The most potent criticism of Teach for America comes from recruits who joined the corps, then discovered they were ill-prepared for the challenges of a high-needs classroom.
This letter from Annie Tan was posted on the blog “Cloaking Inequity,” which is Julian Vasquez Heilig’s blog.
She writes:
“I have had my gripes about TFA from sophomore year of college. Learning about the neoliberal education reform movement, lack of teachers of color in the profession, TFA’s support of charter schools, funding from questionable sources who may have ulterior motives in education other than the education of all students, factored into my criticism of TFA. I didn’t want to be a savior in education- I just wanted to teach. But I guess I did fall into a savior mentality as I joined- I thought I was going to be so much better, that I was going to save my students. I was very smug about it, until the realities of the first year beat me down.”
Annie taught in a Chicago charter school where most of the other teachers were TFA. It bothered her that the charter had displaced a beloved neighborhood public school. Parents realized that few of the teachers would stay for long. Annie came to see that she was not a savior.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For every one of these stories, there are exponentially more TFAers who feel they did do justice, they did teach better than veterans, they didn’t displace anyone, and they believe in “the cause” whatever that has morphed into these days. TFA has done more harm than any intended good. It has lined the pockets of Wendy Kopp and her husband, founder of Kipp. It spawned Michelle Rhee. Ugh.
Plenty TFAers wind up sticking with TFA in administrative positions, pulling down mad cash. They open charters, and pull down mad cash. They become political. They go to Broad Supes school and further ruin public education while portraying themselves as public education advocates.
The day that TFA is eradicated cannot come soon enough.
Commendable and mature self reflection and capacity for self criticism. Actually, extraordinary.. She has a moral center and depth of character.
Thank you for posting my reflection, Diane. I have read your books and blog for years and am honored. Annie Tan
Ms Tan, Congratulations on attaining your Master’s and landing a teaching position. May you have gratifying years with students–and also let Columbia undergrads know that TFA may not be the best choice.
Even many who go through traditional teacher education find they cannot cut it in that first year. We lose far too many teachers in that beginning year due to a number of factors and I’ve noticed that the traditional college preparation classes are never blamed when the teacher meets the real world. This is simply a far broader problem, and has been for years. To blame TFA is unfair.
“To blame TFA is unfair”
Cry me a river.
The reason that many beginning teachers don’t cut it is that teaching is a very hard, mentally, emotionally and physically. Most folks have no clue what a “good” teacher does, how they do it and the energy that is spent, especially the first few years as one is learning the craft, the art of teaching. Most folks, having had many different “good” teachers who made the teaching and learning processes in the classroom seem smooth, seamless, coherent and challenging, “know” that teaching is “easy”.
Just as a pro golfers swing looks so effortless and easy because the golfer has practiced that swing tens of thousands of times, so the “professional teacher” makes the teaching and learning process appear effortless and easy.
Duane brings up a point that the eduformers have failed to grasp or refuse to acknowledge: teaching is really hard. It takes a long time to hone your skills and do it well. That is why these systems of teacher evaluation and quick fixes will never work to improve teaching.
Often, learning is hard too. It takes a long time to hone your skills and do it well. That is why these systems of standardized testing and untested standards-curriculum will never work to improve learning.
The eduformers’ ideas reflect their arrogance and naivete about education. That is why their policies will never work to improve our country’s educational system.
This whole mess is going to fail, hopefully sooner than later, so the damage stops and it can be rebuilt from the bottom up.
(From a Montessori teacher sadly watching from the sidelines.)
TAGO, Marianne!!
Amen Duane!
Changemaker, TFA and its “teachers” are given EVERY advantage. They are promised spots, arrangements are made for their arrival, they are given numerous perks that traditional teachers, who WANT to be teachers, don’t get, and then when traditional teachers who are new are saddled with college debt, doors are not opened for them, especially those doors that have been wedged open by TFA and its scabs. TFA lobbied to have “highly qualified” apply to its 5-weeks-of-training “teachers” who are not qualified let along highly qualified by definition, not certified, and ill-trained. Student debit is forgiven. Subsidized housing is arranged. Spare me how to blame TFA is unfair…it has nothing to do with teachers leaving in a first year; it has everything to do with the scales being unbalanced and biased in favor of TFA, who don’t reallllly want to teach in the first place, and how TFA does a disservice to the kids. Oh, and don’t forget our government’s generous gifts to TFA, especially the one that was snuck in during the latest government shut down.
TFA has been very profitable for Wendy and her husband, and has been a catalyst in union busting and diminishing the teaching profession overall. Who benefits? The charters and TFA, and those who stay with TFA via administrative positions. Of COURSE they want TFA to be temporary; if it was permanent, it’d put itself out of business.
Donna……. Thank you for your excellent response to changemaker.
It is too bad that Annie Tan felt beaten down and defeated. The fault may not lie in TFA as much as the schools of education where professors disconnected from classroom teaching develop courses that are more theoretical than practical. Teachers today need more hands on experience putting the methods they learn in method classes into practice. They need to know about assessment practices, how to grade and give feedback to students more than the history of education. They need courses on classroom management and core curriculum until the next big idea comes into vogue. All new teachers should be assigned a veteran mentor who meets with regularly and helps them learn the ropes. However, since there aren’t many veterans working in charters that may not be much help!
