Part 2.  You can read Part 1 here.

A Closer Look at Teach for America

Teach for America is a program that recruits hundreds of teachers each year, gives them a four-week boot-camp style summer program, and then places them in school districts in which TFA has contractual agreements.  School systems need to agree to pay $5000 per year for each teacher for a two year period (TFA teachers only commit to 2 years).  For example, Huntsville, Alabama just signed a contract with TFA for $1.9 million dollars to hire TFA recruits.

Tagxedo of this Post on a Closer Look at TFA

Should a school district invest $1.9 million in recruits, many of whom will leave the profession at the end of their two year stint, when in fact, there is not a shortage of teachers in Huntsville.  In fact, nearly 300 teachers were laid off because of lack of funding.  There are at least three reasons that Huntsville should not hire these TFA recruits.

Teachers Talk About TFA

There are many reports out there written by TFA teachers about the destructive effects of the TFA organization, and TFA alums, who have continued in education but in the charter networks that were spawned during the TFA era.

Gary Rubinstein’s blog, which is located on Teach For Us, a network connecting TFA teachers with each other, provides insight into how TFA has grown from 500 recruits in year one to 7,000 in 2011.  Rubinstein says that:

Unfortunately, the landscape in education has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Instead of facing teacher shortages, we have teacher surpluses. There are regions where experienced teachers are being laid off to make room for incoming TFA corps members because the district has signed a contract with TFA, promising to hire their new people. In situations like this, it is hard to say with confidence that these under trained new teachers are really doing less harm than good.

According to Gary Rubinstein, TFA has changed over the years, but not evolved to make it the kind of change agent it once purported to be.  He put it this way:

Twenty years ago TFA was, to steal an expression from the late great Douglas Adams — ‘mostly harmless.’  Then about ten years ago they became ‘potentially harmful.’  Now, in my opinion, they have become ‘mostly harmful.’

Though the change happened so gradually, I hardly noticed it, TFA is now completely different than it was when I joined. I still believe in the original mission of TFA as much as anyone possibly can. The problem is, in my opinion, that TFA has become one of the biggest obstacles in achieving that mission.

TFA has highlighted their few successes so much that many politicians actually believe that first year TFA teachers are effective. They believe that there are lazy veteran teachers who are not ‘accountable’ to their students and who are making a lot of money so we’re better off firing those older teachers and replacing them with these young go-getters.

Rubenstein doesn’t recommend TFA to new college graduates.  He writes that TFA is actually assisting in the destruction of public education.  He write:

So TFA has participated in building a group of ‘leaders’ who, in my opinion, are assisting in the destruction of public education. If this continues, there will soon be, again, a large shortage of teachers as nobody in their right mind would enter this profession for the long haul knowing they can be fired because of an inaccurate evaluation process. And then, of course, TFA can grow more since they will be needed to fill those shortages that the leaders they supported caused.

So if you’re about to graduate college and you want to ‘make a positive difference’ the way I wanted to twenty years ago, you should not do what I did and join TFA. Had TFA evolved with the times, and it’s not too late, I’m hoping they eventually do, then maybe it could have been something that I’d advise new graduates to do.

Maybe they can make it a four year program. I know that this was not the idea of TFA, but I do think that when people teach for two years and then leave, it contributes to the instability of the schools that need the most stability. Maybe by bringing fewer people but having a plan for them to be true leaders with ‘wisdom’ and the ability to analyze the facts, even when those facts are counter to what they’d like them to be, future TFA leaders can be competent enough to handle the responsibilities they’ve been trusted with.

Rubinstein has ideas about how TFA could emerge as a constructive force in education, and teacher education in particular.  As I mentioned above, I was involved as director of Georgia State University’s alternative certification program.  After four years of work, and a full year to study the program, we created a full-time “alternative” which involved new recruits in advanced graduate study in science, science education, special education, and educational psychology.  TEEMS is a program at GSU that is very similar to what Rubinstein proposes as a way to make TFA relevant to current education practice.  He recommends:

TFA becomes a three year program with the first year composed of training, student teaching, substitute teaching, and being paired up as an assistant to a corps member who is in her second year of the program, which is her first (of two) years of teaching. So TFA would become a three year program. One year of training, subbing, and assisting, and two years of teaching. In the second year, these first year teachers would have the benefit of getting assistance from the new first years.

The TFA institute would become obsolete. TFA would partner with universities in their regions and the new corps members would live on campus and be enrolled in a special year-long training program.

