Arthur Camins explains what is wrong with the TFA approach but cautions that the recruits should not be blamed or criticized. I agree. The recruits are idealistic and well-intentioned. They are akin to Peace Corps volunteers. No one suggests that Peace Corps volunteers are qualified to be Foreign Service officers or diplomats or ambassadors. Blame the organization for its hubris, not the kids. It is the hubris that produced John White (Louisiana), Kevin Huffman (Tennessee), Eric Guckian (North Carolina), Michelle Rhee.
Camins writes in a comment:
“Behind the cheap labor, quick-fix and undermining unions appeal of TFA, there are ideas. We need to address and challenge the ideas. They include,
1) Ignorance: Knowledge of teaching and learning is easily learned and is relatively unimportant compared to content knowledge;
2) Elitism: Attending a prestigious college is prima facie evidence of the intelligence and disposition required for effective teaching;
3) Arrogance and/or Naiveté: Teaching as a profession is devalued, as it is considered as temporary employment rather than a lifetime profession in which expertise increases over time.
On the other hand, we need to be careful to attack the ideas, rather than the TFA teachers, most of whom are well-intentioned. I touched on some of this in an earlier post here: http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=196 and here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/18/key-questions-begging-for-answers-about-school-reform/”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The primary attack against TFA should be waged against its behavior – its use of idealistic young people as scabs, its openly-stated purpose as a training academy for so-called education reform cadre, its insufferable paternalism and condescension in aiding the hostile takeover of the public schools, etc. – rather than its ideas, abhorrent though they are.
Most of this years TFAers are people of color or from a low-income background. One fourth are first generation college grads, You are calling a number of your former students scabs and saying they are being duped. These are 22 year old grown leaders. You are sounding a bit paternal to me Michael.
Wow…IGNORANCE, ELITISM, ARROGANCE and/or NAIVETE…sounds like Duncan, Obama, Rahm, Gates, etc. need I go on? I put the emphasis on the ARROGANCE, though.
As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, my antennae have quivered each time TFA is compared to Peace Corps. The differences between the two organizations, as you know, are myriad. First, PCVs spend twelve weeks of really intensive training before going to post (and continue learning throughout their service–and are expected to have come in with skills in hand). Second, PCVs work with local people as colleagues, never as replacements–and are expected to leave those colleagues better able to continue on without the PCV than before. Third, PCVs are expected to take away knowledge of the culture where they have lived and worked, creating a bridge between those countries and the American culture the PCVs came from.
Those three differences will do for starters. Believe me, there are more, many more.
Still, you are right not to blame the TFAers. It is in the organization that the problem lies, not in the participants.
If we’re really trying to turn TFA recruits around, I don’t think this is a realistic approach.
TFA recruits, like anyone, see an attack on their organization and its philosophy as an attack on them and their philosophy. Saying TFA ignorance, elitism and arrogance will be taken by TFA recruits as, “You are ignorant, elite and arrogant.”
Imagine running up to a soldier enlisting for combat and urging him to reconsider. “Look, it’s not you! It’s your murderous, bigoted and avaricious country!” It will only increase his patriotic zeal.
I think the first step in talking to these people (I used to be one) is just the bare-bones practical stuff. Peer-reviewed studies show first-year TFA recruits teach less well than credentialed teachers. TFA places teachers in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, which have laid off thousands of teachers. Teacher shortages are largely a thing of the past. Some of the policies TFA implicitly supports — VAM, charters, data-driven instruction — have spotty track records and little empirical support, and certainly aren’t silver bullets.
You need to start there. If you can convince them that some of the objective claims TFA makes are bogus, they’ll (hopefully) start to perceive the ideological pitfalls of the organization. In their minds, vilifying the organization to which they’ve pledged themselves amounts to vilifying the individuals in it.
I agree with you Owen. The same can be said of the phrase “status quo” or “traditional system of education” or “union”
When market education reformers come in and say stuff like “you’re part of the status quo and you need to be held accountable” it causes the knee jerk reaction, as any of the 3 or 4 million public school teachers in America are part of this system.
So what I don’t get is how reformers like Rhee think that good leadership is coming in and telling all the people who work in the system that they suck, and then at the same time saying things like “I love teachers they do incredible jobs.” It’s like saying “I hate TFA, but I like you, TFA corps member.”
So instead, the language needs to change to the actual policies that are hurting students.
I do wish they did a better job of weeding out applicants who only want to spend a year just to burnish their resumes and give themselves a pat on the back, the ones who treat troubled schools like they were a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving.
Nice analogy with the soup kitchen. TFA does somewhat add to that old idiom, People who can do, people who can’t teach. “Smart” people might do teaching as a public service, (like volunteering at a soup kitchen) for a bit and then go off to do something really important like start a business. The rest of us, unsuccessful types, I guess, just get stuck in the muck of the lowest of professions.
