tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post2144340582648507565..comments2024-01-04T05:57:26.735-06:00Comments on Education Policy Blog: Hosted by the Forum on the Future of Public Education: Looking Past the Spin: Teach for AmericaCraig A. Cunninghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18160288758906798678noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-10888409223277345262010-04-26T12:15:46.460-05:002010-04-26T12:15:46.460-05:00I think this is a fair question: If you don't ...I think this is a fair question: If you don't think Teach for America is spendng the money it raises as effectively as it could (1) is it your place to complain about that? and (2) can you offer any specific suggestions for how to spend a couple million dollars?<br /><br />I think it is fair to criticize TFA, but we aren't Wendy Kopp's boss while we are Obama's, Duncan's, your local superintendent's, etc. If TFA is going to waste resources then let it, we have bigger fish to try by ending teacher tenure, reducing class sizes, recruiting better teachers, promoting vouchers--whatever it is you believe it.<br /><br />My primary field of research is development (secondary is education), and we spent way too much time criticizing NGOs in development (e.g. One Laptop Per Child, Millennium Promise) and not enough time celebrating good ones and fixing up our government agencies. It seems the same is true in education.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10230344931186858123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-89759146669568304142010-04-19T21:41:20.008-05:002010-04-19T21:41:20.008-05:00Well said, Anne. The scariest part about TFA is t...Well said, Anne. The scariest part about TFA is the way the media touts it (explicitly or implicitly) as a key in solving public education's problems. <br /><br />There are 3.3 million teachers in the US. There are something like 340 certified high schools in the state of Georgia and 80 certified physics teachers. If our answer is merely to improve teacher quality (especially with a program like TFA), then we've already lost. <br /><br />That the likes of Wendy Kopp make so much money on a program that, as Anne noted, is not reforming anything, strongly suggest that they have a financial incentive (i.e. not what's best for kids) to push for funding that might otherwise go toward real reform.<br /><br />I don't despise TFA. I've worked with some very talented TFAers while teaching in DCPS. But this is not a long-term solution. I'm afraid too many people in TFA are in it for the wrong reasons. I've worked with far too many administrators who did their two years in TFA and then went on to grossly mismanage a teaching staff because they were far more interested in showing everyone how quickly they could rise through the system than they were on doing real teaching.<br /><br />Teaching is a true profession that deserves more respect from the public, not less. If we send the message that any kid with a college degree can do what we desperately need experienced professionals doing, then we're working backwards.james boutinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09625944306253098621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-54584324427328937832010-04-19T09:34:11.190-05:002010-04-19T09:34:11.190-05:00The definition of reform---strengthening what work...The definition of reform---strengthening what works and fixing what doesn't. A chronic problem that needs to be fixed in urban schools is the relative inexperience and high turnover of teachers. Teach for America’s recruitment model attracts some of the "best and brightest" from elite private and upper-tier public universities to teach in urban (and rural) schools for 2 years. TFA uses savvy branding and cultivates relationships with powerful political networks and high-profile funders. Recruits probably do become more empathetic, knowledgeable citizens and some do stay in education, though my understanding is that most go into administrative or other higher-paying positions outside the classroom. So while TFA should be praised for its business prowess and Peace Corps-like contributions (and individual recruits for their dedication), it shouldn’t be held up as a significant reform agent because its very mission does not fix the chronic problem of inexperience or turnover. <br /><br />Therefore, I don't see this post as another “attack” on TFA, but rather a way to ask hard and necessary questions. As with most controversies, skeptics often serve an important purpose---to encourage everyone to be more honest, transparent, rational and realistic. Star-struck politicians, think tanks, TV pundits and editorial boards need to be more objective and better analyze the privatized efforts they promote, like TFA and similarly-positioned charter schools/private management companies, to determine if they have the capacity and expertise to truly reform public education or if they are simply small-scale innovations, however well-meaning and successful, that work more around the edges--<br /><br />We need to be asking more big-picture questions---------<br /> <br />What WORKS within the traditional public school system and how can it be strengthened? <br /><br />What are the solutions and strategies that can fix problems in urban schools, such as inexperience and turnover, at a SCALE that will make a difference for the majority of students who are enrolled in them? <br /><br />Where is the definitive COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS of this increasingly popular privatization movement (organizations like TFA, charter schools, private management companies, etc.)---i.e. what is the return on investment of public dollars in these organizations in large-scale reform terms---strengthening what works and fixing what doesn’t?Anne Geigerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12523675841351318822noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-71468460423960942212010-04-18T21:05:43.621-05:002010-04-18T21:05:43.621-05:00On the question of whether TFAers abandon educatio...On the question of whether TFAers abandon education after two years, Andy Rotherham says that more than two thirds of TFAers stay in education after their initial two-year hitch - more than one third remain as teachers and others stay as school administrators or work in government or nonprofits related to education.Arthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00819037382464587673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-85826715537571494812010-04-18T17:43:10.757-05:002010-04-18T17:43:10.757-05:00Hi Ken,
