Parents--Experience with Teach for America?

Parents Forum
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<p>As a certified teacher who has taught in Camden (a very poor area of south Jersey), I understand some of the underlying bitterness in these posts. Here it is: I myself am a highly trained professional (Masters, years of classroom experience) and am committed to the profession. Imagine this: I am teaching for years, and then a very privileged, usually upper-class child with no life experience not to mention no job experience, swoops down and ‘teaches.’ Naturally she is terrible. Ok. But by her/his OWN admission, she is not here for the long haul at all. Does she want to seek to improve so that maybe in 10 years she can become a master teacher (in our profession, it is generally acknowledged that it takes about that long to really learn the ropes)? No, she is here essentially so it will look good on her resume and for a couple of gap years. In other words, this is not real to her. She is not of my world. She does not need to do this to pay the mortgage or put food on her children’s plates. She does not need to really deal with adminstration because by her own admission she is there for only two years. ALl she has to do is say, “Just two years, just two years.” She does not make any long and lasting connection to the students (I still see my students ten years later. I ask them what they’re doing about their career, their lives, etc.) By her own admission (this said by several parents in this site) she is there purely so that she can USE this ‘experience’ in order to go on to bigger and better things and perhaps one day be in charge of policy that impacts me. HOw can I NOT be insulted? How can I NOT be resentful? There is a VERY REAL class conflict going on here.</p>

<p>Let me put this in perspective for you. Let’s say you’re a doctor. Mr Obama decides his daughters would like to play at doctor for a couple of years because they will eventually be in politics and be attorney general or whatever making decisions that will impact you for the rest of your life. So straight out of college, without any training or experience, just because they’re connected and well-spoken, they ‘become’ a doctor in an inner city hospital. They are terrible at it. Ok, that’s to be expected. It’s delusional to think they would be anything else. But they have no investment. They’re not there for the long haul. It’s really a game to them so their resume will look good. You are there for 20-30 years because you care about the patients and also because you really have no choice–you need the money to support your family. But they are there because they think it will look good to the Powers That Be. They can afford to leave any time. And what about the patients? Oh yeah ,them. They have to suffer with these privileged children’s incredible inexperience just because these privileged people want a good resume. Who cares about the patients? They’re drudges too–they’re inner city patients. The privileged ‘doctors’ only are there for two years. And then they move on to bigger and better things than you and those inconsequential inner city patients.</p>

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<p>Wow. That’s a lot of bitterness to choose to carry around. But thanks for putting it all in perspective for us. And interesting to see the political biases at play here. And, if I might add - TFA recruits do not tend to be people who are OK with being “terrible” at anything.</p>

<p>

Um, if you’ll pardon the expression - prove it. You know nothing of my daughter, her life experience (plenty), job experience (2 part-time job since she’s been 16 years old), or what is “real” to her. My d is one data point, as are you. So, for what it’s worth, here goes: she’s tutored since high school. Four years of inner-city tutoring in college. Many hours of volunteer work in areas where some folks should apparently wear bullet-proof vests (“privileged” though she is, she doesn’t have one).</p>

<p>Your post, and the other negative ones on this thread, will certainly be helpful to her. TFA recruits know that there’s an undercurrent of hostility (or in your case, a river of it) among some experienced teachers. My kid’s a problem solver - she’ll find a way to work even with people like you.</p>

<p>My d has worked hard for a record that would have made her competitive for almost any law or grad school in this country; ditto many service organizations. She didn’t fall into TFA because she’s “privileged.” She is one TFA recruit who is at odds with your pre-conceived notions. I wonder if there are any others?</p>

<p>And I’ve gotta say - your metaphor with the “play doctor” thing is just - beyond ludicrous.</p>

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<p>PS–I re-read my post and I see it sort of gathering anger and resentment as it goes along. I didn’t intend for it to sound quite so ****ed off and I apologize for the tone. I realize many of these young people have genuine altruistic feelings. And that is only to be praised. I guess my resentment (which must be greater than I realized since it came out as I wrote) is that if they really cared about teaching in the inner city or other underserved areas, nothing is preventing them from getting their certifications and teaching there. I think what gets my goat is the underlying assumption that teaching is not really a profession–that anyone can just step in there and teach and all they need is enthusiasm and willingness, including a 22 year old with very limited training and not even a desire to stay in the profession. We would not have this attitude for a lot of other professions, such as a doctor or a lawyer or an air traffic controller. In order to get my job in Camden I had to go through an extensive interview process, demonstrate competence in the subject area I taught with standardized tests, demonstrate competence in the classroom with two lesson plans taught in front of the superintendent, principal and hiring committee. I had to compete with about 400-500 other applicants for the position. Camden wants the best for its children too. </p>

