Plenty of Praise for Teach for America

Alternative Opinions to Approaches

The journalistic approach used by this periodical's staff is shocking, beneath even the blogging basement. This piece is dubious for a number of reasons, the most blatant is the clear lack of research by the staff of the US News. To cite support from a single study by the Urban Institute and to recycle their findings through newspaper proxies (WSJ & NYT) is a bit disingenuous. And to cite Time magazine as any sort of authority is equally suspect. Additionally, referencing clear fluff pieces as support is careless journalism one should scarcely find in a High School newspaper.

The legitimate research regarding TFA has been without question mixed. Simply perform a rudimentary Google Scholar search (something you'd hope responsible journalists might consider) and the ambiguity becomes immediately clear. The effectiveness of teachers from TFA, Troops to Teachers, Teaching Fellows, NU-Teach, District Interns, and the bevy of alternative routes to teaching is a very important issue, one that requires thoughtful consideration borne out of reliable research. The integrity of the US News Staff is another issue worth contemplating.

What the media overlooks

While I commend the premise of TFA and its founder, let's look at the what the media has not covered: The financial aspect of the TFA & KIPP programs. The programs are run by a husband and wife team; both programs receive millions of dollars from corporations and donors, on top of what they receive from states and local distrits per pupil. I take issue with KIPP's recruiting program, as it pulls its school leaders from the TFA program. I take issue with the fact that KIPP is considered a non-profit, but does not give to the communities in which it serves other than providing a school. I take issue with the fact that KIPP can build schools in low-income, mostly minority communities but the leaders of the schools oftentimes do not look like the people they serve nor share common experiences. This practice holds true for the other Charter Management Organizations (CMO) and Education Management Organizations (EMO). The truth is here in print, you draw your own conclusions.

Teach for America

In my 13 yrs teaching, I have had the chance to work with many TFA teachers. I have always worked in inner city schools. Schools in many inner city neighborhoods often are the one constant. It has been my experience that the addition of TFA teachers to a staff creates and atmosphere of constant change in the school. Many TFA teachers teach only long enough (2 years) to gain financial help with student loans. Then, they leave. Others leave to create foundations and masquerade as experts after teaching for only two years. TFA fails reveal the problems with dicipline and student achievement many of their teachers face.

If TFA was truly concerned with educating disadvantaged youth, they would try to cultivate teachers who choose education as a career. There are so many of us who have chosen to dedicate our entire lives to students and chose to get the education to back up our decision. We stay in it for life, no matter how little we get paid and without help on our student loans. Perhaps, if TFA teachers were required to teach for five years before getting financial help, we would get a group of teachers truly dedicated to the profession. For now we get, high teacher turn-over rates in places that most need stability and consistency.

I did have the honor to teach with one young woman who was a member of the TFA corps. She was fabulous and chose to stay long after her TFA contract ended. She had amazing test scores, great classroom management, and a great connection to our kids. She was the exception, not the rule. She was born to teach and that was the difference. A good teacher cannot be made or trained, especially if they are not committed in the first place.

Re: Mastery is Understanding

As yet another Mississippi Delta Corps Member, I tend to agree with the comment titled "Mastery is Understanding" . However, I can also recognize that, perhaps, Teach For America's training has become more sophisticated and developed since the original commenter was in the corps. During my training, I was always pushed to ask how I could help my students "move up on Bloom's Taxonomy", that is, how I could push them to high levels of thinking. This was something that was certainly a focus of the training for the '07 corps.

I must take exception with one specific statement in the original comment:

"For me, it seems obvious that when working with the youth of underprivileged communities, the fundamental goal should be teaching them how to think—how to analyze information, grapple with complex thoughts, and formulate conclusions based on the evidence."

