Desperate for special education teachers, a few principals in San Francisco defied the board of education and hired inexperienced, unprepared young Teach for America recruits for special education classes.
How sad to think that the neediest students get the least qualified teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Borderline abusive…Special Ed requires substantive knowledge and training beyond even the highest achieving Ivy Leaguers. Of course that could be said for teaching in general but it is especially egregious for these students.
Yes, it is. I had gotten a dual-major Bachelors degree in psychology (with an emphasis on child psychology and child development) and education (emphasis on special education), and then went on to get a Masters degree in special education.
Even with my extensive training, my first year of teaching this very challenging population was difficult, but I knew where to start, what their disabilities meant, how to begin to approach their needs.
I cannot even imagine walking into some of the classrooms I taught with five weeks of training. My students would have (pardon the hyperbole here) eaten these TFA “teachers” alive.
How is this even legal???? Grrr…
Why do you think that TFA candidates are unqualified to teach? Why is it any different than being allowed a provisional certification to teach? Besides the fact that they’re teaching in areas where filling open teaching positions are difficult.
I am sure if you want to go and work in such locations you your portfolio is such as described, then one would expect that you would be a desirable candidate in comparison to ANY other candidate with less qualifications, TFA or otherwise…
TFA has only FIVE WEEKS of training. How on earth can you believe that this is enough training for any teacher, particularly special education teachers?
Yes, exactly.
I worked in such areas when I was a special needs teacher. And I had a whole he!! of a lot of training and practimum in the field. Even despite that, it was challenging.
Given the needs of such students (and indeed, they are not called “special needs” students for nothing), poorly trained TFA candidates would not, in fact, be qualified to teach this population.
The children I taught were severely to profoundly developmentally disabled, multiply handicapped, very severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed. And many of them had epilepsy, as well as other, some difficult to manage, medical problems. Feeding problems. Toileting problems. Communication problems.
Anyone walking into such a classroom without a whole lot of training and preparation in this area could very well do more harm than good.
I wouldn’t even expect a supremely credentialed and qualified English teacher, or science or math or elementary education teacher, to go into those classes and do well. It takes a certain amount (or more than a certain amount) of specialized training and supervised practice in the field.
Why on earth would you even begin to think that a TFA teacher, with a few weeks training, would even begin to be able to deal with this population?
They would be no better than “baby-sitters.” Amd might even be worse than a compassionate baby-sitter.
Once districts relax credentials in one area and get away with it, they will do more. Parents should complain as it sends the wrong message about their children. Public schools should have to abide by state certification laws.
There is a big difference between a provisional certification and TFA. TFA are college graduates in any major that have five hours of training. They may not even be there for the right reason. They often are doing two years of “teaching” service in order to excuse college loans. They are untrained facilitators. A provisionally certified teacher has had many courses in psychology, foundations of education, methods of teaching, content courses and, of course, successful completion of student teaching. Certified teachers intend to make teaching a career, and they expect to be doing it for many years.
M, you need to do your homework. Teachers with degrees, even in Special Ed, are being let go for TFA, because districts have partnered with TFA, or someone, somewhere, is getting a kickback. The end goal is to turn teaching into a revolving door where no credentials are necessary; like starting out in the mail room of a corporation and working your way out in 2 years. The privatizers love this.
Do some research into TFA and you see why your post is so off base and misguided.
Your post doesn’t make sense. I remember when my sis in the ’80’s was a ‘provisional’ SpEd teacher in NYS. She was a BA in SpEd, required to attain her Master’s in that field w/in 5 yrs (which she did, & went on to a career that included managing a SpEd midsch dept & thence to admin in hs discip & beyond). As a SpEd BS, before even being considered for a pubsch SpEd position she needed experience, which she got the hard way w/an underfunded private for extremely delayed & emotionally-disturbed students. I remember she learned there self-defensive postures for calming & controlling acting-out students. How a Humanities BA w/5 wks training could be expected to walk into such a classroom is beyond me.
“Why do you think that TFA candidates are unqualified to teach?”
And in reference to SpecEd students no less…
Said comments as not just ruinously uninformed but immoral.
For shame.
☹️
Just because you have a credential in special education doesn’t necessarily mean your qualified in the area you might be asked to teach in. My kiddos Special Ed teacher was teaching science classes and background and her undergraduate major was in social studies!!! How does that qualify her to teach science classes???
What the heck is going on in SF that they cannot find qualified SpEd teachers & in desperation hire TFA’s? Any area folks onboard care to elucidate? I don’t get it. Is it because it’s such an expensive place to live that SpEd teachers can’t afford to live w/n commuting distance?