Note: TFA in the Atlanta area has partnered with GSU, but nevertheless, uncertified teachers have been hired by several Atlanta area districts.

Read more about Gary Rubinstein’s ideas about fixing TFA here.

Another teacher’s blog that I think is compelling in the story Rachel Levy  tells about her experiences leading her to a ten-year career in teaching, which she intends to return to when her children are raised. In her blog All Things Education she speaks with knowledge and authority about education issues including charter schools, politics, educational reform, high-stakes testing, Rhee-form, school choice, and Teach for America.  It was the last topic that I want to bring in here.  In one of her blog posts, entitled Teach for America: From Service Group to Industry, Levy tells us that she applied for TFA in 1995, but was rejected, so as she says, she headed to NYC and took a job as a paralegal.  But in the next year she took a job in Brooklyn as an after school and substitute teacher.  She was hooked on teaching, and returned to her home, and did a graduate degree in education in ESOL and social studies.  She went on to teach for ten years.

In her opinion (which I totally agree with), TFA makes it possible:

for some corps members to put off pursuing jobs in corporate law and finance until after they have “made a difference” for two years; perhaps at that point corps members and their peers have more distance from undergrad idealism. Perhaps to ease the transition to jobs in the private sector, financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, have established partnerships with TFA, to provide summer internships. Furthermore, TFA has partnerships with hundreds of graduate schools which offer TFA alumni benefits such as two-year deferrals, fellowship, course credits, and waived application fees. With education reform having become the new cause célèbre among hedge fund managers, Oprah, national journalists, and Hollywood types such as Davis Guggenheim, I can’t see TFA losing popularity any time soon. Many TFA applicants should indeed be applauded for their nobility, but I’m not so sure that is the beginning and end of all of their motivations. Is twenty-five percent of Harvard University’s graduating class so purely well-intentioned?

Research on Effectiveness of Uncertified Teachers including TFA

Dr. Philip Kovacs, professor of education at the University of Huntsville has studied the 12 “research” reports the TFA posts on its website.  Of the dozen “studies” Dr. Kovacs ruled out four of the studies as being irrelevant.  Seven of the 12 studies are problematic or mixed, according to Dr. Kovacs.  Several of these studies use the flawed Value Added Measure (VAM) to ‘measure’ student achievement and then link that growth to the performance of the teacher.  The problem here is VAM is widely variable, and scores change like the wind from one year to the next.  The one study that TFA claims shows the effectiveness of their program is a survey of principals opinions of TFA.

As Kovacs points out, there are a number of studies that have shown that uncertified and inexperienced teachers do not do as well as fully licensed and certified teachers, or experienced teachers.

In an extensive study entitled Teacher for America: A Review of the Evidence by professor Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas at Austin, and professor Su Jin Jez of California State University, Sacramento, these researchers concluded that “the lack of a consistent impact, however, should indicate to policymakers that TFA is likely not the panacea that will reduce disparities in educational outcomes.”   In their study, they found that TFA and non-TFA teachers do better with experience.  The problem for TFA is that after two years, 50% of the TFA teachers are gone from teaching, and after year three, 80% have left teaching.  Indeed, they recommend that TFA teachers be hired only after the pool consists of uncertified teachers.  They also suggest that districts consider the recurring costs of TFA, estimated at over $70,000 year.  They suggest that instead of two year commitment, it should be five.

As cited above, the most telling study on the effectiveness of TFA was “Does Teacher Preparation Matter” a peer-reviewed scholarly evaluation.  For example, one of the major findings is:

Although some have suggested that perhaps bright college graduates like those who join TFA may not require professional preparation for teaching, we found no instance where uncertified Teach for America teachers performed as well as standard certified teachers of comparable experience levels teaching in similar settings.

This study did not go over very well at the TFA corporate offices.  The founder of TFA, Wendy Kopp, called any of the peer-reviewed studies “diatribes.”  According to Barbara Miner, in her article Looking Past the Spin: Teach for America, Kopp has an “ongoing enmity toward Darling-Hammond, and Kopp actually wrote a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger opposing Darling-Hammond’s appointment to the state’s Teacher Credentialing Commission.  As Miner suggests, this calls into question the organization’s alleged “uninvolvement in political and policy issues.

Affect on the Morale of the Teachers in Huntsville

If you read what teachers in Huntsville are posting on their blogs, they don’t appear to be pleased that their superintendent’s action to bring TFA teachers to Huntsville to the tune of $1.9 million dollars over the next five years. As one Huntsville teacher put it: “If, however, you are one of the thousands of traditionally trained teachers, fully certified teachers, highly-qualified teachers, who has dedicated your life to the children of our community, there’s not much there for you.