While I would certainly agree that teaching them how to think is *very* important (and I strive, in my classroom, to do just that), I think that giving students the building blocks of life in a society is more important. I think it would be quite difficult to teach someone to think critically who can't read, write, or add. So to say it is our fundamental goal is a bit far reaching. However, I do think that we can teach those critical thinking skills within the context of teaching basic skills and that is something that TFA is training their current corps members to do.

The apparent change between the training of an '05 Corps Member and two '07 Corps members highlights a facet of Teach For America that I don't think gets enough credit in the mainstream media. TFA has shown an unbelievable ability to make changes to its programming to support the needs of its Corps Members and the children that they serve. Each and every year (from what I gather) the program has changed itself to better reflect the needs of those it serves. This sort of agility is remarkable considering the size of the organization. They are always moving the program forward through better recruiting and admissions, more effective training, and giving greater support to those out in the field. I give a great deal of credit to Wendy Kopp and the TFA national organization for creating and maintaining such an effective organization.

Mastery is Understanding

In response to the comment above, I would like to share the experiences I have had this year- my first as a corps member.

When you enter the corps, TFA will discuss with you the importance of mastery. They'll show you all sorts of examples of 80% mastery. From day one, it is incredibly clear that mastery is the goal. TFA doesn't just tell you that you need to get your students to master things though. They help corps members differentiate between the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and often discuss the importance of teaching concepts at a higher level so that students will understand what they are being asked to remember. To me, there was never a question that mastery meant understanding, or that understanding required teaching students to think and analyze concepts, not just memorize them.

As a concrete example, I will briefly describe my experience this year. I teach high school science and have faced everything from disciplinary problems to kindergarten reading levels in my drive to teach 10th and 11th graders biology and chemistry. There is a state test in Biology, so there was a great deal of pressure for me to just get through all the standards. Despite that, the goal for me in my high school science classes was to push my students to UNDERSTAND and THINK about what we were learning. The TFA staff was amazingly supportive in this and was always working with me to design lessons that would do more than just introduce concepts. The question was always, "What are you doing to make sure your students really understand and will remember the material? How are you making sure they end up with a deep understanding of the concepts?" In the end, I guess the goal was sometimes as simple as "be able to list the steps of mitosis in order," but that goal was never achieved unless I helped my students understand why those steps made sense. While critical thinking skills themselves were not always what I assessed, they were ALWAYS at the forefront of my teaching thanks to the coaching of the Teach For America staff.

Thoughtful Reflection from a former TFA corps member

As positive an entity as TFA is, I would be remised if I did not comment on this article. TFA teachers have made great strides in “closing the achievement gap” by increasing scores in math, science, and reading, and that is great. I give those teachers a lot of credit, and such results are very beneficial for the students they serve. However, I take issue with the focus of TFA as an organization. We should ask ourselves why TFA stresses increasing student performance on the basics while not giving much attention at all on developing critical higher-level thinking skills. There are many teachers in TFA that struggle with this question and attempt to challenge their students to go beyond just learning the information to understanding and analyzing the information. Yet, the organization as a whole trains teachers contrary to a system that would allow for intellectual curiosity and the pursuit of deeper understandings.

For me, it seems obvious that when working with the youth of underprivileged communities, the fundamental goal should be teaching them how to think—how to analyze information, grapple with complex thoughts, and formulate conclusions based on the evidence. From my experience as a TFA corps member, one of the largest problems in impoverished communities was that their understanding of the world around them was very limited with no analytical thoughts, questions, or analysis. So how do you create a greater understanding? You actually teach critical thinking and push students to challenge their thought processes. In short, you change the way they think.

Looking at the broad picture, what is TFA doing by not emphasizing critical thinking and instead pushing teachers to teach the basics with a sense of urgency (your students are behind and you must close the achievement gap before its too late)? It is helping more students get through school and perhaps giving them the future opportunity of a better job (a good thing), but it is also churning out clogs to put into the system—non-thinking workers for lower-middle class jobs, typically in the service industry. TFA is not thinking about creating future leaders, just future employees.