<p>ANd that is the other thing. What I hear is the assumption that our lowest classes are not deserving of the best nor should they expect the best. THey should be grateful for a youngster who doesn’t even commit to be there for them three years later and who doesn’t particularly want to be there even now. It is really really really harmful for the children being served that they would be taught by someone with very limited experience and no desire to stay there.</p>

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<p>Wow again. I guess there will always be people who see things in absolute opposition to my viewpoint.

I’ll say it again. Prove it. Shall we denigrate all the traditionally-certified teachers who quit for various reasons after a few years, too?</p>

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<p>frazzled1–Again, I’m sorry for the hostility of my words in my post. And it sounds like your daughter is more committed to teaching. And you’re absolutely right, I do not know your daughter, and she is only one example. But if she is interested in teaching, why doesn’t she just…become a teacher?</p>

<p>I don’t really understand a couple of things --why is the metaphor of the doctor ridiculous? Is it because you believe being a doctor requires years of training but being a teacher does not? Is it because you believe being an inexperienced doctor might negatively impact people’s lives but being an inexperienced teacher cannot? Or what? Also, I don’t really understand what you mean about politics. For the record, I’m a democrat. Is acknowledging there is an extensive class system in America politics?</p>

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<p>Prove what? Look, it sounds very much like your own daughter is a very caring person. I’m not talking about your own daughter. I’m talking about TFA. But i have to say that, again, if your daughter wants to become a teacher, nothing is preventing her from getting her certification, working as a student teacher, taking the Praxis, interviewing, and becoming a teacher. Nothing is preventing her from going to highly needed areas.</p>

<p>Here is a post from JHS:<br>
“The most important thing to recognize about TFA, I think, is that it is NOT about getting smart, well-educated people to become public school teachers. Its rate of conversion of participants to teachers approaches 0%. The paradigmatic TFA success story would be someone who went through the program, then became a centimillionaire on Wall St., funded his own Senate campaign, and was sympathetic to public education (and, of course, TFA) as a member of the Senate Education Committee. In other words, TFA is all about the Establishment, and promoting TFA… TFA is a service club and networking system for people on their way to bigger and better things.”</p>

<p>As you can see, and this is absolutely true: 'Its rate of conversion to teachers is practically zero. It is not about training future teachers. It’s about training people to use the teaching profession as their own stepping stone to become a 'centimillionaire on Wall St." It is a 'networking system for people on their way to bigger and better things."</p>

<p>And that’s not insulting to my profession because…? That’s not classist because…? That’s not antithetical to the needs of the underprivileged children because…?</p>

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<p>“most of them are teaching in areas where there is no money for classroom aides to keep the peace.”</p>

<p>Aides? My daughter did not have a whiteboard for the first four months she taught. She offered to go to home depot and pay for materials herself but was told no that it had to come from the school district. Nothing to write on for her lessons which meant she slaved every night to all hours over powerpoints to put up on the wall (with a computer from the school that was so awful and slow that she ended up using her own personal laptop.) One of her four lesson planned classes was a remedial reading program that was computer based. The computers were not all working for weeks and she did not have enough for each kid to actually do the lessons they were supposed to be doing. It was so difficult to get to the one copier her school had for a myriad of teachers teaching 2,000 students that she bought herself a laser printer to ease up some of the frustration. Books? She has spent hundreds of dollars of her own money to buy books for the kids so they will read. The amount of money she pours into her classroom blows my mind. She would go into shock if an aid was ever assigned to her.</p>

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<p>The NPR report yesterday on TFA cited the same statistic - that one third of TFA recruits stay in education. It is not a zero percent conversion rate and their are people on CC whose kids did TFA and stayed in teaching.</p>

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<p>Look, there are some real issues out there, and it’s not surprising that this thread has exposed them:</p>

<p>Yes, it is a premise of TFA that all those master teachers out there, and their certification and training processes, and their recruiting pool and education, have not worked, are not adequate to solve the problem. And, at one level, that’s not arguable. However, there are two pretty different (although not mutually exclusive) paths to a solution, and one of the geniuses of TFA is that it straddles both.</p>

