In a recent podcast on ‘Getting Smart,’ they interviewed TFA CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard. At the 0:56 mark the host gave this series of numbers, straight from the TFA PR department, “Of the 53,000 alumni, 85% work in education or in careers serving low-income communities. That includes 1,260 school leaders, 471 school system leaders, 500 policy and advocacy leaders and 200 social entrepreneurs.”
A major critique of TFA is that the teachers use TFA as a way to pad their resumes — that they teach for two or maybe three years and then go on to law school, medical school, or business school. If this 85% number is accurate, it would serve as a great counter to any critique of TFA that the corps members do not commit long enough.
Six years ago in a HuffPost editorial, Elisa Villanueva-Beard said that it was 80%. Over the last few years this has grown, at least in theory, to 85% and it is something that is now quoted on the Teach For America website in the section about their impact.
Teach For America has a 28-year track record of advancing educational excellence and equity in the United States through our network of remarkable and diverse leaders working to expand opportunity and access for all children. With nearly 60,000 alumni and corps members in 51 regions around the country, our network now includes 14,000 teachers; 3,700 school principals, assistant principals, and deans; more than 300 school system leaders; 500 policy and advocacy leaders; nearly 200 elected leaders; and almost 200 social entrepreneurs. And while only one in five Teach For America corps members had plans to teach before applying to TFA, 85% of alumni are now working in education or careers serving low-income communities.
This 85% statistic, if to be taken literally, would mean that 43,350 out of 51,000 TFA alumni have a career in education or serving low income communities.
The first question to ask is: How was this data collected? Did TFA track down all 51,000 alumni? Did they do some kind of random sampling? Or is this based on their alumni survey? I know it is based on their alumni survey since when I fill mine out there is this question:
So what they should say is that out of the people who self-selected to take the alumni survey, 85% of the responders answered yes to one or both of these questions. There are two types of bias at work here.
The first is selection bias since this is not a random sampling — it is the people who choose to answer which likely has a higher percent of people likely to answer ‘yes’ to these questions. We don’t really know what percent responded. Since there is so much selection bias it probably doesn’t matter if the response rate is 60% or 70%. But if the response rate is something like 10%, that would make the statistic even less reliable.
The other type of bias comes from the wording of these questions. What qualifies as “relates to improving the quality of life in low-income communities”? Since it is up to the responder to decide, we really don’t know.
The way these questions are worded, something I’m really wondering is: What percent of college graduates, in general, would answer yes to one or both of these questions. Since we don’t have this control group to compare to the TFA group, it is hard to know if 85% is actually impressive.
Another thing kind of ironic about the 85% number is that, in general, 85% is the percent of corps members who don’t quit during their first two years of teaching. Since this statistic is just about ‘alumni’, those people who quit are not included and that further skews the numbers.
In the past six years TFA has found a way to say that this number has grown from 80% to 85%. Who knows what they will be saying it is six years from now. Whatever it is, people should know, as TFA absolutely does, that this number is complete nonsense, something that it would not even be fair to call a half-truth. If TFA continues to use this 85% number and they didn’t realize it was bogus before, they know now and they will be purposely using something they know is misleading at best.
There are two ways to get more accurate data. One is for TFA to try to fully account for all 51,000 alumni. This is a difficult thing to do and something that TFA is not going to invest the time and money into since it can only make that number more accurate and make them look worse for it. The other way is to do a random sampling where they pick about 10,000 people who started with TFA out of the about 65,000 alumni plus quitters. Then they would have to track down all 10,000 of those and that would be a pretty good random sample, I think. They won’t be willing to to this either.
So I’ve decided to do a little crowd sourced experiment. In the early days of TFA, they sent me an alumni directory with the name of every corps member from 1990 to about 2000. So here is my experiment. There were 522 corps members in the first cohort of 1990. I had WolframAlpha picke 100 numbers between 1 and 522.
Then I alphabetized the 522 corps members from 1990 and assigned each a number and then picked the 100 people who corresponded with the 100 numbers that were randomly chosen. This is a true random sampling and it is about 20% of the total population which is a pretty good size sample actually.
