The kids, of course, get screwed out of professional, permanent teachers with these revolving door models.
Snip:
The study, “Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Youth Service: The Puzzling Case of Teach for America,” is the first of its kind to explore what happens to participants after they leave the program. It was done at the suggestion of Wendy Kopp, Teach for America’s founder and president, who disagrees with the findings. Ms. Kopp had read an earlier study by Professor McAdam that found that participants in Freedom Summer — the 10 weeks in 1964 when civil rights advocates, many of them college students, went to Mississippi to register black voters — had become more politically active.
“There’s been a very clear and somewhat naïve consensus among educators, policy folks and scholars that youth activism invariably has these kinds of effects,” Professor McAdam said. “But we’ve got to be much more attentive to differences across these experiences, and not simply assume that if you give a kid some youth service experience it will change them.”
Teach for America is nearing its 20th anniversary. Of its 17,000 alumni, 63 percent remain in the field of education and 31 percent remain in the classroom. (This reporter took part in the program from 2003 to 2005.)
13 comments:
Whoah. "A feather in a cap for a person's resume, and nothing more"? Perhaps you were a TFA member, perhaps you know one or more. But can you really generalize 17,000 people's motivation for joining TFA?
I admit to being biased, as a TFA member. I have serious problems with their model in some areas, and will engage in a constructive dialog about it. But I believe it is small minded to pass off the service of thousands of individuals in high-need schools as solely based on resume fodder.
I attended a TFA school as a child. I was motivated to go to college by a TFA teacher, and when I graduated from college, I joined TFA to give back where I was given to. And you have the nerve to say it was "nothing more" than resume fodder?
Intelligent discussion about TFA and whether four weeks of training is enough to prepare some teachers for the difficulties they encounter, or TFA's support mechanisms, or individual instances of racism/classism encountered within TFA? Sure let's have those conversations. Blanket accusations about TFA members' reasons for joining? Small-minded attacks on well-intentioned individuals.
That's an idiotic take on a complicated issue. And a severely uniformed one-- not just in terms of what the research says about TFA members in the classroom, but also about your contention that TFA gives poor kids a 'revolving door.' It's true that most teachers leave their placements after two years. The thing is, TFA places almost entirely in schools where there are severe teacher and staff shortages-- that's why those school districts will have them. These are poorest and most troubled schools in the country, in America's poorest areas, not some suburban school where teachers with masters are clamoring to teach. Why would you snip an education article and comment when you don't know what you're talking about?
Nice try at spin. The only purpose of TFA is undercut teachers' unions because districts are now getting rid of tenured teachers or denying tenure to real teachers to hire these temps at far cheaper pay.
See, I KNOW what I am talking about; I've been through the system. You "teachers," which you are NOT, only went into TFA to make your resume look better. You are not willing to actually go through the hoops of being a real teacher. But these kids are being cheated out of trained, qualified teachers in favor of temps.
The trouble is TFA "teachers" are now infesting school districts and charter schools by apparently becoming administrators. This is a horrible trend. School districts don't need MORE unqualified people.
Susan,
You have a right to be unhappy if you feel that TFA teachers are replacing more qualified teachers. This is not the case. I taught in a school with TEACHERLESS classrooms full of children. Teachers who had been through traditional channels were trying to leave at the first opportunity. TFA teachers are NOT cheating other teachers out of a job, we take the jobs that teachers trained in traditional educationschools will not fill.
And on the resume fodder point, you clearly have not read my previous post. I grew up in Long Beach, California and attended a high school where I was taught by a TFA teacher. He inspired me. I would not have attended college but for his influence. When I graduated, I joined TFA to try to influence some other child in the same way that Mr. D influenced me. You call that resume fodder? For me and the many others like me that I met at TFA Institute? I resent that statement.
You see, having gone "through" a broken system does not qualify you as an expert any more than me, having attended a broken schools and growing up with drug addicted parents. Do not condescend to me, for you are no better than I simply because you have an M.A.T. or some other combination of letters behind your name to show that the institution that is depriving ghetto children of their education has legitimized your worth.
Engage me in a constructive, intelligent debate about how to improve education in low income communities and I would love to learn from you and discuss with you. Insult me, my background, and an institution that is at least attempting (if misguided) to remedy the situation for my people and I will respond by exposing you and your elitist assumptions.
REAL teaching is not the Peace Corps, two years and then you're out. It takes a good 5 to 7 years to get good at it, but now districts don't bother to give teachers a chance to hone their craft.
The ONLY reason TFA exists is for districts to save money by hiring temps. At-risk kids need the most senior, most experienced teachers out there, not cheapie, inexperienced teachers.
Hell, substitutes are a lot more qualified to teach than these temps.
At bottom it's supposed to be about the kids, not about fake "teachers" who are being hired purely for budgetary reasons.
Susan,
Your argument is undercut by the facts. TFA teachers are paid a full teacher's salary. We are not paid less than other first-year teachers. Baltimore did not save any money by hiring me. This is TFA's national policy, look it up. So, there goes your argument about TFA teachers being "temps" who are only hired to undercut unions and disservice poor children because they are "cheapies."
