At the start of my career, the news that I was teaching in an urban public school was invariable met with the response, “Cool! Teach for America, right?” As if going through TFA were the only reason a fresh young college grad would concede to such a flat and ambitionless career. Somehow, the fact that I chose to pursue a degree in education seemed to disappoint people. Upon receipt of this information, many potential new friends dismissed me as unmotivated, mediocre, and not worth their time. Shocking though this may be, popular opinion of career teachers was, and is not exactly positive.
Although I will freely admit I am not a fan of Teach for America, I will say that I know and love many brilliant and dedicated people who have pursued work with TFA either as an entry point to a career in education or a learning experience prior to further study in graduate school. I think the program does help as a stopgap measure in areas that have low pay and poor teaching conditions, and therefore have difficulty attracting quality, credentialed educators. The problem is that people have come to view TFA as a permanent fix, rather than actually tackling the underlying problems of poverty and inequity that led to the teacher shortage in the first place. In addition, die-hard supporters of TFA tend to inflate the program’s impact and “suck the air out of any public discussion about restructuring and improving the profession.”
The issue that has disturbed me the most about TFA however, was recently addressed by TFA Alum Marie Levey-Pabst in an article titled “Will the Teach for America Elite Save the Poor?” She writes, “What I don't hear people talk about as much, which bothers me, is the fact that students of color really become ‘training material’ for mostly middle and upper class white ‘leaders.’” The idea that the privileged, white elite can fix all the problems in our education system if only they spend about two years seeing what life is like on the wrong side of the tracks is an absurd notion. Why is it ok for our nation's poorest, most disenfranchised neighborhoods to serve is a training ground for the next leaders in educational policy while wealthy suburban areas enjoy their pick of only the most seasoned educators? (This is especially frustrating in light of recent events, revealing corruption and misrepresentation of performance data in charter organizations and school systems run by TFA alums.)
My friends and fellow teachers Gemma Cooper-Novack and Masha Wasilewski describe this dilemma as the “charity model vs. the equity model” of education. It seems as though, in embracing and promoting TFA, the U.S. has settled for a charity model, in which quality education for the poorest children becomes the responsibility, should they choose to accept it, of the wealthy elite. We should be working instead towards an equity model, in which quality education is the right of all children, and the responsibility falls on all of us to create and maintain the conditions necessary for such education to take place.
Hey Whit - I know I work for TFA, and I don't totally disagree with some of your comments, but I would encourage you to read more about TFA's research record and results.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teachforamerica.org/about-us/research/
As someone who works on their Research team, I know it's tempting to cover up unfavorable research and promote the more favorable stuff. However, we consider it a main part of our role and responsibilities to not "drink the kool aid" and look at everything objectively. I think we do a really good job trying to 1) understand what the research says about us, 2) evaluate the strength and the quality of the research and 3) make changes where we need to. I don't think you would find anyone, in the TFA leadership, who honestly believes that is is the "charity" model. That may be how it plays in the media, with researchers who have grudges (as does Diane Ravitch), and popular conversation, but the people in TFA really believe that we are NOT the solution, but 1% of the solution. We're all in this fight together - improving education for ALL - and we should remember that.
We're not perfect; then again, no one is. We're the first to admit that, and constantly work to make changes to our training, support and development to ensure we're doing the best job possible. I don't know if you could say the same thing to traditional teacher cert programs and/or district professional development programs. However, you'll see in the most rigorous studies, we do a good job - and most of the time, better than traditional certification programs. We provide better training and support, and our kids do better in the classroom. We can argue about teaching as a career and the 2 year retention problem. I go back and forth about what side I fall on. However, at the end of the day, if kids are getting a better education - why does it matter? Isn't that what we all want - for kids to get a better education? These kids aren't training material - the research shows we're making a difference in their educational paths and their lives.
As usual, Whitney, you are right on track! And by the way...HOORAH for public school people :-)
ReplyDeleteOh, and I have a doc that might be helpful to read. It goes over every study that has been done on TFA, links to the actual studies, results, methodology, etc. Includes the good, the bad and the ugly. I'm happy to share it with you, if you'd like to read the research.
ReplyDelete@ Alissa: "However, at the end of the day, if kids are getting a better education - why does it matter? Isn't that what we all want - for kids to get a better education?"
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for Whitney, but it seems to me that that's not all that matters. If kids are getting a better education, but our institutions and education system are still structurally flawed, then raising test scores and performance in some fraction of our schools seems like a hollow victory. If we continue to have a drastically stratified, two-tier system of education, then efforts to make that stratification seem not quite so bad without addressing the deep, fundamental issues with the system seem morally suspect to me.
And perhaps this is more a factor of how TFA plays out in the media and popular conversation, but that's where public debate about education happens. The public's understanding of TFA's mission is not incidental--it's fundamental to a general understanding of the state of education in the US and what reasonably can and should be done about it. It's very clear that the public perception of teachers is conflicted at best. We can certainly go back and forth over teaching as a career vs. a two-year fly-by stint, but I'm more interested in knowing the degree to which TFA's promotion of its success affects public perception of career teachers. TFA teachers may be effective, but if it becomes even harder to recruit career teachers, then any good they do will be more than cancelled out by the damage done to teaching as a profession. Which will not help kids get a better education.
TFA, and other TFA-like entities, do provide pipelines for potentially good teachers, many of whom do stay, to enter the profession. They also, I think, do provide a valuable service in having future "leaders" in the field of education gain at least some experience, first hand, in the classrooms and in the schools that they'll be making decisions about. Statistics provide a useful overview, but I don't think that the perspective gained from actually teaching can be duplicated or replaced. However, the "revolving door" policy that seems to be a trend in education these days, and of which TFA is just one example, seems to strike at the heart of schools being community institutions (I think Diane Ravitch talks about this.). Schools are, in addition to being entities that serve the greater community, communities themselves. As such, continuity and stability are paramount. There is something extremely unsettling about the idea that your teacher, let alone your school, might not be around next year.
ReplyDeleteHi Whitney, thanks for this! I wrote a bit and then it got lost in cyberspace. But mostly what I was thinking was that it makes me sad that TFA has caused people to look down upon career teachers. I wonder if this is part of how teachers lose ambition because there aren't very many structures in place--other than the obvious goal of helping children--that encourage teachers to improve. Might there be any ways to solve this, besides merit pay based on test scores (which I don't think is a great option)?
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to bet, though, that TFA receives more than 1% of the media coverage of education reform in the last twenty years. That's a study I'd like to see done. :>)
ReplyDelete