Whenever I meet young people who have joined Teach for America, I am always impressed by their idealism and enthusiasm.
As readers of this blog know, I am not as impressed with the organization, TFA, which is filled with hubris, self-promotion, and ambition. No amount of money ever seems to be enough, as this organization grows and grows and collects hundreds of millions of dollars from foundations and corporations (no matter how rightwing they may be), and paints itself as the saviour of American education from those “others,” the veteran teachers. Periodically I learn that TFA is out shaking cans to raise nickels and dimes in grocery stores or ATMs and I get angry all over again. It seems that their business plan is to get richer and richer, while sending out these terrific young kids to staff the classes of the nation’s most disadvantaged children for two years, then move on.
So, that’s my dilemmas, love the kids, don’t love the organization.
I just read an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times that reminded me of why I love these kids. This young man, Jared Billings, is a TFA teacher who decided to stay. He says that TFA should require a commitment of four-five years, not two. He is right. No one is a great teacher in their first year, and precious few are effective in their second. TFA has resisted this because they would get fewer applicants. But that’s the kind of commitment that would turn TFA into an organization that was dedicated to helping the schools, not itself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The thing is, these privileged (for the most part) kids already believe they are superior to veteran teachers. Their so-called idealism and misguided belief that they are to go where no man has gone before, is a result of their unchecked hubris and boundless, youthful, and sometimes, vastly entitled ego. They are also looking for a short cut, and many are signing up for school-to-Goldman Sachs programs. They don’t need to follow a traditional route because they are “special,” ” the best and brightest.”
You can love the TFA kids all you want, but THEIR choices are abetting TFA’s mission.
LikeLike
I am a graduate of a TFA-style program (University of Michigan Peace Corps Fellows). We were charged with teaching in the Detroit Public Schools. Of the 30-some participants in the early nineties, none of us remain in DPS, nor do any teach in inner-city programs. Only of a few of us remain in the classroom; most have left education all together.
LikeLike
I would also like to make a related point about the ways many top colleges, especially MAT programs, critize veteran teachers. I take student teachers from Brown University, many of them have related stories of Ed professors telling them to point out mistakes to veteran teachers and to become vocal “agents of change” in the schools.
In addition to a TFA problem, top universities themselves are following the TFA party line, by espousing charter schools and trying to lay blame for the acheivment gap with the current teaching force, while telling students they will be the new saviors. Some come in the first day petrified that if even one minute of class time is wasted, they can damage a high schooler for good. This is what they have been told.
LikeLike
Brown has changed a lot in the past 10 years, unfortunately. When I went through the MAT program, the program instilled a lot of respect for veteran teachers. A whole cadre of experienced teachers, mostly from the PPSD, were really the backbone of the program.
LikeLike
You’re right Tom! When I had those students long ago, the faculty supported the public schools, especially PPSD. I loved going to the Brown Summer High School seminars then. Teachers and student teachers learning together–those were the days! It was especially fun for me since I attended Brown Summer High School when I was a high school student.
LikeLike
Someone explain how TFA can take the jobs of experienced, veteran teacher who are laid off? This seems ripe for lawsuits and it has happened and it is still happening.
I have read that TFA had a contract with those cities, well so did the teachers.
Read Barbara Miner’s research:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_03/24_03_TFA.shtml
LikeLike
I have been asking the same question. In CT the procedure for hiring an under certified teacher is to issue a DSAP (Durational Shortage Area Permit), but this is only permitted if there are no certified applicants for the job. A DSAP can be renewed for three years, providing time for the permit holder to complete his certification requirements, but it can only be issued if there are absolutely no certified teachers applying for the position. I would like to know how TFA gets around this in CT.
LikeLike
Not sure the best place to put this…I need Diane’s opinion on this.
Conclusion and full link:
An independent taskforce report published recently by the Council on Foreign Relations warns, “Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk.” Failure in the form of inadequate student achievement and achievement gaps, of course, has many causes, but traditional teacher compensation systems are undeniably part of the problem. Teachers are the most important school-based resource affecting student achievement, and the lion’s share of school spending goes toward the financial compensation for teachers.
Policymakers wishing to take steps toward smartly differentiated compensation for teachers have to start somewhere. Divesting in master’s bumps by following the discrete recommendations we’ve offered may be one of the easier places to start. The disconnect between the goal of improving student achievement and the tradition of paying teachers extra simply for holding post-baccalaureate sheepskin certainly makes doing so strategically defensible.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/07/sheepskin_effect.html
LikeLike
CAP- run by John Podesta who is attached at the waist inside of the WH. And Obama’s team wonders why he might lose the presidential race? He sold our public schools to Wall St. yet they’re turning on him anyway.