Apartment costs are astronomical in SF. Teachers cannot afford to live here and compete for housing with techies that have much higher salaries. Teacher pay here is also lower than surrounding areas in Silicon Valley because of the inequitable California funding system. Richer students attend districts where teachers can make nearly double their counterparts in SF, Oakland and other areas that serve children who live in high poverty. One would think that our progressive city would value public education by building teacher housing and raising local taxes to create competitive wages, however, our city is economically and racially divided, and there is not much political will to raise taxes to support education for the poorer and browner half of the city. As a parent of a public school child in SF, I have been extremely disappointed in how little of our city’s abundant wealth goes to support public schools.
As a professor of Special Education (not in CA), we face a tremendous shortage of teachers. TfA and other alternative programs are trying to service a desperate need. I cannot imagine SF is very affordable for teachers to boot. Bottom line, I think all administrators would love a healthy pool of qualified candidates to choose from, but reality is that a qualified teacher does not mean a good teacher, and there are not enough GOOD qualified candidates applying. We ultimately need to entice more people into the field of teaching and pay might be a consideration.
TFA kids are trained for five weeks. Is that adequate preparation for someone to teach children with special needs?
TFA kids are trained for five weeks. Is that adequate preparation for someone to teach children with special needs?
TFA kids are trained for five weeks. Is that adequate preparation for someone to teach children with special needs?
You really need to add an edit button to this blog to fix the typos some of us have do to typing on monitors screens…
1) Not all TFA candidates are kids
2) These candidates are teaching at schools that cannot find enough teachers in given areas.
3) Most schools seem to want young teachers and staff that they can mold and won’t “rock their boats .”
4) It’s not really going to be significantly different since the bar is so low for special education students to begin with.
A point you missed:
The San Francisco school district had terminated their contract with TFA. Regardless of your feelings on TFA, M, I hope you would agree that principals going over the head of an elected school board is a problem.
http://www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/certificate/rightpathway.html#four
Option 3 noted in the link above, sounds very similar to what the TFA requirements are to apply for a in initial certification to teach….
PS- Zorba: My first response was in response to your post which came before it noting your credentials. Your next response seemed to affirm what I had seen in other districts (that a special ed teacher could be asked to instruct a class that they had no prior experience or training or knowledge of, as was the case for my kiddo’s high school science special ed teacher…. Her undergrad degree was in social studies, not any of the biological or physical sciences which she was teaching. Her only “qualification” was she had a credential for special education… In my opinion, that does not make her highly qualified to teach a science class….
I’m sorry, but what does your kid’s high school science teacher’s lack of credentials in science have to do with the subject of this post, which is about San Francisco hiring way under-trained TFA’s to teach special needs students?
My daughter’s high school geometry teacher was an English major who was hired to teach geometry mainly because they needed a swimming coach, and yes, he was a good coach, but he was a terrible geometry teacher.
Doesn’t make it right. Fortunately, we were able to fill in the gaps for our daughter, and she graduated high school as valedictorian and went on to get a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League school, and a doctorate from another Ivy. Good for her, but the teacher was still unprepared.
All teachers should be fully trained and certified for the specialty that they are teaching.
Because some credentialed teachers are hired for positions that they are not qualified or trained for still does not excuse hiring minimally trained TFA teachers for the most challenging students in public schools.
And if you think that your daughter’s experience with a teacher who was credentialed in special education, but not in the sciences she was teaching, provides such an excuse, then we shall have to forever disagree, and I am through responding to you.
Threatened Out West: Sorry, but it wasn’t that I missed it… I was responding to prior comments (in response to the post from Zorba)….
Which post from me? It would help if you could reference the exact post, or learn how to respond to an actual comment so that the rest of us can figure out what you are responding to.
This is just a suggestion, but when a commenter throws out another comment and receives a response, but then says that they are “responding to prior comments (in response to the post from Zorba),) it’s not clear which post of mine you are referencing.
Let me know. Just saying.
Can you say “lawsuit”? I hope there are some savvy parents out there that decide, somehow, to sue the schools and hold the principals responsible. I could never understand why parents don’t sue more often. They have documentation with IEPs. It’s basically a contract. Unfortunately, many of the parents of these students are not familiar with their rights. Same goes for ELL students. So sad how our own country has stopped caring about the future. We’re so “reactive” and not “proactive” … Shame.
Zorba , It has a lot to do with the fact that there are people with a special education credential teaching students in subject areas they have no other experience or qualifications or experience and therefore they are NOT highly qualified, other than they have a special education credential! It also has to do with the fact that states higher teachers with Bachelor degrees to teach and is not really any different path than what TFA is doing, and with more supports. Kudos for your daughter being a valedictorian and an Ivy leaguer. Many parents such as myself struggled with getting our kids a solid foundation academically and had to fight tooth and nail for FAPE and only found it outside the public school system. So there is that connection to unqualified educators and ineffective educators teaching classes if you want some sort of connection to how my kids less than qualified high school teacher ties into the discussion… And how it’s more common than not…
I repeat: “All teachers should be fully trained and certified for the specialty that they are teaching.”