That’s really difficult to do. Anyone with hiring experience knows that candidates can seem great on resume / interview but then turn out to be not so great.
I can appreciate that TFA has some wrinkles. I’m a TFA alumn who actually went to a traditional teacher training program and then joined TFA after teaching for a year. It puts me in an interesting position to see both approaches to teacher preparation.
1. In my time in the corps there was never an assumption that teaching didn’t require an enormous amount of time or study – in fact corps members take all the same classes as traditionally certified teachers, if not more. I did far more work as a corps member than as a university student. Not only did I have to take masters level education courses, but I also had to attend weekend trainings, monthly meetings with a program director, and was observed more than I ever was as a student teacher – but then to receive continued “supportive not punitive” observations even into the second year was a treasure.
2. I went to a state university, not an elite college. There are many people who do come from fancy schools, as I call them, but being in a room full of students is the great equalizer.
3. Teaching/education is not considered temporary employment to corps members. In fact, nearly all my close friends from TFA are still in education. As an overall organization, I believe number of folks who stay in education is around 40%. I’ve read that nationally attrition is closer to 50% among all teachers. But what about this idea? What if people are leaving teaching after two or more years with a positive and realistic impression of the profession and our students (usually the case for corps members), and then they take this practical knowledge to their sectors? I hear a lot of teachers complain about people making decisions about education while never actually being in it.
I’m not so sure about the phrase “the kids” – that’s a little demeaning. Funny how I never address my high school students in this way…yet it’s okay for new professionals.
I’m still a teacher. I’m proud of both of my training programs, but I have no qualms over pointing out both of their shortfalls. I guess I’m finally getting a little tired of hearing inaccurate information. Like that TFA is a union-hating bunch. Or the fact that their teachers get paid exactly what first year teachers get paid – so the “cheap labor” part is confusing to me. Or even the idea that corps members think they are better than traditional teachers. Oooh – and the frustrating belief that TFA is a stepping stone – those few people never survive the classroom. It’s just not what happens on the ground level.
After a while, it is “the kids”– those who persist in the arrogance that they are The Chosen Few who will assume leadership– including writing legislation. Here’s an example:
http://www.miamistudent.net/news/campus/asg-talks-teach-for-america-bill-writing-1.2937475
For a while, TFA advertised the ALEC Education Task Force Director position on its website.
Yes, we have to accord the TFA recruits the honorable status of being responsible for what they actually do. That said, everybody under thirty looks like a kid to me at this point, and as grown-ups our job is to talk them over constructively, doing them no harm. I tell my fifteen year old students they have to choose what they answer to, and then its up to them to answer to it. If they can do that, they will own the ground they’re standing on.
Two months ago, I started saying the same thing to TFA colleagues when they short-changed their own students, and covered it by rattling off gibberish slogans they didn’t believe themselves.
How does it help anybody if we just feed them more pablum? And where does everybody get the idea these poor young ninnies are well prepared in their subjects?! “The hippo is in the water” is a mnemonic they taught, to answer osmosis questions. So, I asked them, if the solute concentration inside a cell increases, is it hypertonic or hypotonic? They were lost, arguing about what their stupid hippo lesson even meant. The young working class teachers who were churned in my department, to make room for TFA, had actually bothered to major in science at their non-elite state schools.
I’ve become quite fond of a young soft-psych major who stayed for a third year, beyond her TFA commitment. It turned out that was because she couldn’t get another job. So last year she was offered a great job mid-year, and after she accepted it, sold her bike and and gave notice to our school, the offer was withdrawn.
I’m in some suspense whether she’ll come back for year four. If she does, should I congratulate or console her?
I am afraid I have difficulty with all of this. After a certain point, you have to blame the individuals for what they are doing. I can’t help but see a similarity with individual Germans in World War II. TFA members know perfectly well what they are doing. They have no respect for teachers in the trenches. They are buying the kool-aid that TFA is selling, even if their only motivation is to pay off their student loans. Their elitism is simply stunning.
And I for one can’t help but blame them too and not just their organization.
My daughter was TFA for a month, and then taught in a Charter School. I disagreed with her doing this although I supported her efforts to teach in one of the worst schools in Los Angeles. TFA did not equip her to handle either of these jobs.
I saw the arrogance in action.
I too am having difficulty thinking how to reason constructively with the over-entitled young sheep TFA has placed in my department. They aren’t exactly innocent lambs, and they know they’re doing this because they couldn’t get a better job. They readily share their frustration that the huge advancement they hoped for has eluded them so far, and (most of all) they see a way to get out from under their student loans.
They certainly don’t need more stroking with unmerited nonsense about their purported idealism, but you’ve gone way over the top here, Joan.
Ill equipped, arrogant, selfish, and dense does not equal “Germans in
World War II”.
