Gary Rubinstein was one of the earliest corps members of Teach for America. He knows it’s routines well. He has long been critical of the inadequacies of its teacher preparation program, which offers a five-week training to young college graduates before they start teaching real classes. As he explains here, the teachers in training get only 20 hours of practice teaching, which he thinks should be eighty hours.
The TFA training is about to be watered down considerably, as the recruits will be remotely taught this summer.
He writes:
I learned yesterday that TFA has chosen not to cancel the 2020 Institute, but instead to hold it remotely. So this means that TFA has weighed out the pros and cons of cancelling training vs. remote training and decided that the reward of remote training outweighs the risks of remote training. I see this as a huge mistakes that harms children. But for this decision to harm children, there are three other parties that share responsibility. I will outline who these other parties are in a minute.
Teach For America surely knows that a remote training with no actual student teaching will produce extremely unprepared teachers. And those teachers will each teach 30 (or up to 150) students next year and each of those students will suffer for having such an untrained teacher. I don’t know what alternatives TFA explored, but there was another option besides just cancelling the institute altogether. If I were in charge I would take some of the $300 million that TFA has in the bank and make this summer a remote training for teacher assistants. Next year will be a challenge for teachers and having 3,000 teacher assistants who are knowledgeable about the different remote learning options can be very useful. And TFA could pay the salaries of these 3,000 teacher assistants too. This way, the 2020 corps members can actually be helping improve education and there would not be student victims who have completely untrained teachers as their lead teachers. But this is not the decision TFA went with. They are comfortable sending teachers with zero hours of student teaching into real schools next year with students who have just suffered the emotional, physical, and educational trauma of the previous six months.
But as I mentioned, TFA is not the sole culprit here.
He also blames the states that approve contracts with TFA and the principals that hire “teachers” who have never actually taught anyone before entering their classrooms.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just when you thought teaching couldn’t possibly get better!
Yes. The districts that hire these teachers and pay extra for their inexperience are a problem, in addition to all of the billionaires who are cheerleaders for the idea that anyone with a college degree can teach if they are indocrinated to Doug Lemov’s no- nonsense discipline techniques for managing children who are mostly poor and brown or black.
If my experience was any indication, 17 weeks of student teaching did not prepare me for my own class. Even our best schools do not prepare us for emersion in the profession the way we do young teachers.
No first year teachers should teach the full load of an experienced teacher. It is too intense. We should have an extended period of internship.
All of which points out how abysmal the TFA training must be.
The entire enterprise of teacher education preparation fails to meet the needs of developing teachers and thus their students (CAEP and DOE standards dictate so much of what we do in teacher ed prep). I have been a public school teacher, a teacher educator, a professional developer (not trainers…despise that word as well), and currently teach doctoral and Ed. S. students curriculum and instructional theory to practice. I also work as an educational consultant and have witnessed all kinds of teaching practices in districts across this country (most of which focuses on test preparation in some form or inevitability). The only way any of this ends is when parents, teachers, caregivers and others who care about our children come together and end the requirements of high-stakes standardized testing. This may seem off topic, but it is not. TFA exists because Edreformers point to the test to say that what practiced, experienced and educated teachers do is completely unsuccessful (they point to NAEP, SAT, PISA, state testing data, etc.),and because the data is consistent, TEACHERS are the failures; SCHOOLS are the failures; and PARENTS are the failures. They do not want to point to poverty, and systemic and structural inequity and racism as the cause of “failure.” And even when kids are developing and growing and teachers manage to close their doors and really teach their kiddos, they get no credit if the testing data does not reflect that “learning.” TFA trainees (and that is what they are because there is NO professional development or meaningful teaching and learning happening with these KIDS) are a problem but they are not THE problem. They are a symptom of the problem.
Michelle Tenam-Zemach, regardless of your alleged experience in public education, I disagree with this statement that you made in your comment:
“The entire enterprise of teacher education preparation fails to meet the needs of developing teachers”
There is a teacher prep program that has a high success rate. While all teacher prep programs that are labeled “Uban Residencies” may not be equal, the best ones are doing an incredible job.
I suggest you read at least chapter ten in “The Teacher Wars” by Dana Goldstein where the author compares teacher prep programs pointing out that evidence proves Urban Residencies were the most successful programs and TFA the worst by a very WIDE margin.
Back in 1975, I earned my teaching credential through a full time, year-long urban residency program out of Cal Poly Pomona. I was placed full time in a 5th-grade classroom in a local school district with a master teacher for one complete school year while taking the required classes at Cal Poly in the evenings and in the summer. I was also paid a stipend (not much, but better than nothing) for the work in my master teacher’s classroom.
What I learned served me well for the next thirty years until I retired.
As far as I know TFA has never committed to producing legitimate teachers. Their mission is not about professionalism. It is about producing a system of temps to fill teaching slots while TFA gains access to public money. The schools that employ them are to blame for accepting less than qualified associates to man their classrooms. Like the charters that open and close like daylilies, the TFAers ebb and flow like the tides. Most TFA members view teaching as a “gig,” not a profession, but what our countries needs are professional teachers that plan to pursue teaching as a career. These are the teachers than can provide stability to schools and students’ lives long term.
CX: our country needs
“the teachers in training get only 20 hours of practice teaching, which he thinks should be eighty hours.”
I’d say it should be significantly more than even 80 hours.
To get a provisional NY State teaching certificate, I had to teach for six weeks in a school. At 6 classes a day, that was roughly 180 hours.
That did not include the time spent giving practice lessons to other adults in teaching methods classes, which are really no substitute for teaching students at any rate.
Watering down the Water
Watering the water
Soldering the solder
Diluting the dilution
The TFA solution
And I would say even 180 hours as nowhere near sufficient
Come to think of it, it must have been more than six weeks because it was most of the fall school term but was a long time ago so I can’t remember exactly.
HORRORS!
TFA is a NIGHTMARE.
In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, they “trained” science teachers in a school without electricity. Seriously.
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We figgered, if TFA kin do it, why caint we?
The headline should not say, “. . .train its new group remotely . . . ” I think “remotely train its new group . . .” more accurately portrays this idiocy!
Remotely Trained
The training was remote
And folks remotely trained
If training were a boat
Then boat would not be drained
Let’s stop calling teacher preparation “training.” Teachers are not dogs. Here, my outline of what a first-rate program for preparing English teachers looks like:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/what-should-be-taught-in-an-english-teacher-preparation-program/
How much of this do you think people will get in five weeks of TFA boot camp, in person OR online?
There are those who think that training to be an English teacher requires less. They show by that their Trumpian lack of understanding of what a good English teacher must know and be able to do.
TFA Training
Pavlov’s dog
Was trained to drool
Wendy’s crop
Was trained to “school”
LOL. Fish out of water can’t even do that, SomeDAM.
TFA Teacher Training
The training of the Rhee
Is something you should see
The question here for thee
To bee or not to bee?
Just picture a bunch of TFA teacher trainees around a bee hive practicing their lessons.
Remote training for TFA means they will be recruiting from prisons, too, with a focus on criminals serving time for statutory rape and/or child abuse.