Special educators should no more be teaching science or math (unless they are also trained and qualified in such fields) than science and math teachers should be teaching special education (unless they are also trained and qualified in that).
The ideal, if you have special needs students in a science, social studies, math, etc class, is to have two teachers, one qualified in the subject and one in special education, and the two of them collaborate to teach the class.
Of course, this costs school districts extra money, and they certainly aren’t going to spend the necessary funds. Unfortunately.
I guess that what I am basically saying is there are credentials, and then there are credentials. Because you are credentialed to teach high school physics does not mean that you are qualified to teach English Literature. Or art. Or music. Or special education.
All children deserve to have the best, properly trained and qualified teachers in each grade level/subject area/special needs where applicable. That is not happening any time soon. Again, it’s about the money. Pay the teachers more, stop shoving down their throats all the testing mandates, teaching to the test, and making their jobs (and the very existence of their schools) contingent upon the test results, treat them as professionals, and you will very likely get more people going into teaching.
Zorba, She was co-teaching, but she still wasn’t qualified to be co-teaching a subject she had no experience or knowledge in. Our kiddo never received appropriate remedial instruction in foundational language nor literacy skills needed for a proper foundation in reading and writing; nor received the proper alternative formatted materials that would have been appropriate. Instead, we were forced to locate PROPER and APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION and AT independently and privately, OUTSIDE of the public schools! It’s hard to be supportive of public schools and supposedly credentialed educators or other school “professionals” that treat students and families unprofessionally and do not provide them with BASIC and PROPER FOUNDATIONAL SKILL SETS, and then CONTINUE TO IGNORE THE ISSUES YEAR AFTER YEAR as the GAP WIDENS and the STUDENT IS LEFT FARTHER and FARTHER BEHIND EACH SUBSEQUENT YEAR! Yet when provided with the APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION, this child ACHIEVED BEYOND ANY OF THESE CREDENTIALED EDUCATORS WILDEST EXPECTATIONS! So predeterminations based upon a student’s demographics is less than helpful and perpetuates the school to prison and welfare pipelines already entrenched in today’s educational systems. Generational ILLITERACY is a PERPETUATED by public schools that fail to succeed in their mission to educate the masses! Especially those with the cognitive ability to benefit and succeed!
I understand your frustration, and I’m so sorry your kid had so much trouble. Did they not have a good remedial reading/developmental reading instructor at the school? Because it’s sounds like that was very much needed.
Very sadly, too many public schools “make do” (or are forced to make do) with whoever they can get, which is too often inadequate. After I retired from special education classroom teaching, I did a lot of private tutoring, as well as educational consulting and parent advocacy for special needs kids. And a number of the parents of the kids I tutored asked me if I would please open a private school for kids like theirs. I wish I could have, but at that point I was getting too old to even contemplate this.
For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle has been highly supportive of the SF school principals who went over the head of the SF school board and decided to hire Special Ed teachers from Teach for America. Granted, the teacher shortage is particular onerous; too many reasons here to discuss, but here’s the interesting part. In response to the Chronicle’s original op-ed piece, there were two letters to the editor today, one for the decision and one against. Balanced reporting. So far, so good. The first author rips the teacher’s union motivations, calling it the “self-centered, bullying power teacher’s unions wield.” The second letter, reasonably asserted the need for the most highly qualified teachers for Special Ed, which can’t be provided by TFA, with 5 weeks of teacher training. Okay. But…who wrote the first letter? Someone from Idaho? Why would she care about SF school politics? Well no matter, everyone is entitled to an opinion. Turns out…wait for it…Ms. Teresa Mull from Idaho writes and researches for the Heartland Institute. What do they do?
According to the Heartland Institute (Wiki), “it advocates free market policies.The policy orientation of Heartland has been described as conservative, libertarian, and right wing. The Institute promotes climate change denial, advocates for smoker’s rights, for the privatization of public resources including school privatization, for school vouchers, for lower taxes and against subsidies and tax credits for individual businesses, and against an expanded federal role in health care.” Wow. And they also hate public school teachers.
Just to make sure I got the balanced view, I checked the author of the second letter. He’s local, a Berkeley grad who teaches math to other teachers at UC Berkeley. He may (or may not) belong to the Dark Side of the Heartland Institute (the teacher’s union), but no matter. In the end, which person do I want advocating for my children and my grandchildren’s educational future?
The reason this got me so hot was because I had just dropped off my son at a free (free!) two week jazz band camp, run by two of those terrible, evil, Oakland public school music teachers.These terrible, evil people think so little of children that they actually spend two weeks, full time, teaching kids how to play jazz.Over the summer. For free. Did I mention that it’s free? No money to be made. I mean, who in their right mind would do that for kids? Bill Gates? Sam Walton? The Heartland Institute? Didn’t think so….