Teach for America's Questionable Statistics

In response to critics that TFA teachers don’t have enough long-term impact, TFA replies with the statement from their annual survey “Nearly two-thirds of Teach For America alumni work in the field of education, and half of those in education are teachers. Teaching remains the most common profession among our alumni.”

The first thing that you should notice when looking at a stat like “one third of alumni are still teaching” is the careful choice of words. You’re only an alum if you don’t quit before you become an alum. And since somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of people who start in TFA do not complete their commitment and therefore become alumni, they are not considered in that stat. That alone would move the number down to 30%, but that’s just the beginning.

The first report I looked at was the 2007 report. At the bottom there was some fine print that said “The information in this report is based on self-reported data as of April 2007 and represents more than 57% of our alumni network.” Well, 57% is pretty low, considering that it’s self-selecting. This is not a random sampling by any means since those who are in education are more likely, I think, to respond to the alumni survey...

The one-third stat makes it seem like one out of every three alumni have chosen to become career teachers, while I’d say the number is more like ten or fifteen percent (of which I’m one of them.) I think that ten or fifteen percent is actually pretty impressive considering that most of them (like me) weren’t planning to become career teachers before doing TFA. They should be proud of the people who are still teaching, but be honest about their retention rate.

http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2011/05/07/two-out-of-three-aint-bad-but-is-it-true/