I am deeply impressed by you as a teache...Hi Ken, <br /><br />I am deeply impressed by you as a teacher (from the way you write and the awards you receive) and have nothing but respect for your perspectives and arguments in general. <br /><br />But there is something else going on here with the level of your arguments. Your language and your passion on this one issue is way way greater than the issues you claim to have with them. Look at your language: TFA teachers are in fact not “volunteers”; they are paid just like any other teacher under the exact same union contract as everyone else. And their work in the classroom is not a “way station” anymore than the hundreds of thousands of others who pass through urban schools. I am skeptical that your main argument against TFA is that they take up too many resources given what they do. Goodness gracious, the amount of fiscal waste and drain in the educational system is horrific. The NYC “rubber rooms” comes immediately to mind. All I am trying to say in my comments is that the attack on TFA is coming from someplace else; my gut is probably, as the author wrote, having to do with the corporatization of education and the conservative whos-who surrounding TFA. But those are different issues and should be handled with different arguments. <br /><br />P.s. I hate the comments section too as it eats my stuff lots as well.Dan W. Butinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17079818445749641221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-14407621982527171022010-04-18T17:21:32.165-05:002010-04-18T17:21:32.165-05:00Dan
I wrote a long response to your comment, but...Dan<br /><br /><br />I wrote a long response to your comment, but somehow blogger ate it, and I do not have time to reconstruct the entire thing. My primary concern with TFA is that I do not think we solve problems by taking in people who view teaching as a 2-year stop on the way to something else. For what it is worth, I was accepted into the Peace Corps and decided not to go for precisely the same reason. My niece did (Central African Republic) and felt she did some good. I am sure she did. I am sure that the enthusiasm and dedication of many of the TFA volunteers offers something better than staffing the room with an unqualified substitute. But that is not a solution problems that concern both of us in our commitment to public education.<br /><br />I think you are unfair in calling this a hatchet job, either towards Barbara Miner or especially towards me. I will acknowledge that you have a personal relationship with some of the figures which may color your reaction, as my experience of the impact of turnover and its impact on a school's culture has on my mine. <br /><br />I am more than aware of the problems of urban education: I live just outside DC, and teach in an adjacent district with many of the problems of the typical urban setting. Nevertheless, I think the resources that TFA applies might be better applied to those willing to commit for longer than two years as a way station. That is my principle criticism of TFA. I am pleased that over time they have lengthened the preparation before placement, and increased the support during placement. I still think the preparation is insufficient, but I also note that many states are turning to sources of teachers that are even less rigorous than TFA. <br /><br />We are going to disagree on the value of TFA. I respect your commitment to public education. I would hope you would also respect mine. <br /><br />FWIW - that someone can make much more doing something else does not impress me - when I left my managerial job in data processing in 1994 to become a teacher I did not reach the same level in nominal dollars until around 2004, and I still have not recovered the purchasing power I had when I became a teacher. Most of the teachers in my building could make more doing something else - after all, we have precisely the same skills cited by the one young lady now in St. Louis.<br /><br />I think you do Barbara Miner a disservice. I know you do me one.<br /><br />Peace.teacherkenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02225551101423123044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-28405728052553857972010-04-18T16:27:59.632-05:002010-04-18T16:27:59.632-05:00Hi Ken,
I’m sorry, but this is a hatchet job. T...Hi Ken, <br /><br />I’m sorry, but this is a hatchet job. The key question is not what TFA or TFA teachers do or don’t do, but compared to what else is out there. The author’s argument, and your post, is a set up: if you disagree with your arguments, it is as if we are for high turnover or for high executive salaries or for unseemly political influence. I am for none of these things. And you are still inaccurate. <br /><br />300,000 teachers leave the profession every year. That’s 15% of the workforce. Richard Ingersoll’s work in the last decade, moreover, has shown that it is just as much about teachers transferring in and out. Added together, we’re talking more than half a million teachers needing to be hired every year. TFA’s 4,000 is nothing. <br /><br />And, if anyone on this blog needs to be told, the numbers for urban and rural schools is double the national average when it comes to teacher attrition. This has nothing to do with TFA. This is a demand and supply problem that superintendents and principals have to deal with all the time. Some urban schools and school systems have 50-80% attrition every single year. The research is there. <br /><br />We can agree to disagree about the best way to prepare teachers and whether TFA does or does not do that. But I, as a current dean of a school of education, wish I had six support staff