoring which are only dreams for most urban public schools, whose teachers often have to sweep and mop their own classrooms.  Then there is Jaime Escalante, whose students attended a math enrichment class at a local college before entering his Calculus class. He also had strong administrative support for his program.  And who could forget the”Freedom Writer” teacher my students so adore who left teaching after four years.

Yet when you look at who is doing the deepest work in the classroom, it is the veteran teachers who have stayed and who work with students in both high and low-income areas.  By deepest work, I mean after doing a ton of planning, honestly being able to say to oneself “this isn’t working “and planning again.  It’s taking risks and knowing that your students may tell you “this is boring” but when they make the connections it’s forever.

I do a little lesson on the Yalta Conference from the Center for Learning.  Some students get frustrated by it because it does require some heavy thinking.  (One of my brightest students  put her head down on the desk 3/4 of the way through the lesson saying she couldn’t take it anymore then lifted her head and screamed “Roosevelt was an idiot!”).  Of course it appears that Roosevelt gave Stalin the farm at Yalta until you remember that the Soviets lost 20 million people in World War II and Stalin was already occupying the nations between the Soviet Union and Germany.  Am I defending Stalin? Hardly.   By this time, I should have moved on to the Cold War because my pacing sucks, but I never spend less than 6 weeks on the Rise of Dictators, WW II and the Bomb, the Holocaust and Nuremberg Trials.    My next lesson is about the dropping of the atomic bomb by Truman and includes short quotes by those involved including Truman’s Chief of Staff who disagreed with his decision.   After that lesson students come to understand that the bomb may have been dropped for political reasons so that Truman would not have to negotiate over the Pacific region with the Soviets the way Roosevelt had to negotiate with them over Europe.   Students gain a much deeper understanding of these events just beyond simple pro and con about whether dropping the bomb was justified.  My point? I couldn’t have taught this deeply after just 2 years or even 4 years and especially not after just a 5 week training program.

My other point is that 1/2 of the class was absent that day which is typical. Why? Various reasons particular to areas of poverty.   Had to visit their probation officer, ditching,  babysitting, depression, pregnant. All of the above and more. So they never got the benefit of the lesson on the bomb or making the connection with Yalta.  One of my students in Career Development class wrote an essay telling me that teen pregnancy was a “gift from God.”  I made the mistake of trying to use logic in discussing the issue with her.  What about allowing yourself to grow up first I implored? What about the importance of two parents? What about being able to support yourself on a living wage first?  None of it was to any avail. She acknowledged all of my points but stood firm in hers.  I see potential that will go unfulfilled.

Wendy Kopp would say that this is my fault, or my union’s fault.   Our school which has  probably one of the hardest-working principals in the district would not be “transformational enough.”   Yet our principal last week visited one of our students who was shot twice in the chest and barely made it out alive.      Middle class and upper class communities don’t contend with this.

Thus I can’t in good conscience push test scores as a value on my students. The “reformers” send their kids to schools where testing is either not done, or not used to judge teachers.  Yet they demand the factory education for our students while their kids get the Cadillac treatment.    It makes no sense.    You want me to tell my students that their school sucks because they didn’t do well enough on tests they have no incentive to take after they sat in a claustrophobic classroom for four days straight determining the difference between two types of pine cones?  Enough.    I can’t take the charade any longer.