I agree with what you are saying. Teacher education is in need of some reform, and one of them is to mandate teachers to 2 semesters of school finance. Teachers need to understand more than just behavioral management and pedagogy, although those two make up the core of their profession.
Yet a teacher knowing more about the system and how it impacts his/her teaching conditions is a teacher who is far more empowered.
And you can say that the fault does not lie in TFA, but it does, in part, because it’s a sucky organization.
Would you want your doctor to have 6 to 8 weeks of training and not commit to cardiology if you were to go to him for treatment?
What are you thinking, Helen?
Helen, apparently you said it better than I could. You can’t say that TFA teachers have every advantage when they go into poverty areas with less training than fully credentialed teachers. The fact that they’re willing to give it a go is commendable. But even in good areas with fully credential teachers, the attrition rate is something to be very concerned about. A course on finances isn’t going to help, either. A full experience with student teaching and a good mentor during that experience and an empathetic, knowledgeable principal is needed along with professors in teacher education who are experienced (more than three years) in the public schools.
No commendations are coming from my neck of the woods. We have one new TFA who cannot get the kids lined up.
“The fault may not lie in TFA as much as the schools of education where professors disconnected from classroom teaching develop courses that are more theoretical than practical.”
I don’t quite get your reasoning here. Most of the college students who go through the TFA program are not sitting in schools of education listening to professors spouting facts about the history and theory of education. So how do you arrive at your conclusion that ” the fault may not lie in TFA”.
I do agree with you that all new teachers should be assigned a veteran mentor. The fact that there are few veteran teachers in the schools that are hiring TFA recruits is certainly partly the fault of the TFA organization.
My response was to Helen’s point above.
That’s fully credentialed (wtih an “ed”) teachers.
There are too many problems with TfA to list, but the biggest is that they promote the idea that young, “smart”, “elite” and mostly white recent college grads are better than the veteran teachers they force out who have been serving their own communities for years. It’s the missionary mentality.
“It’s the missionary mentality.”
Quite correct Dienne!
Rhetorically speaking I might take it up a notch and call it either “colonial mentality” (think of all the human resources one can exploit when all those resources know is blind obedience to authority) or “imperialist mentality” (mining compliant human resources for profit and gain that doesn’t accrue back to those doing the work).
Colonial mentality and missionary mentality go hand-in-hand. We superior white people know what’s best for savage brown people which is why we deserve to dominate the world.
Put me down for colonial and missionary too. The TFAs I know get big smiles on their faces as they leave our school for greener pastures.
Bait and switch arguments for TFA going on above. The bottom line is that TFA, at its core, is about making money for TFA and staying in business at all costs. Wendy Kopp would have dug up corpses and paid them nothing if should could have trained them to “teach” and pocketed the profits. Lets be clear.
The training that education majors get, and the observations and clinical teaching they do, and the plain fact they WANT TO BE TEACHERS, far outweighs anything TFA can offer.
We’re comparing apples to rotten apples here.
The argument that TFA goes into bad areas — yea, so do teachers who trained to be teachers and want to be teachers. I grew up in Newark, and TFA is mightily entrenched there, and TFA’s presence is prohibitive for classically trained teachers, and veteran teachers are planned to be fired to make way for TFA. Does that make sense to anyone except reformers?
TFA should disappear, quietly or kicking and screaming, and I’m betting neither will happen so long as Broad, Gates, Walton, Koch and the usual suspects with their hands open at TFA are funneling money to their friends and their ilk.
Donna,
I work in Newark and I am one of the veteran teachers they would like replaced.
I have a feeling that changemaker could go by any pro-reform name. Traditionally trained, educated, certified, credentialed teachers a) want to be teachers, b) are trained not only in subject matter(s) but pedagogy, c) perform observations of teachers in action at the head of the class, d) write curriculum, e) and teach clinical 1 & 2, for an entire year FOR FREE (often while going to school and holding a part time job) with mentor teachers, and lastly, when/if they can finally secure a teaching job, against all odds it sometimes seems in NJ, they are assigned a mentor for their entire first year, and the fee for that mentor is paid out of their own pockets. How can I stress enough that traditionally trained teachers want to be teachers at all costs?
Stack that up against the TFA model of 5 weeks training during summer school in front of a group of 8 or so kids, and what they’re learning is how to spout disciplines to “those unruly kids” to keep children compliant and silent. AND, many of the TFAs are ill equipped to teach subjects they perhaps know nothing about. I’ve read the horror stories. TFA is entrenches and embeds itself into the campus experience and preys on kids it feels it can indoctrinate into its TFA image. TFA has long strayed away from its initial mission – unless that mission statement was BS to begin with and Wendy just found a way for her then cronies to skim the cream eventually by slumming it for a moment.
The job situation overall has been in the crapper for years now. The fact that elite well-off graduates are then given special dispensation to enter into a field they never wanted in the first place, with so many perks “if they just endure teaching for 2 years” is shameful. It displaces REAL teachers, novice and veteran, and I’m tired of my tax dollars supporting this nonsense.
Everything about TFA is so wrong. I believe none of the hype. Do I feel sorry for the kids who join TFA? Why should I? No. I feel sorry for the real teachers who didn’t get the job because the odds are stacked against them, and the teacher that TFA displaces. So many of the TFA scabs wind up drinking the Koolaid and spouting the virtues of how they have saved education and saved the kids from REAL teachers. No, I find them, and their supporters, contemptuous.