Teach For America Makes the Grade at Challenged Schools, Criticism Aside

TFA new york

As I hear it, the New York - Teach for America program is a mess this year. The recruiters misrepresented the program to top students recruits. Nobody has been informed of the personal expence they will encure. Their housing situation is deplorable, and they don't even know if they will be placed this year. The current administrative organizer is either incompetent or incapable of doing her Job. These are college graduates at the top of their classes from good colleges that were lead to beleive this is an organized program... The organizers will do well to pay attention to their recruits and fix it now. In this new push for service in this country they should be held to the standars they want from their recruits and for the praise they want to get.

TFA

From the perspective of a professor at a selective liberal arts college that had (in our department at least: political science) been suggesting TFA to some of our graduates. I have heard nothing from our best students (some who gave up slots at the best law schools and grad schools in the country to do TFA --under the false impression that it was something akin to the Peace Corp-- of what can only be called a lunatic asylum in Houston's five week "boot camp" their--TFA's-- terms to the students who are "trained" by a bunch of 25 year old graduates of TFA, to become teachers in the hardest possible environment. Given our feedback (all the students have been successful in TFA by the by: not one is teacher--6 students) I no longer suggest TFA as a move for our students in general.

It is true that TFA can place you in the private sector- -- and that is tempting given our current national economic status -- BUT for me, there is something fundamentally unethical (immoral perhaps is a better term) about taking very good students and letting them "practice" to teach on "at risk students and school systems." This is not a race issue per se (although some critics of TFA frame it this way, I would not), BUT IS DAMNED WELL A CLASS ISSUE!

TFA has it backwards (theoretically and organizationally), the best teachers even, dare I say it the best college professors [sabbaticals for example] with the *most experience,* should be used/recruited to teach at risk students. Alternatively, TFA should be a four year program: two years in the best schools where students learn to teach and not practice quantitative outcome assessment on the backs of the poor at the Houston "boot camp." After completion of this first two years, THEN AND ONLY THEN should TFA teachers be placed in at risk school districts to complete their four year commitment.

Finally, TFA actively tells students NOT to continue teaching but to move to administrative positions ---just what we need in education: NOT. Why do so many students leave teaching after TFA? One reason is the above mentioned private sector contacts TFA has and, two, the move to grad school is easier (perhaps justifiably)--- but mainly the tenure system in the public school which is at odds with the TFA program. For the most part public schools grant tenure in the fourth year: if two years are spent engaging in "on the job training" on human beings (kids!) that leaves only one more year before getting tenure. Most of the TFA graduates are not trained well enough to get tenure, they are out at year 3. Oh yea, the schools are getting subsidized to hire these TFA folks that also ends at year 3.

TFA is business with an agenda: the pushing of a corporate model as the best way to frame a national public school program. The debate on this open, but TFA is not a good example of this model--for it uses the poor as guinea pigs for well meaning (some of the best) young adults to practice on, as they try and learn how to teach.

ADG

Teach for America

Teach For America activists say poor schools and bad teachers cause the achievement gap not bad habits or inequality. Discounting the notion of individual responsibility, they want us to give TFA alumni top jobs in our urban schools, and to transfer kids from neighborhood schools to the charters they operate, so they can eliminate job security for teachers and eradicate any influence we have over school-district policies. The idea that teachers are opponents rather than advocates of education is a new one in our country. It derives from the time when Ms. Wendy Kopp first started TFA and decided, from her Princeton perch and without a day in the classroom, that inexperienced teachers were inherently better than experienced ones. Wendy's friends in Washington D.C., Houston, New York and elsewhere are launching an anti-American Ivy League class war on the very same teachers who serve our nation's toughest schools.

The New Teacher Project

I agree that the New Teacher Project is a strong organization and one certainly worth supporting, but you missed something significant.

5 out of the 9 senior leadership members of the New Teacher Project (which oversees NYC Teaching Fellows and other Teaching Fellow programs) are Teach For America alumni.