per location supporting my alumni, as TFA does. I don’t begrudge TFA; I simply watch how they support their teachers and learn a little from them, as I do with every other initiative I feel has value. <br /><br />Finally, as I’ve written about before, I am “biased” because I was – for the sake of this article – one of the individuals namelessly referred to of sharing the empty office space donated smack in the middle of mid-town Manhattan. I knew and worked alongside Richard and Wendy way before they even liked each other. We all made $25,000 a year. Every single staff member. For the first two years of the organization’s existence. (I left after that.) If Wendy makes $325,000 now, good for her. We all wondered when she would leave the organization for a better deal somewhere else. She never has. <br /><br />I could do a much longer post, but this article is to me another standard attack on TFA that has absolutely no context or history of the realities of the statistics of urban education. TFA is far from perfect. As is much of urban education. But this article is a story that was written way before this author ever got in her car to drive to St. Louis. <br /><br />DanDan W. Butinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17079818445749641221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-54557471592748749632010-04-18T14:14:37.600-05:002010-04-18T14:14:37.600-05:00As a successful business person I know that I woul...As a successful business person I know that I would not be anywhere without my teachers. I grew up in Miami, FL in a very large urban district. We may not have been wealthy but we benefited from the era when women in large numbers sought careers in education. We all know that many stayed until they married and/or had children or their husbands became more successful.It may have been 2, 3 or 10 years. My favorite gov't teacher worked for 5 years to earn money for law school and HE became a judge. That was bad? None of us cared--as long as kids were taught, we were happy. When I graduated from college in 1971 I wanted to be anything a women didn’t do: lawyer, business leader, business owner, CEO, scientist. <br /><br />1971 was the cusp of that major work force change. Forty years later, young people no longer enter the education field in large #'s--they have so many choices. We know the avg. GPA of all Ed majors across the USA may be (a lot) less than a 3.5. Teaching is a noble profession and so why should it matter how we recruit new teachers thru TFA or New Teacher Project or Troops for Teachers or college Ed programs--we need smart, qualified teachers. The fact is that once we recruit them, we should try to get them to stay. <br /><br />Does anyone know how long an Ed grad who accepts a job in an urban school stays in that job? Does anyone know how many Ed grads even apply for jobs in our urban and rural schools? We have the data on TFA because they value data but no one mentions this issue for non TFA teachers. Teach For America teachers join the unions and maybe one day one of them will become a Union President like Randi Weingarten who was a lawyer and like Wendy Kopp who runs TFA, also makes a six figure salary plus lucrative benefits I am sure. As she should. She works hard for children every day. She is educated, runs a large organization and manages many constituents. We should not begrudge them their hard earned pay!<br /><br />I have worked hard to help our local urban and near urban schools get better with more resources, better teachers and more awareness in our community. I mentor teachers, some Teach For America teachers and others not and principals and district staff. We can't all be classroom teachers but we all know the value of a good one and the value of mentoring as a form of teaching too. <br /><br />I for one am all about attracting the best and brightest from Ed schools or other majors like Science, math, music, English, Spanish and helping them succeed so our children succeed. We need passion and compassion and we need smart people sharing their wisdom with our children.<br /><br />Maybe the Ed schools of the USA ought to learn from TFA and see what they are doing to get so many young people passionate about considering education as a profession when they were unable to even attract them to their education schools. The majority of Teach For America teachers come from our large state universities, bastions for Ed programs for centuries. To me Teach For America is the Peace Corps for the 21st century and the war on poverty we are fighting is in the urban and rural centers of our country. The only way out is a quality education. <br /><br />It is all about the children and what we can do to give them a life of possibility.<br />We should stop the bickering over is Teach For America a good way to attract teachers or not and welcome these bright young people into the profession gladly. Maybe they will wake up and be proud and glad they became teachers and who will care 5 years or 50 years from now whether they came as Ed majors or through an alternative introduction as long as they were a good teacher!<br /><br />For once parent and teacher and union, Teach For America and Troops for Teachers and the New Teacher Project and universities and colleges around the country let’s get on the side of kids and their education needs and work together to make a difference. We should have the best school system in the world not the most polarized. Our kids deserve better.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-83013529512650250332010-04-18T11:31:04.308-05:002010-04-18T11:31:04.308-05:00The world does not divide neatly into 21 year olds...The world does not divide neatly into 21 year olds who really want a lifelong career in teaching and 21 year olds who go into teaching through TFA.<br /><br />Nobody really believes that sending small numbers of high achieving and highly motivated 21 year olds from elite colleges is by itself going to solve all of America's educational problems. Setting up and knocking down straw men is beyond pointlessness.Arthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00819037382464587673noreply@blogger.com