Monthly Archives: October 2011

Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t

Posted on October 31, 2011 by garyrubinstein

There was a time, not very long ago, when I was an active volunteer alumni recruiter for TFA. And, as you might expect, I was great at it. One year, I think it was 1998, I did a recruitment session … Continue reading →

Posted in book proposal, Teach For America, tfa rants, top posts | 218 Comments

The Vindication Of P.S. 84 Part III

Posted on October 26, 2011 by garyrubinstein

In the first two parts of this series I examined how the New York City progress report system is less about measuring a school’s quality and more about comparing schools.  The number of comparisons that occurs to determine the ‘progress’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Research, Tom | 4 Comments

The Vindication Of P.S. 84 Part II

Posted on October 25, 2011 by garyrubinstein

In the previous post I demonstrated how the New York City progress reports are distorted by a inappropriate use of ‘standard deviation’ to unfairly punish schools that score slightly below average on certain metrics when all the scores are very … Continue reading →

Posted in Research, Tom | 5 Comments

The Vindication Of P.S. 84 Part I

Posted on October 23, 2011 by garyrubinstein

I was inspired to get to the bottom of the New York City school progress report grades after reading this story from the New York Times Schoolbook website about P.S. 84 which was one of the thirty F rated schools … Continue reading →

Posted in Research, Tom | 18 Comments

When Bad Progress Reports Happen To Good Schools — Change ’em!

Posted on October 21, 2011 by garyrubinstein

New York City’s Department of Education recently released their ‘progress reports’ for all the middle and elementary schools for the 2010-2011 school year. For each school they have a complicated formula that assigns up to 60 points for ‘progress’, up … Continue reading →

Posted in Teach For America | 2 Comments

Readin’ > ‘Rithmetic

Posted on October 19, 2011 by garyrubinstein

Something that nearly every adult has wondered about, but is scared to say it out loud is “Is knowing math really that important?” They don’t say it out loud because they fear that someone, possibly a math teacher like me, … Continue reading →

Posted in book proposal, Teach For America | 15 Comments

A Newbie’s Guide To My Blog

Posted on October 18, 2011 by garyrubinstein

If this is your first time here, Welcome! Over the past 3 years my posts have fallen into different categories, which you can access by locating the ‘categories’ menu on the right pane, near the bottom. ‘Teaching Advice’ is what … Continue reading →

Posted in Teach For America | Leave a comment

Reason #15 to be wary of #TeachForAmerica

Posted on October 15, 2011 by garyrubinstein

I wrote about this topic a few months ago, but on Twitter I recently saw this: This got a lot of ‘amens’ and retweets, of course. What I’m about to say needs to be prefaced VERY carefully so as to … Continue reading →

Posted in Teach For America | 19 Comments

New Orleans RSD — the ‘miracle’ district

Posted on October 12, 2011 by garyrubinstein

The Louisiana Department Of Education just released the 2011 School Performance Data. As New Orleans has been hailed as a ‘miracle’ district, I was eager to see the results. As you might know, after Katrina the lowest performing schools were … Continue reading →

Posted in book proposal, Debunking, Tom | 21 Comments

Talking a struggling TFAer off the ledge

Posted on October 11, 2011 by garyrubinstein

To quit or not to quit. That is the question? It’s the same question I pondered twenty years ago, nearly to the day. TFA doesn’t publicize this, but a lot of the people who gave up all the other opportunities … Continue reading →

Posted in Teach For America | 25 Comments