Teachers, like myself, pounded the pavement and made regular donations to his 2008 election. No more. I’ve shared my disgust with every caller from the DNC, DCCC, DSC, etc. The Obama team clearly doesn’t give a d***.
What that old saying? ‘You should dance with the one that brought you?
LikeLike
Linda1,
From the article, “But teachers’ performance, as measured by value-added estimates of their impact on student achievement, tends to flatten out after 6 to 10 years.”
Notice what is being used as the “measuring” device student achievement (whatever the hell that is) and “value added estimates” which = VAM which is so inaccurate as to make it a laughing stock of an idea.
Does that help?
Duane
LikeLike
The antilabor bias couldn’t be clearer: TFA is the hiring hall for high needs schools, rotates in two year, nonunion clones, allows districts to dump older, more expensive and BETTER teachers. The TFA newbies never stay to collect pensions or actually use their health insurance. Great deal for the districts, horrible for the students. There’s not gonna be an unfair labor practice charge, extensively litigated, every time an individual experienced teacher is forced into a buyout. Oh, and the test scores aren’t and won’t go up under this regime.
LikeLike
Scabs???
LikeLike
So schools are faltering because teachers are paid too much, and should be discouraged from developing professionally and intellectually?
I’d like to see them apply these notions to corporate CEOs.
LikeLike
or to doctors or dentists or engineers or . . . .
LikeLike
I agree. The kids are for the most part are OK. The organization is problematic. They are spreading throughout the world. The UK, India, and Eastern Europe are their latest footholds.
If as Jared points out, TFA required a longer commitment, then revenues may fall 50% and when money is the priority, that isn’t a “best practice”. Yup. Money corrupts.
Now on the other hand, if they returned to their original purpose and mission, then maybe they would be welcomed by veterans. But when you mess with someone’s livelihood then expect resentment and push-back.
LikeLike
I have had similar experiences in dealings with TFA teachers. One young graduate from a top university, who was no longer teaching but working for an international non-profit training teachers, told me he had taught middle school in the South Bronx and “it was the best”. I had to bite my tongue not to ask, “if it was so great why did you leave?!” Of course, TFA are taught that they are too good to waste their time in classrooms. Teaching is so easy for them because they are so smart and they need only 2 years before mastering the craft. It is their duty to then move on to influence educational policy from the top and tell the rest of us how it’s done. And that’s why we have Michelle Rhee.
LikeLike
“He says that TFA should require a commitment of four-five years, not two”
Great now we’d have non-dedicated non-professional teachers who don’t want to be there in the first place harming the teaching and learning process for that many more students for twice as long. There is a reason the majority of TFAers leave after 2-3 years.
Don’t buy it!
LikeLike
If they as good as they say, they should stay longer. My guess is they commit for two years because they don’t want a career in teaching. Five years is a serious commitment.
LikeLike
The problem is, Diane, teaching shouldn’t be a short-term job. You also know about five years and pension vesting. Too bad these self-described geniuses can’t figure out why school districts would want them in the first place and that’s to save on pension costs.
LikeLike
I agree. The kids are for the most part are OK. The organization is problematic. They are spreading throughout the world. The UK, India, and Eastern Europe are their latest footholds.
If as Jared points out, TFA required a longer commitment, then revenues may fall 50% and when money is the priority, that isn’t a “best practice”. It really is in their interest to have churn. Plus, after the third year you start to learn what is really going on in school and with TFA.
LikeLike
If you want to capitalize on the idealism and enthusiasm of intelligent young people and grow the teacher pipeline for career work with inner city children, I think there are better alternatives to TFA.
In some states, service learning is a high school graduation requirement. I wonder how many of those students are encouraged to work in education programs with children who are in poverty. Service learning wasn’t required when I was in school, but volunteering as a high school student in education programs with inner-city kids is actually how I got my start in this field.
I worked in Head Start with preschoolers in poverty, in a tutoring program for low income primary aged students, and in an arts-based program for underpriveledged youth. I found out about these jobs through my public high school. In all of those programs, low income high school students worked alongside more priviledged peers, which fostered for the latter the kind of “there but for the grace of God” humility that seems to be missing from many TFAers. (Maybe the program knocks it out of them, as it inflates the egos of people just planning to make a pit stop in poor neighborhoods on the way to more lucrative fields.)
I think that high school students from BOTH sides of the economic divide who are engaged together in service learning in education programs for low income kids would be great candidates for Grow Your Own Teachers type programs.
