Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Teaching for or against America?

In a previous post on charters, I noted that aside from their very mixed performance, charters seem wasteful because they suppose that you should scrap the entire old public system for a new, semi-public system. The organization Teach for America (TFA), which essentially takes recent graduates of elite universities and puts them in challenging classrooms across the U.S. for two years, seems problematic in the exact same way. It effectively replaces our old set of teachers (many who happen to be more experienced and unionized...and thus expensive) and replaces them with untrained teachers who may be smart and have unbridled passion, but often have little else that qualifies them for teaching (unless they've taught before, TFA corps members receive a 6-8 week "boot camp" in a summer school program as their only experience). I have met some extraordinarily talented TFA corps members who do an amazing job and do beat the odds (just as I've met amazing teachers that went through normal channels), so my critique is of the organization's purpose and goals, not individuals. (full disclosure: I applied and was admitted to TFA in 2010, though I ultimately rejected the position.)


The Issues with Teach for America

A recent Washington Post blog entry by Andrew Hartman on Teach for America, ties the organization and charters in a different way, asserting that both charters and TFA advance a Conservative agenda to privatize education. The author notes that the organization does so by undermining unions (most TFA recruits are low-paid, non-union recruits that can replace a more expensive unionized teacher), by promoting standardized testing as the means to measure whether kids are learning (TFA is very driven on having teachers be able to bridge an achievement gap between rich and poor, minority and white that is only measurable through such tests), by going outside of the political system to make any reform (which is my big concern, given that education is a universal right and public good), and by pretending that regardless of your origins, an enthusiastic enough 22 year old from Harvard can fix your life and send you to college (which I also question as a goal for all kids).

Hartman also notes that the organization fails to deliver on its four stated goals. It is designed to raise the prestige of teaching, yet the organization's existence is predicated on teachers not needing training, many TFA members do not stay beyond the two year commitment and use their participation as a rung in the ladder to higher education. TFA is also designed to accommodate a short-fall of teachers in more challenging schools, yet there is no shortage in teachers applying via normal channels, especially given mass layoffs since 2008. Third, TFA would craft a corps of ambitious professionals armed with experience in challenging environments to "fix the system." This one has proven most true, with many teachers going into policy work (my public policy program at Georgetown was no exception, many of my colleagues were TFA alums), though they have yet to fix the system and seem to perpetuate (if you look at former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee) solutions outside of the system. Finally, TFA is supposed to bridge the so-called "achievement gap" between the wealthy and the poor and between whites and minorities in educational success. Julian Heilig and Su Jin Jiz conducted an extensive study on TFA that found that TFA teachers do only comparably well to normal public school teachers based on their level of education and training.

Put simply, TFA is not delivering. This should not be a surprise, as it is a bandaid solution: you cannot permanently attract cheap, quality teachers with experience and keep them there by supressing their wages, showing they are easily replaceable, signaling that a profession requires no training, and assuming that being poor, living in a dangerous area with no extracurricular resources, and having parents with low education levels (or a parent, or no parents at all) has no impact on a child's success. Teach for America is doing as well as, but not better than, the public school system. If it is duplicative and cannot even offer improved outcomes (except in some cases where TFA taught math better), why duplicate our public school teacher corps?


How Does TFA Compare to the World's Best Education System?

An interesting counterpoint, and one I will likely return to in a future post, is Finland, which is consistently the best performing school system in the world (and also quite equitable). This amazing summary of Finland's model and success by the Atlantic highlights some key features of the Finnish system: there are NO private schools (charters!), schools rely on less homework and almost no standardized testing, teachers are all highly-educated and -trained, teachers are given great autonomy and do their own assessments of student progress, and all students are given access to feeding, health care, and psychological programs. You will note that all of these directly contradict the ideas behind privatizing education through charters and TFA. Promoting such policies will entrench stagnation and inequality in the U.S.


Why TFA Is Worth Fixing

Despite failing (on average) on its mission and feeding into a system of inequality, I still think TFA has accomplished a lot:




  • It helped raise the profile of education and appreciation of quality teaching enormously.


  • It created a network of highly-educated, dedicated people who are working to improve education policy and administration.


  • It helped people of higher-income backgrounds to experience the challenges that have-nots face and understand people different from themselves.


  • It has made recruitment for teaching into something that is very competitive even at elite universities without improving the pay (though this, I would argue is temporary and needs to be accompanied by increasing pay with experience).

How Can TFA Be Put to Better Use?

Just as I think it is a waste to give up on the public system, I think it would be equally wasteful to give up on TFA as a force for change IN the public education system. I have some alternative ideas for how the program can be put to better use:




  1. Maintain TFA as a recruiter of inexperienced, but very educated university students, but put them in the highest performing classrooms. "WHAT?!" you say? Many TFA recruits are not accustomed to low-income areas or their needs and are really overwhelmed (some quitting before their commitment is up, others simply moving on after two years). If we put an inexperienced teacher in classroom with fewer issues, they can develop classroom experience and become qualified to teach in the worst classrooms. If they have more confidence before entering a difficult classroom, they may be more capable and more likely to stay later on. Meanwhile, I would suggest we use TFA allow Master Teachers with a lot of experience who would be much more likely to do better in a challenging classroom to do a one or two year rotation to a low-income classroom.