215 | Holifield, Erin |
278 | Lienhard, Bill |
111 | Darby, John |
308 | McGlone, Thomas |
19 | Arsuaga, Maritere |
461 | Tan, Chin |
425 | Simes, Jeffrey |
115 | Davis, Geoff |
253 | Koo, Chiray |
171 | Gomez, Carlos |
184 | Groom, Ileetha |
392 | Rivera, Richard |
370 | Polen, Michael |
277 | Lewis, Kimberly |
299 | Martinez, Jane |
271 | Lerntouni, Tank |
113 | Davis, Andrew |
60 | Brown, Daryl |
320 | Miller, John |
401 | Sabin, Caroline |
3 | Abell, Jennifer |
273 | Levine Grimaldi, |
72 | Can, Kristen |
95 | Cobb, Kendall |
265 | Lay, Corey |
384 | Rehl, Michael |
281 |
Livingston, Therese
|
485 | Wade, Andrea |
122 | Dennis, Terrence |
379 | Ramsey, Lukman |
512 | Winiecki, Marc |
236 | Jones , Stephanie |
397 | Roth, Sharon |
429 | Skolaslci, Renee |
499 | Wickliff, Derek |
364 | Phoa, Cynthia |
193 | Hamilton, Donna |
413 | Seligman, Miklci |
95 | Cobb, Kendall |
125 | Dineen, John |
467 | Thompson, Julia |
56 | Brooks , Daniel |
361 | Peterson, Lisa |
99 | Collins, Philip |
502 | Willey, Kristin |
136 | Ebby, Rachel |
514 | Wright, Ernest |
41 | Boatright, Laura |
194 | Harrigan, Lisa |
505 | Williams, Brandi |
501 | Wilkinson, Wendy |
173 | Gonzales, Emilio |
373 | Price, Wendy |
20 | Aumou, Elizabeth |
367 | Plaman, Kathryn |
180 | Grado, Danielle |
399 |
Ruvoli-Gruba, JoAnne
|
444 | Steensland, Lara |
478 | Utley, Stephen |
57 | Brooks, Hoff |
27 | Beck , John |
517 | Yudell, Michael |
384 | Rehl, Michael |
185 | Guerrero, Scott |
116 | Davis, Lorna |
350 |
Palazzolo, Rayann
|
513 | Wolf, Matthew |
467 | Thompson, Julia |
203 | Heitmann, Noel |
205 |
Hendricks Richman, Susan
|
68 | Bushnaq, Faith |
109 | Crean, William |
129 | Donoho, Lori |
186 | Gulling, Egypt |
339 | Nicholas, Robert |
210 | Heyl, Densie |
257 | Kruse, Jennifer |
137 | Edge, Kecia |
204 | Held, Robert |
521 |
Zimmerman, Andrea
|
313 | McPherson, Maria |
224 | Israel, Todd |
63 | Brown, Michael |
106 | Cox , David |
251 | Klender, Kimberly |
336 | Newkirk, Jennifer |
64 | Buckley, Michael |
333 | Nagler, Mary |
25 | Basich, David |
181 | Graham, Elliott |
299 | Martinez, Jane |
146 | Eppolito, Veronica |
201 | Haynes, Michael |
216 | Holmes, Tiffany |
464 | Taylor, Olu |
437 | Snyder, Christina |
460 | Tabb, Kathleen |
226 | Jacobs, Sandi |
297 | Marie!, Kecia |
237 | Jones, Brian |
OK, now I did not then go through and start tracking down each of these 100 people. There was a time a few years back where I may have had the energy for such a project. But, with six degrees of separation and all that perhaps some readers will know some of these people who are all about 51 years old right now and graduated college in 1990. Or maybe readers can pick someone off the list at random and write a comment, something like “297 is a banker at Wells Fargo” with some kind of link to prove this. I haven’t really thought this through fully, but if these 100 people can be researched, it would be interesting to see if approximately 85 of them are “working in education or careers serving low-income communities.”
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I’ve never heard of any of these persons.
Is Julia Thompson listed twice?
Here’s Rachel Ebony. Dr. Rachel Ebby-Rosin is a research-associate on the Academic Innovations team at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, whose areas of expertise include qualitative methods and K-12 education policy. She began her career in education as a charter corps member of TFA and taught bilingual elementary school in Los Angeles, New York City and Redwood City.
Oops. Rachel Ebby.