I tend toward hyperbole in all things. I admit to rage around a lot of this – and fear for our entire public school system. But thanks for the critique. I still say that we need to hold individuals accountable. And yes, it is because they can’t get better jobs. It’s still scabbing. I should have stuck with that.
A-men.
“Ill equipped, arrogant, selfish, and dense does not equal ‘Germans in World War II’”.
No, perhaps not. But I find that the comparison is not that far off when one considers the various serious harms that are caused to many students through the whole standardized testing regimes and the various other educational malpractices that the edudeformers impose on the innocents, the children. It (the comparison) hints at the “banality of evil” and the fact that very few people act out of evil intentions but that their day to day actions/inactions can cause much harm to/for many. I believe it is the banality aspect to which the comparison is meant to show.
The problem with that is that banality is everywhere. That’s why it’s banal. If you don’t have the evil, the banality is not interesting.
You are calling thousands of black and brown TFA teachers sheep.
microagression,
Can you please supply source for your “. . . thousands of black and brown TFA teachers. . . “?
I’ve not seen any stats about racial/socio-economic status of TFAers. It would be good to have that source!
Thanks!
Actually, “microagressions”, I only called the young TFA recruits in my own building “sheep”, and not a one of them happens to be brown or black. I hope it isn’t a permanent intellectual disability, because they do have to get some backbone, and stand up to their own minders.
Here’s the problem. They’ll just repeat any slogan their TFA superiors tell them to.
For instance, they were chosen (as a group) to lead the drive for flipped instruction, for no reason they ever questioned. They do like the idea of recording their direct instruction in an empty classroom, then assigning their students to watch it at home as many times as they want. They’ve been told that’s “personalized” instruction. So, their minders told one of them flipped instruction increases “face time” with students, and they decided their little faces talking out of a little box on the screen was “face time”.
They’ll go on about “data-driven” instruction, like it was a chatechism, even in the face of its utter, manifest uselessness for the actual education of the kids they’ve been assigned.
chemtchr,
Your list of the many disagreeable qualities often attributed to TFAers obviously does not qualify them as Nazis, so you are correct.
However, if we look at TFA as an institution, and how it functions within the ruling class project deceptively called “education reform,” we see something different.
Using Nazism (or Stalinism, or Maoism) as a proxy term for repressive and destructive authoritarian control, we see that “Most academics were, however, either apolitical of approved of some aspects of the Nazi program. Teachers who did not were either forced to resign or forced into silent acquiescence… And by the 1940’s (Germany) had an increasingly compliant cadre of teachers… The teachers opposed to the new regime were quickly replaced by younger, pro-Nazi teachers.” (histclo.com/schun/country/ger/era/tr/teach/ned-teach.html)
Are we talking about gas chambers and ovens? Obviously not.
Are we talking about an anti-democratic, corporatist regime that consciously uses the manipulation of young people to advance it’s acquisition and domination-obsessed ends?
If the jackboot fits…
Chemtchr,
I do think screencasts are very very helpful to students. The reaction I have gotten to the ones I do have been very positive.
I disagree..
the recruits want to be teachers without going through a 4 year traditional program. True, they are idealistic but they are not babies…They are adults..They want to teach but do it the easy way– 6 weeks training in the summer when school is not even in session. Michelle Rhee wants a quick buck. The recruits want quick training.
Rome was not built in a day and 6 weeks isn;t going to do it either.
Isn’t it 5 weeks training. First week is education boot camp, then weeks 2 – 5 is “teaching” with students in classrooms, as little as one hour a day for the four weeks.
Gary Rubinstein has a lot written about this but I forget the details. I think I’ve read TFA is increasing training to six weeks so maybe you’re right, but this is only in some cities.
I worked with three TFA teachers in TN last year, and I completely agree with this. Our focus should be on the TFA corporation and on states that allow unlicensed teachers in the classroom. The TFA kids are generally well-intentioned and want to make a difference. TFA is going to fill their quotas. The problem begins with TFA and the states contracting with them.
Some have commented that all the TFA folks know what they’re doing to public education. But, I don’t think this is true for many of them. I know 21 year olds are supposed to know a lot having just gone through 4 years of college, but really, I don’t think we can expect them to know all the nuances of public education while they’re studying. A lot of them are going into it because of the strong marketing and recruitment machine of TFA. They do things like read college newspapers looking for leaders, then e-mail the students directly recruiting them to become corps members. Some get flattered, others feel weird about that. So I can see how many college students who want to make a difference in the world, which a good thing, get swept up with language like “transformational change,” and “challenge the status quo,” and “poverty is not destiny.” And TFA convinces them that yes, YOU have what it takes to do this. You can make a difference, and then two years from now you can move on to make an even bigger impact in ed policy, banking, medicine, government, consulting, etc..