This same teacher wrote on his blog that bring in TFA recruits is entirely unacceptable.  He put it this way:

And when they have at best exactly the same results as the teachers who didn’t cost us $1.9 million to recruit, well, we just need to spend even more, right? Cause giving public funds to a private organization with $309 million dollars in NET assets just makes us feel better than say spending $500 a year on professional development for our teachers in “our lowest-income and highest need schools.” Making the rich, richer isn’t throwing money at a problem, it’s a “good investment.”

I’m sure that “most” of our “highly effective teachers” will feel the love tomorrow as they drive to work for the start of another day of school.

TFA teachers storm into schools with the notion that the most effective teacher is one who is data driven, and that the “methods” they learned in summer school are enough to make sure that students do well on the achievement tests.

Beyond Teach for America: Some Recommendations

Lisa Delpit, scholar, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and Eminent Scholar, Center for Urban Education & Innovation, Florida International University suggests that “freshly minted Ivy League graduates dropping down into poor communities like missionaries in a foreign land often lack that vital bond.”  In her forthcoming book, Multiplication is for White People, Delpit argues that schools with populations of low-income children need to have teachers who see beyond the test, and engage students in a wide range of activities, and especially teachers that do not rely on worksheets or a curriculum that only there to prepare kids for “the” test.

We can not continue to hire uncertified teachers not only because there is a surplus of experienced and licensed teachers, but because it is not an effective way to prepare teachers.  Would you hire unlicensed doctors for urban communities and have them treat your children?

Here are some ideas that might help Teach for America become a realistic teacher education program.

1.  TRIPS Model. I would use a model we used with the Atlanta Public Schools, and one that was used in other large urban settings, and that would be follow the model called TRIPS. This was a collaboration with AFT, the Atlanta Public Schools, Georgia State University and Clark-Atlanta University.  In this model, we recruited graduates in math, science or foreign language, and engaged them in a summer institute.  They were then placed in an Atlanta high school and assigned to a master teacher as their mentor.  The new teacher was given a reduced teaching load (from 5 preps to 4).  The mentor was also given a reduced teaching load, and their schedules were arranged so that they had a double planning period together, and the mentor was also free when one of the new teacher’s classes was in session.  Using co-teaching, and mentoring, the two worked together, with other faculty in the department, during the year.

2.  TEEMS Model. A second model that TFA might consider is the Intern/Mentor model which got its start at Harvard and Stanford in the 1960s.  In this model, TFA would recruit college graduates and like the TRIPS program provide an initiation or summer institute at either local or national sites (local would be preferred).  The Interns would be enrolled in a TEEMS like program at a local university which would lead to a Masters degree and certification.  The TFA intern would be placed in a middle school during the Fall semester, and a high during the Spring semester, not as a full time teacher, but as a paid Intern under the supervision of fully licensed mentor teachers.  Funding would be provided by TFA, Corporations and Foundations, and state funding if available.  For example, in Georgia, if the candidate is a citizen of Georgia, then they are eligible to apply for a HOPE Scholarship.  In this model, which is very similar to the TEEMS model at Georgia State University, and I might add, and most universities in the nation, we set up a voluntary service program, but in this case the uncertified are provided with the kind of preparation that leads to a successful and effective career in teaching.

3. The Gary Rubinstein Model.  A former TFA teacher, Mr. Rubinstein has proposed a model which is similar to TEEMS, but he suggests that TFA become a three year program.  The first year would be composed of training, student teaching, substitute teaching and being paired up as an assistant to a corp member in the second year. He suggests that TFA partner with universities (TFA does that now because of certification laws in most states) to create a year long program (similar to TEEMS).  What I like about Rubinstein’s model is that he extends it to a three year program in which the organization (TFA and the university) commit to work in some way with the teachers in the early stages of their career.  You can read more about his ideas here, but he also says that this will not happen because TFA is so attached to the two-year program.

UPDATE:

Right after this blog post was published,, Anthony Cody posted a guest article by Jameson Brewer that relates specifically this and the last post.  He is a traditionally trained educator from Valdosta State University, but is now a 2010 Metro-Atlanta corps member teaching high school social studies in the Atlanta Public Schools.  The title of the article is Hyper-accountability, Burnout and Blame: A TFA Corps Member Speaks

What do you think about TFA?  Should TFA continue to recruit and support the idea that uncertified teachers should fill America’s urban and rural classrooms?