Timothy Daly, President, New Teacher Project - TFA Baltimore

Karolyn Belcher, VP of Human Capital - TFA New Orleans

Layla Avila, VP of Teaching Fellow Programs - TFA LA

Sarah Heine, VP of Training and Certification - TFA New Orleans

Karla Oakley, VP Teacher Quality - TFA Mississippi Delta

And, for good measure, Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America, is on the New Teacher Project's board of directors.

This is the exact point the editorial is making. To date, most do not understand the full impact TFA is actually making. As the alumni force grows and ages, we will see the true legacy of Teach For America.

Craft Knowledge

What other profession would truly build your craft knowledge and then not only let you go, but encourage you to go? Can you name one???

The retention numbers Rotherham cites are reported by TFA. When independent researchers have looked at sites like Baltimore and Houston, they find retention rates around 10%, even as low as 2%

There's no question we have a lot to learn from TFA about recruiting top talent. But Wendy Kopp has said to school districts, "It's our job to get them there, it's your job to keep them." OK, but if you as an organization pass the retention issue off to someone else, don't position yourself as a prime solution to the human capital problem.

The New Teacher Project and NYC Teaching Fellows strike me as much more viable ways to improve teacher quality than TFA, because they respect teaching as a profession.

Philosophical Differences?

As a first year teacher, I receive day-to-day training, support, and feedback from Teach For America that focuses specifically on building a "body of craft knowledge."

Response to Lamar Miundane

Mr. Rotherham states:

"After their two-year commitment is over more than two thirds of Teach For America alumni are remaining in education. More than one-in-three are teaching, others are principals, superintendents, work in government and the non-profit and philanthropic sectors, and many have launched successful education organizations of their own."

Education needs both great leaders and great teachers. TFA provides both. TFA teachers are virtually all extremely ambitious and academically successful. Many, such as myself, would not have considered the field of education as a career option before joining. Due to my experience, I will take an active part in education issues throughout my life.

Good teachers are not "born," but the kind of teachers that TFA recruits and trains refuse to give up, refuse to accept failure, and work to reach every child at all costs. This kind of attitude goes a long way in a classroom. Plus, TFA provides intensive training, both initially, before placement, and throughout the course of the two years.

Someday, there may be no need for TFA teachers who only wish to teach for two years. This will only happen through school reform efforts that bring more talented and ambitious people into the field permanently. This scenario requires a change in the way teaching is looked at as a profession. Right now career teachers come disproportionately from the lowest third of college graduates, and, in large measure, are neither rewarded for success or held accountable for failure. This is no way to breed excellence. Those two thirds of TFA alumni who remain in education will provide the "silver bullet" by bringing innovative thinking to an area that remains stubbornly wedded to the status quo.

Intransigence

I think the Mark Twain quote says it all.

To the extent that it doesn't, though, TFA's philosophy does involve a body of craft knowledge. Yes, first-year TFA teachers struggle in the classroom, but so does every first-year teacher. And, as other teachers do, they get better as they gain more experience.

So when you combine the *real* philosophical difference TFA embodies -- an unwavering belief that all children can succeed -- with the fact that more than 60% of TFA corps members stay in education, the results are indeed impressive.

As for the 40% who go on to other fields -- ignore for a moment the fact that they take with them the experience of seeing first hand the huge obstacles this country faces in education -- 2% better is still better. As for me, I'd rather have a committed, hardworking teacher for two years than a "shuffler."

Philosophical Differences

The opposition that puzzles you is grounded in philosophical differences about whether or not teaching is a profession.

Wendy Kopp believes good teachers are basically born. There's nothing about teaching in her view that requires a body of craft knowledge. Add to that, the revolving door is encouraged by TFA. Sure, the TFA recruits are better than the shufflers who might otherwise fill those slots.

The independent research you cite above says TFA is as good as or better, but by what? 2 points??? Does that magnitude knock you down Andy? Call me unimpressed. Hardly the basis for claiming that TFA should be the silver bullet of education reform, as TFA CFO Matthew Kramer says it is?