  2. Use the program to recruit teaching assistants or secondary teachers for more challenging environments (low income, special ed, etc.) so that we can tackle the issue of high classroom sizes and allow students with greater needs to have more resources.


  3. Use TFA to start up a system of early childhood education so that students are more likely to get the education they need while they are young that our nation is not delivering on.


  4. Tie TFA more closely to Schools of Education to increase the likelihood that corps members stay in Education, that the profile of ALL educators is increased thus drawing more talent, and that TFA recruits receive a stronger network of support and training. I could also see TFA coordinating student teaching for Masters students as a service to Schools of Education that would improve the practicum requirement for rising teachers.


  5. Use TFA to recruit for public school systems, but expand their recruitment beyond college graduates to professionals or civil society members who are adept at conveying information and connecting with people in challenging circumstances.


Speak out!



Have you applied for TFA or were you a Corps member? I'd love to hear more about your experience and your ideas for improving the organization.



How else could TFA serve the public education system? What other strengths or weaknesses do you see in the model?



4 comments:

  1. To build on your second suggestion--I have always felt that TFA should be a 3 year program. The first year should be a training year where you are a second teacher in a highly successful, experienced teacher's classroom. Then the next two years, you have your own classroom, ideally in the same school. For anyone truly committed to being a teacher, adding an extra year wouldn't be a big deal. If you aren't that committed, why apply in the first place? I think this would week out applicants who really just want a resume booster before going to law school.

    My impression of TFA is that they think the problem with our education system is that teachers aren't smart enough. They drop highly educated, intelligent people in the hardest school environments in the country with little support and expect them to work miracles. A high quality teacher needs to be a dynamic engaging personality, to be highly observant in a chaotic environment, adapt to an ever changing schedule, etc. Not every smart hard working person can do that successfully--and it's even more of a challenge without support or experience with a veteran high quality teacher.

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    1. Claire, I think that would go a long way toward making TFA (and Teaching Fellows) teachers feel more confident and setting them up for success and a career as a teacher. I think it would also help do some weeding. That said, given how competitive grad programs are becoming, I still fear that a large chunk of applicants would use it as a stepping stone.

      I also find it disheartening that the underlying assumption is that teachers are undereducated or that teachers need to come from elite institutions. I think that creates an added hurdle in connecting with students in very difficult environments in some instances. I think it also discounts how many amazing schools that are not generally high ranked have really solid Schools of Education. It also basically says "you could not afford an elite college, so you can't be as good," which reinforces the achievement gap. There are a lot of brilliant teachers who can't help their students, and I think we need to recognize the limitations of this recruitment strategy too. Excellent points!

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  2. I've been seeing a crop of TFA articles recently, and my program, Teaching Fellows, has the exact same model except we're expected to, you know, stay teachers. We're under The New Teacher Project, who appears to have some big research going on under the catchphrase that 'teachers aren't widgets, so why do we treat them that way?'. In hearing TFA horror stories, it sounds like we had more support and personnel (although, interestingly, our staff had an alarming turnover rate for my cohort throughout our two years of classwork pre-certification). Anyway, all these very understandable issues with TFA make me wonder why Fellows doesn't have the same prestige and fame as TFA. Then I wonder why TFA alums can waltz out of low-income schools and straight into extremely fancy policy or consulting positions, or law school, etc. Aren't they facing the same challenges that the average teacher in a low-income school faces? While I obviously appreciate the value of an elite university, it saddens me that this teaching experience is used as a launch to a lucrative career -- and that opportunity seems to only belong to those who survived Teach for America. Or, as Fellows call it, Teach for a While.

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  3. Pam, thanks for reading! What I just realized is that because I also was accepted into the DCTF 2010 cohort, we almost could have taught together! I agree that the Teaching Fellows program (which I recommend people check out if they are considering TFA or if they are looking to transition from another profession into teaching) seems to offer more support, which is why I was more enthusiastic about the program. I think that because it is locally based, you also get a better sense of the system and administration that you will be dealing with when you apply.

    On the note of TFA teachers getting into higher policy positions, I think it is good that they at least have been in a tougher classroom and can bring that experience over an administrator with no teaching credentials. That said, I do agree that using TFA to "check a box" on your ascent (to education policy or to another hihg-paying field) is a bit disingenuous. Further, if their stated belief is that quality teaching is what matters, then ostensibly more TFA-ers should remain in the classroom. I also am concerned that one single organization is indoctrinating so many people who move into policy and could perpetuate this privitization movement unchecked by people with different teaching or education experience. As someone who grew up on welfare and was able to use education as a great equalizer, I am particularly cautious about the organization because it is almost a slap in the face: "you aren't good enough for a trained teacher, so here's someone who did summer camp and smiles a lot." It is just one more way that inequality is perpetuated: experienced teachers for the rich, a whole crop of newbies for the poor. They're using an experience gap to plug the achievement gap.

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