LikeLike
If these kids want to be teachers, let them do the hard work of getting educated and credentialed in the field, just like everybody else has to do. Actually doing the work of becoming a teacher instead of having it handed to them, like they apparently have already had everything else handed to them, could knock their arrogance down a few pegs. BTW, just because they went to Ivy League schools doesn’t make them smarter than everybody else.
LikeLike
“Shaking cans to collect nickels and dimes in grocery stores” reminds me of the first of several puff pieces on TFA in the local newspaper that referred to our region’s first crop of CMs as “volunteers” three separate times in the one article. They are often portrayed as having sacrificed much to “volunteer” to go into high-needs, priority schools to turn things around. This is not the Peace Corps, however, many folks perceive it as such.
Full teacher salaries and full teacher benefits, plus a free masters degree in Ed. Leadership, plus a walk-away stipend of $8-9,000 “to further one’s eductation.” Not volunteer work at all. And my district pays an extra $10,000 per CM per year for this privilege. How’s that for financial management.
One other objection: the local college that provides the masters program in ed leadership benefits financially while at the same time providing fully-credentialed multi-year training for new teachers. I always wondered how Susie’s dad would feel about his daughter’s potential job being filled by a TFA CM? Kind of a conflict of interest, if you ask me.
LikeLike
Where does the $10,000 figure come from? I’ve only ever seen $1,000. TFA CMs, by the way, generally do not know about this contract agreement. And as somebody pointed out, they also are generally unaware of their positions within the overall labor landscape. Please don’t mistake that for an apology, because it isn’t.
LikeLike
TFA, to me, sends the connotation the “best” students graduating from our top colleges opt for this program only to buttress their resumes. Unfortunately they then do something else with their professional lives.
How do we get our BEST students to consider teaching as a career? We don’t need any more C students becoming teachers. They’re an embarrassment to the profession.
LikeLike
Amazing that in the LAUSD 48,000 teachers had only 4 fired in the last ten years. Possibly, your concern about union dues 68 million in Ca. 234 billion in retirement funds could be used for students rights. Unions are the new robber barons of our generation. Just give me an opportunity to destroy the union mentality. Common sense has to prevail. Great teachers are born not made.
karl
LikeLike
Karl,
Please cite stats for the only four fired in ten years. Please explain how the unions are the “new robber barons” in comparison to the original robber barons. And what exactly is the “union mentality”, please explain.
Thanks,
Duane
LikeLike
That comment was especially ill-informed because nationally about 30% of teachers are gone within the first five years; and in inner city schools, it is 50%. Many were fired, asked to leave, before ever getting tenure. Many gave up because of poor working conditions. So for anyone to say that no one is ever fired is uninformed.
LikeLike
His info is contradicted by this newspaper report:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_18626604
LikeLike
Many teachers leave on their own or retire early when the know the
process to get rid of them begins. You could consider these teachers as “being fired” but they are not reported. There are poor performers in all professions…I dont hear too much about the dishonest banker, lazy cop, careless nurse, etc.. Yes, bad teachers should go and they do in my state. Don’t make blanket stereotypes and apply them to all of us. When you’re tired of bashing teachers will you be moving on to the other public sector jobs primarily staffed by males, cops and firemen?
LikeLike
A young woman I know worked for 2 years in New Haven, CT. She had not taken any educational training classes, and was put into a situation with a principal who did not support TFA. (I do not either). In a classroom (elementary) with 31 students, she was really at a loss. With no support from administration, no real mentoring, she struggled through and ended up hating teaching when she had hoped to be in education. Maybe she did not belong in the classroom, but her TFA experience set her up for failure.
LikeLike
Jared’s experiment regarding how people react differently when he says he’s from TFA vs. when he says he is a teacher is really disturbing, because it shows how folks have been influenced by the propaganda promulgated by TFA and education “reformers”.
The data used to claim that public school teachers come from the bottom third of their class and TFA teachers come from the top third are high school SAT/ACT scores, not college grade point averages or even school rankings.
Who could have ever predicted that the SAT/ACT scores we obtained as high school students would become the scarlet number for future teachers?
If I knew as an adolescent (who was somewhate rebellious) that my high ACT scores were what people would think mattered most in my adult career, maybe I would not have worked as hard as I did nor graduated summa cum laude from college.
LikeLike
I couldn’t agree more. I’m a 39 year veteran teacher and a union officer. My daughter is a two year TFA teacher in a charter in new Orleans. She’s opted for a third year. I hope she stays with it.
LikeLike