<p>First, I think most teachers and principals would argue that schools’ failures aren’t caused by poor teaching, but by educational and social policy decisions (including resource allocation) that are made at a high political level. TFA addresses that by trying to incubate the next generation of high-level educational policymakers, including by interesting future policymakers in education at the outset of their careers, and to give them real-world experience on the front lines of teaching in difficult, failing schools. That’s probably a good idea, potentially a really productive long-term effort that could really make things better a generation down the line. I would note that the personal qualities that make someone a master teacher or a successful principal are often very different from those that make for successful politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists. (A close family member, who works with school districts, educational bureaucracies, and the political system, says that all the time.)</p>

<p>The other solution direction is much more hostile to the existing educational establishment. The idea, of course, is that the educational Golden Boys and Girls, with their gaudy IQs, SATs, GPAs, and Ivy degrees (in substantive majors), their personal records as leaders and achievers, their charisma, bring something important to the table that the majority of career teachers don’t. There IS a class difference, by and large, and there’s an expectations difference and an ambitions difference. Career teachers aren’t entirely wrong to catch a whiff of contempt for them from organizations like TFA, because it’s part of the foundation on which they were built. But in the end, there IS something wrong with the educational system, it’s not just a budget issue, and if you are trying to jolt the system into medium-term, local change, the people to do it may NOT be the ones whose ambition is to get along with the administration for the next 20 years. And students may well benefit from seeing a mix of teachers, from having contact with young teachers who want to be President as well as those who want to be principal.</p>

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<p>

Not only is nothing preventing per from taking the Praxis, she just took the second of the two exams this week. She won’t graduate until May. So we seem to have a disconnect about the requirements here. As I stated in one of my previous posts, she is intending to obtain her masters via the TFA partnership with American University for that very purpose.</p>

<p>So was the author of “Relentless Pursuit” lying yesterday when she quoted the 1/3 figure of TFA alums still in the education field?</p>

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<p>Since I was the person who used the “conversion rate approaches 0%” line, I ought to explain where it came from, and make clear that it’s certainly hyperbolic. Mainly, it was based on what the TFA interviewers, recent alumni, told my child (they said “no one”), but it was also based on 15 years of conversations with a relative who spent a decade working with TFA, and who now works for a rival organization that is significantly more focused on producing career teachers (this relative never said “0%” though, and could well be biased).</p>

<p>I haven’t been able to figure out where the author on NPR got her 30% number. TFA itself sometimes says “two-thirds” in its press releases, but without providing any details. Because of TFA’s explosive growth, it would be inherently difficult to come up with a simple number for this. Last year, it claimed 14,000 total alumni, and it signed up over 6,000 new participants; this year, it expects to have over 7,000. In other words, within a couple years all of TFA’s existing alumni will constitute much less than half of its alumni, and it is quite likely that half of the existing alumni are very recent “graduates”. In that context, it would make a lot of difference what criteria one uses for measuring whether an alumnus has stayed in education, and when one makes the measurement. Also, whether the dynamics of the 500 or 1,000 person cohorts of the past will apply to the 6,000-7,000 person cohorts of the present. I suspect, therefore, that there is a very broad range of numbers one could use for characterizing TFA’s “conversion rate” – not including 0% – and that the real number is probably unknowable in any meaningful sense.</p>

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<p>

Hey, me too! I guess I made an unfair assumption because of the “Mr. Obama decides his daughters” scenario. And as it happens, I didn’t decide anything for my kid. She decided.</p>

<p>I found the doctor scenario ridiculous, in part, because TFA was not founded by a president, of course (as if George H. W. Bush would), nor because someone was looking for a way for the children of the privileged classes to build their resumes. It was Wendy Kopp who developed it in the late 1980s for her Princeton thesis (so let’s discount that, right? Everyone knows what dilettantes those Princeton kids are.) And because your comparison takes as fact that the “play doctor” program would be founded simply to benefit the “privileged” and meanwhile do actual harm to the less fortunate. This is not why TFA was founded. </p>