She graduated from Yale in 1990. About Faith
Faith Bushnaq has an office in Louisville, KY and handles cases in Appeals, Immigration, General Practice, Criminal Defense. This attorney has been licensed for 22 years and attended Duke University.
My daughter’s friend is twenty years younger than this, so she’s not on the list. However, the girl spent most of her first year on Xanax and left by the second year. Full nervous breakdown. No, she did not go back into education. She said nothing TFA said/did had prepared her for the extreme poverty of the Deep South. I have a former student, yes, a grad from an elite school, teaching now for TFA. It is in one of the most deprived areas in the state. Charter school. No books. Computers everywhere.He told me I would have a heart attack.
Gary, once again I wonder why do this..you make your point (and the person even misspoke). But here’s my question – how many other times in other cases have educators misused data? Time and again I’ve seen districts use survey data to make “data driven decisions” only to learn that the n for the survey is either a biased sample OR a very small sample.
My point – why pick on one organization over and over. We get it., You are not a fan of TFA, and I think that many of you points are valid ones about the organization. The head of TFA misspoke or made an exaggerated claim. I am sure that such a claim could get three or four pinnochios in the Washington Post Fact Checker test. But, at the same time, one can come back and show how other organizations or school districts have misused, misinterpreted, or used data poorly. Why not instead focus on the systemic issue in education of misusing data instead of targeting one group?
“Why not instead focus on the systemic issue in education of misusing data instead of targeting one group?”
Hello Jlsteach!
You have repeatedly questioned my questioning of that misusing data insisting that standardized test scores are valid for all sorts of things. Why not put your efforts into understanding that your insistence on using said invalid data is “misusing data”? Why target one person as you have done here?
Should I now assume you are a TFA alumni?
Is this #253, Chiray Koo. CHIRAY KOO, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE
Chiray Koo
Chiray Koo is a program associate for the Institute for Business Ethics and Sustainability in the College of Business Administration. Chiray came to Loyola Marymount University after three years working in government ethics as an ethics advisor for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Prior to that, she worked in the nonprofit field at the Community Nonviolence Resource Center and the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center developing community mediation and training programs with an emphasis on cross cultural conflict resolution. She holds a B.A. from Georgetown University and a M.S. from the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. https://cba.lmu.edu/centers/ibes/about/leadership/chiraykoo/
#379, Lukman Ramsey. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukmanramsey
Math Teacher, Secondary
Los Angeles Unified School District
September 1990 – June 1992 1 year 10 months
Dorsey High School, South Central Los Angeles
Lukman Ramsey
Cloud Solutions Architect for ML at Google
Hastings On Hudson, New York
Information Technology and Services
Taught high school math for two years via Teach For America. Also taught BASIC programming and AP Computer Science. Worked with IBM on a partnership to provide new computers for the school.
#364, Cynthia Phoa.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindyphoa
Teach for America
Charter Member1990 – 1993
English Teacher/ ESOL Contact
Broward County Public Schools
August 2013 – Present 6 years 1 month
Margate Middle School
Create and curate digital lessons that utilize a variety of media
Maintain a classroom website to help students and parents easily access instruction
Write individualized educational and behavior plans for struggling students with academic team
Evaluate language proficiency and maintain records of all English-language learners
Communicate state and federal requirements to administration, faculty, and parents
Implement Broward’s new computer software, ELLevation, made for ESOL programs
#517, Michael Yudell. Tufts 1990. Doesn’t mention TFA.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-yudell-94206574
Michael Yudell
Chair & Associate Professor, Drexel University School of Public Health
Greater Philadelphia Area
Research
#25, David Basich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-basich-048a40b
University of Illinois 1990
Teacher
Teach For America
June 1990 – June 1993 3 years 1 month
David Basich
Director at Davis Advisors
Greater New York City Area
Financial Services
#19: Maria T. Arsuaga, “Maritere”, is an Associate at the Miami office of Charles A. Ross and Associates, LLC.
Maritere graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio with a B.A. in French and Government. During her undergraduate studies, she studied one year in Montpellier, France. After graduating from Oberlin College, Maritere worked for three years as an elementary bilingual school teacher in Washington Heights, New York, through the program Teach For America.
I know 15 of those listed here from the Charter Corps. 10 of the 15 still work in education and/or nonprofits in education, one is a big-time lawyer, the other 3 work in industry, and the last I do not know her whereabouts.