Power couple: The impact on boys…
NYTimes has great article today on TFA founder Wendy Kopp and husband Richard Barth, who runs the KIPP network of schools. The writer never dips into the boys issue, but each is an important player in the boy troubles.
Let’s start with KIPP. During my first visit to the KIPP DC: KEY Academy I paused in the hallway to study a posting of test scores. What I saw amazed me: In literacy skills, the seventh grade boys at KEY Academy scored even with the girls, maybe even a little ahead. When I asked the KIPP leaders in Houston if that happened in other KIPP schools, they took the time to run the numbers. After studying the data from several middle schools, they concluded it was no quirk. Boys arrive at KIPP schools in fifth grade reading roughly two years behind the girls, but by the end of seventh grade the boys, on average, read as well as the girls.
What’s interesting is that KIPP succeeds the old fashioned way, not by separating the sexes or embracing “brain based” learning strategies, but rather by infusing all classes with rich literacy skills, even the math and science classes, and then refusing to give up on a single student. That’s all boys need.
As for TFA: Besides supplying a lot of very talented teachers to KIPP and other high performing charter schools, Kopp brings an interesting perspective to the theory that boys are falling behind because of the paucity of male teachers. The decline in male teachers is indisputable, and I’ve seen instances where male teachers had huge influences on the boys in their classes, especially when they double as sports coaches.
But the TFA teaching corps is 71% female (as of the last time I checked, in 2006) and that doesn’t bother Kopp. She prefers to hire the best teachers, period, and doesn’t bend standards to seek more male teachers. ”Our own data hasn’t shown that men are more effective,” Kopp once told me in a phone interview. And she understands why fewer men than women apply. “There is society pressure on men to get on a career track that people feel has long-term potential to support a family … Men feel that pressure more than women.”
TFA draws more men than traditional teaching programs. Teach for America’s relative success in recruiting men arises in part from the two-year commitment, said Kopp. Men view those two years as akin to domestic Peace Corps service. After the two years, they can pursue more lucrative options. What strikes Kopp about teacher effectiveness is not gender but image.
“I just came from interviewing someone who was applying for a marketing job here. She said she never personally wanted to teach, that she didn’t have the patience for it. That’s one of the things we fight. We’re not looking for patience. We’re looking for someone who is achievement oriented, someone who is a real leader. They need to set goals and motivate kids to work toward those goals.”
At Teach for America, women are as likely as men to emerge as aggressive goal setters, said Kopp. That explains the success of the predominately female teachers at KIPP.
As usual, Kopp has a good point. While researchers have uncovered a slight advantage when students are taught by an instructor of the same gender, that alone can’t account for the emerging gender gaps. And while the dearth of male role models, especially at the middle school level, is regrettable, that alone probably can’t account for the fact that middle school is the time when gender gaps blossom. There’s a far stronger force acting on boys at those ages.
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