<p>Such a shame that there is no common ground here.</p>

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<p>"Imagine this: I am teaching for years, and then a very privileged, usually upper-class child with no life experience not to mention no job experience, swoops down and ‘teaches.’ Naturally she is terrible. Ok. But by her/his OWN admission, she is not here for the long haul at all. Does she want to seek to improve so that maybe in 10 years she can become a master teacher (in our profession, it is generally acknowledged that it takes about that long to really learn the ropes)? No, she is here essentially so it will look good on her resume and for a couple of gap years. In other words, this is not real to her. She is not of my world. She does not need to do this to pay the mortgage or put food on her children’s plates. She does not need to really deal with adminstration because by her own admission she is there for only two years. ALl she has to do is say, “Just two years, just two years.”</p>

<p>First of all, “naturally, she is terrible.” Not necessarily. Some TFA teachers are really good. My daughter tells me her roommate’s kids’ scores are higher than surrounding classrooms and she is very well regarded at her charter school. Some of them do a very good job which, if you read “Relentless Pursuit” you will see. TFA is a very data-driven business-model program and they evaluate performance based on test scores and data like that. My daughter’s department teachers were worried she’d pull down the department scores and I think once they saw that her benchmark scores were what they wanted, they eased up. TFA teachers are not just there to build up a resume – that is a terribly unfair characterization. If they were, they’d show up and go home and live a high life in the evenings and on the weekends. That is hardly the case. Most of them have no life. My daughter’s social life pretty much consists of hanging out with other TFA teachers while they grade papers and lesson plan on the weekend. Of the TFA teachers I personally know, one spent last Saturday taking his inner city kids to a debate tournament 30 miles away to compete with the top-tier private school kids. He’s setting the bar high for them. Another spent her Saturday visiting the homes of her students. These are not things that are part of the job requirement. If a resume was all they wanted, they don’t need to do these things. My own kid sacrifices sleep to make sure her lesson plans are up to her own perfectionist standard. Her classroom is always open and she is always in it – nutrition, lunch, after school. As for the mortgage and putting food on her kids’ plates – she’s 22. She doesn’t have a mortgage or kids yet but she does have rent, utilities, groceries and a grad school bill of thousands of dollars – oh, and the hundreds, probably thousands, of dollars she’s poured into her own classroom. Are we going to fault these people because they don’t own a home? </p>

<p>As for your “doctor” argument – the argument would be better if you are comparing seeing someone who has just graduated medical school with no other training versus someone with no training. My daughter has a degree in the subject she teaches whereas long-term subs don’t have to. Would I rather see someone if I was sick who went to med school but is not ten years in the profession versus seeing someone who did not go to medical school or nursing school? Yes. Of course, I’d rather see someone who was board certified and well-regarded but if it’s the med school grad or someone who studied law, give me the med school grad. That’s a better analogy. The fact is, the choice in these schools is not between a Master Teacher and a TFA teacher. It’s often between a long-term sub and a TFA teacher. And I’d rather have the Duke grad who majored in chemistry teaching my kid chemistry than a long-term sub who never studied chemistry in college. At my daughter’s school there are some long-term subs. If I had a kid at that school and had the choice between a long-term sub and the Ivy-League grad who completed a major in the subject she is teaching with distinction and is a TFA teacher – it would not be a hard choice for me to make at all, because at least I’d know she knows the subject she is teaching. Years ago, my kid had a long-term sub who admitted she absolutely did not understand the math she was teaching and could not do it. Would I take a math major from MIT in TFA over that? In a heartbeat. It would not matter to me what his plan was two years down the road.</p>

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<p>With respect to the “lack of teaching qualifications” of TFA participants, the research I’ve seen is that there is little evidence that traditional teacher training programs are successful at training effective teachers who choose to stay as teachers in very high needs schools. It isn’t as if we’re choosing between diamond and coal. The reason that there are so many vacancies and so many unqualified-in-their-subject teachers in these schools is BECAUSE the traditional teacher training programs have fallen far, far short of success.</p>

<p>The teacher training program at our state’s flagship university was notorious for producing teachers who did not know much at all about how to teach kids to read. They did take lots of courses in affective learning, supporting diversity, choosing literature, cultural understanding and the like. Another state college that was generally much less prestigious had a much more effective program, and principals were generally a lot happier with the hires from that school. But in both cases, it wasn’t as if either of these two schools produced graduates that chose to stay and teach in inner-city areas, so it is hard to label that a success.</p>

<p>TFA isn’t perfect, but it isn’t as if those traditional teacher training programs are much better. There are also a truly tremendous number of studies that show that the typical ed school grads are actually among the lowest achieving students in most colleges – lower test scores at entrance, less challenging courses while they’re at college, and lower college g.p.a.'s.</p>