So when bloggers attack TFA, these idealistic corps members, who in their minds are “making transformational change” and “challenging the status quo” and “fighting poverty” get really defensive. These corps members truly believe they are doing these things, especially since they’ve only taught maybe a few months before they come across criticism of TFA. And, to a certain extent, individually, they do work hard and try their best from what I’ve seen. But systemically, they’re hurting more than helping.
But now we’re seeing many TFA folks starting to speak out and question (Gary Rubinstein, Camika Royal for example). This is a good thing. I think TFA, along with other reform groups, ironically, need to reform.
I’m a 2nd year teacher who went through a traditional education program (postgrad) — or rather, TFA recruited me as an undergrad but I wanted to go to grad school instead and eventually found my way back to teaching several years later. There is a relatively small TFA presence in my district (a lot less than in neighboring Oakland) and I felt bad for the TFA recruits at the district orientation last year– I don’t know if they were cliquey or just that no one wanted to sit with them. (Probably cliquey, which I can’t blame them for; I spent the whole time with others I knew from my residency program.) Having had friends who went through TFA (and didn’t like it) I can’t imagine now putting myself through my first year of teaching without the preparation and connections I had from my credential program and residency. I also have friends from my teaching program who interviewed at schools and were put off by interviews that seemed geared toward TFA only; for instance at one middle school they mirrored the TFA interviews exactly. Said this friend, “I want to work at a school where I know my colleagues will be there for more than a year or two.”
It seems to me that one of the weaknesses of TFA is the fact that the training for most people is in a different city than they will end up working, and that the way they recruit puts people who are strangers to their new region in the classroom with little time to adjust. I’m working in my hometown so I already had familiarity with many of the schools in my district and the history, at least dating back to when I was a student at another school here. But beyond that, I know local institutions where I can look for support and curriculum; I’m connected to two local universities; as a science teacher I know places to go to get cheap supplies and so forth. That’s one of the main reasons I’d recommend a traditional program to most college students I know who are considering teaching; it at least allows you to spend a year gaining familiarity with your community. Moving is stressful. Moving twice in one summer is even more stressful, as is having to figure out how to shop for regular stuff and teacher stuff right as you’re starting your job. I don’t know why TFA doesn’t have its summer training located in more places; wouldn’t that also allow them to have more normal-size classes during its training?
But mostly, I’m annoyed with the entire economy for how it’s exploiting my generation during this recession. I don’t see how TFA is much better than the range of unpaid internships that companies are preying on college students with; it’s certainly worse in that it sets people up to have more short term jobs in their 20s and wring hard work for cheap out of people who don’t know any better. Yeah, I’ll be honest, even with a master’s from a good program I still worked long hours in my first year and sometimes felt ineffective with my classes. I averaged about 5.5 hours of sleep on weekdays. It sucked. But the difference is, I got paid about $8k more per year than TFA intern teachers in my district and all my loans from grad school are getting paid off by federal/state loan forgiveness programs that TFA folks could have taken advantage of if they were willing to stay in teaching for at least 4-5 years, and I plan to stay in at least long enough to reach my full effectiveness so I can sleep more.
(Also, the #1 question I got asked in April and May last year by my students was, “Are you going to be here next year?” Anyone who says that teacher turnover doesn’t matter is wrong. Students, even 9th graders going through horrible 9th grader growth phases, want to have some stability in who they see at school next year. My students asked for a science club. They asked if they could TA for me next year. They asked me what next year’s teachers would be like. They asked what science electives I could teach. They asked me about graduation and college. How would I respond to that if I was planning to spend less time at that school than they were?)
Great thoughts. Thanks for writing. To sort of answer your question — TFA has a very difficult logistical problem with where to place corps members for training and where to place them when they get to their regions in the Fall. They have separate teams doing this I believe. One team devoted to getting the corps members from college to Institute. Then another team from Institute to the region.
The problem they run into is that they don’t know how many teaching positions exactly they’ll have in the Fall, as districts and charters don’t know exactly either all the time (student enrollment changes, personnel changes, etc…) So this is a a major moving target. On top of this, they have to figure out what teachers are teaching, but lots of times what CMs teach at Institute doesn’t match what they teach in the Fall. This causes major frustration.
My guess is they can’t create more Institutes in the cities cause that would cost too much. So at each Institute, there will be a bunch of corps members from different regions together getting trained. Centralized training.
I’m not defending them, just educating.
First of all, I can guarantee you that my former students are not TFAers: as recent immigrants, they and their siblings are precisely the students being excluded from TFA-staffed and managed charter schools, and are among the students most affected by the public school-closing “leaders” groomed, trained and promoted by TFA and its funders.
Second, please document your claims with something other than the skewed, self congratulatory deceptions regularly churned out by this compulsively dishonest organization.
Sorry for the error: the above comment is directed to microaggessions’ response to my initial comment.