Next, TFA teachers actually stay on as teachers at a higher rate than those who have been through traditional programs. According to the Christian Science Monitor, TFA teachers "come back after the first year at a higher rate than other new teachers in high-poverty schools (91 percent versus 83 percent)." There goes your argument about TFA teachers being "temps" who just move on after their service. Additionally, the very article you quoted in your blog reported that 63% of TFA grads stay in education. So, there goes your argument about how TFA teachers are "like the Peace Corps." I agree that it takes time to hone your skills as a teacher. But what is the difference between a TFA teacher who takes 5 - 7 years to hone their craft and a teacher who went through traditional education program and then needs 5 - 7 years to hone their craft?
I agree that at risk kids need quality teachers, but try telling that to six experienced teachers who left Frederick Douglass, a horrible school in Baltimore, for jobs teaching at Catholic schoools and in the suburbs. I worked with these teachers. I also worked with 3 TFA teachers who stuck it out, despite the difficulties at the school. The reality is, many experienced teachers want nothing to do with inner-city public schools. TFA teachers are the only ones who will fill those classrooms in many situations.
As for the substitute teacher problem, well, at Frederick Douglass we couldn't even get subs. And one that we did get was caught smoking crack cocaine in the faculty bathroom. TFA teachers, on the other hand, have consistently gotten higher scores in math and science than their peers at similar schools across the country. I do not believe that test scores tell the whole story, but when inner-city kids are scoring on par with their suburban counter-parts on a state biology exam something good is happening.
Why forsake a system that, although perhaps different from what you are used to, works for students who are not being served by the traditional system. TFA is not trying to take over education, it is trying to contribute to betterment of education in under-serviced communities. Please open your mind and consider the arguments for the other side, and stop insulting people you do not know.
The whole idea underlying TFA is that "anybody" could teach; you don't need more than a few weeks' training to become a "teacher." It's an insult for those of us who spent YEARS getting trained.
School districts are using TFA for cost cutting. Poor kids are being screwed over because they are being "taught" by poorly-trained temps.
There should be financial incentives for experienced, tenured teachers to go to the toughest schools instead of too many of them going to the wealthiest schools.
You TFA supporters are wasting keystrokes here. I know the public education system too well.
Now you are speaking a language I can engage with, Susan. I agree with you that it takes more than four weeks to train a teacher. That is my biggest problem with TFA (which I mentioned above). However, it is not the point of TFA to say "anyone can teach." In fact, the point is to take the top students, from the top schools, and funnel those students who excel towards education, rather than the top students always going to higher paying jobs in the corporate sector. Because of TFA students' extreme motivation and intelligence, they are successful in the classroom (look at any number of studies showing TFA teachers outperforming teachers trained in traditional programs for evidence).
Your cost-cutting argument has no support in real life. Again, TFA teachers are paid the SAME as other teachers, are members of the teachers' union, and are indistinguishable from other teachers in their districts. How does that cut costs for the districts? Your argument makes no sense.
I totally agree there should be financial incentives for experienced teachers to teach in the toughest schools. But what entity lobbies against such incentives? The very same teachers unions that you support, because they represent the interests of the priviledged.
You are not the only one who knows the system, Susan.
If you teachers that spent "YEARS" getting trained could get the job done and/or were willing to work in our nation's most under served schools, then TFA wouldn't exist.
No, you have it exactly backasswards.
It's because of the move to privatize schools and try to run something that can't run on a business model on a business model is why scams like TFA exist. School districts are using them to save money on hiring real teachers and keep a revolving door of cheapies to be used and thrown out. Who the hell really wants their kids taught by temps when they should be taught by experienced professionals?
Susan,
I understand where your frustration with TFA comes from but I don't agree with your logic. BUT lets say that you were right and we were wrong and that TFA shouldn't exist. The issue is still at hand where underprivileged kids and schools are driving traditional teachers and especially more experienced teachers out because they don't want or need to put up with the chaos. Now, if those schools are driving all the teachers out, who would teach them? In the extreme case, it's better to have inexperienced TFA teachers than not have any at all.
I'd go further, in fact, Susan, and note a number of things. First, TFA isn't perfect, but it's not in the least as you conceive of it. Second, in the sort of schools TFA places in, most teachers with 'letters' after their name would be as ill-prepared as anyone else. You're right, teaching is an art-- and surely four weeks isn't adequate preparation to teach in the sort of situations that TFA places people. TFA is indeed elitist in a sense: they depend on the dedication and will of their exceptional corps (they take 1/12 people who interview) to compensate for everything they don't know and find a way to succeed. But I do have to say this: TFA members might come in naive, idealistic, and arrogant, but by the time they leave, if they've done the work it takes to find a way to teach, they've been changed, even had their paths altered (that 63% is HUGE for former corps staying in education-- these were people bound for work where they'd have made a lot of money). I'd know: I graduated Stanford with a 3.98 (and I wasn't some rich kid-- I earned my way there with an athletic scholarship). My friends today are doctors, lawyers, professors, lobbyists, consultants and google millionaires. As for me, I've spent the last five years teaching low-income, at-risk students of color and nontraditional students freshman composition as a glorified adjunct working near the poverty line, and I am a VERY good teacher now, as well as an expert on composition pedagogy. I mentor; I teach for free in a Title I after school program; and I write essays about education, inequality, reform, and pedagogy. I'm not the exception, but the rule with TFA alums. So, while you have almost everything wrong, perhaps your heart is the in the right place; perhaps you can leave your assumptions behind and try actually looking at the facts and the concrete experiences of someone like myself, or more powerfully still, z, who's living proof. Or you can bloviate. Your choice.
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