<p>Smart graduates who’ve been able to coordinate and accomplish a lot in college, whether that was through the greek system, college government, or some other activity, may well be able to bring some of that same energy, enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial ability to get things done into their schools. Some will walk away – but boatloads of ed school grads do too. Others make a significant difference. Some go on to create other transformative school programs, like KIPP schools, or become principals in the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) two-year training program. And if others move on to careers where they continue to advocate for real reform in inner-city education, that’s good too.</p>

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<p>“And, if I might add - TFA recruits do not tend to be people who are OK with being “terrible” at anything.”</p>

<p>Exactly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished that my daughter could lower the bar a little bit – but she’s not wired that way. Also, regarding those who see themselves going into educational policy and reform: most teachers want those who are setting policy to have spent some time in the trenches. They resent those who make policy and have no idea what it’s like to be in a classroom. That is one reason my daughter decided to do TFA. She felt that classroom experience was a necessity if one is going to go into policy. I’m not sure you can really understand the problems without that kind of experience.</p>

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<p>Okay, and one more thing I’d like to throw in here and let you parents toss around: I personally know of a handful of EDUCATION MAJORS who are choosing Teach for America. Just because Teach for America CAN act as a “gap year” doesn’t mean that every graduate that chooses that path views it that way. In fact, out of the several friends I have getting involved in TFA, all of them intend on staying in education past their two years. It’s important not to pass sweeping judgments. Criticize the organization if you want (which as I said earlier should really be a criticism of the SYSTEM at large) but its really unfair to make negative comments about the motives of the corps members, who really are trying to do a positive thing.</p>

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<p>There are absolutely problems in the classrooms and problems with the education majors at many colleges. IMHO, more energy should be spent figuring out what works and what doesn’t work at both places instead of creating another company that is almost competing. </p>

<p>One of the reasons that many teachers drop out of teaching within the first five years is that they really never got enough classroom experience in college. I know several people with ed degrees that only found out in their senior year that they did not like teaching in the classroom. Why? Because they only shadow and observe before their senior year. The senior year is the only time they actually teach in the classroom. By that time, all of them felt it was too late to switch majors and decided to teach for a little bit to at least be able to pay off student loans.</p>

<p>My daughters college required all ed majors to double major. They also required three separate teaching experiences starting sophomore year. My daughter student taught in 1) a rural elementary 2) an inner city school and 3) a private school. She also had 3 different grade levels to get a better idea of each. The inner city school was especially challenging as most of the students were taller then her and there was a real problem with her East Coast accent and their inner-city slang. Her last experience was a whole semester and the first two were four weeks each.</p>

<p>I mention that because my understanding is that the TFA students do not get a similar on the job training BEFORE they agree to a two year commitment. My daughter met up with some TFA students at a testing center in St. Louis when she went to take a Praxis test. All were teaching at St. Louis schools and all were dissatisfied with their experience and felt they had been misled about the working conditions. That can be taken with a grain of salt - one day, one conversation.</p>

<p>By the way - My daughter, a teacher, like all of her friends that majored in education, did so because they wanted to save the world too. They just knew they wanted to do it when they started college. ;)</p>

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<p>I think this will be my last post on this subject. I can see that there are very different opinions here. And I applaud parents who are supportive of their sons or daughters; that is part of what I hear, that you feel I am insulting your children’s career choices and it hurts. I don’t blame you. I have five kids myself and I’m guessing I would respond in a very similar manner if the shoe were on the other foot. But that shoe also includes the parents themselves having no education experience. I am not speaking as a parent here. I speak as a professional with experience on the field. I don’t really have time to refute points one by one, but I do want to say that it is really really insulting, not to mention ludicrous, to believe that teachers are not capable of proposing solutions and that only a 22 year old Ivy upper class kid will be able to do so. That is precisely the problem with our educational system today–that it is so top-down as to be unworkable and to actually be (IMHO) destroying our nation’s educational system. The last thing we need are MORE top-down education suits in Washington. And the pot shot about my ambition to get along with administrators for 20 years is, well, indicative of the simmering contempt many of you seem to have for the profession you claim you want your children to fix.</p>

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<p>I guess my question would be if not TFA and like programs, what else? I don’t see any established teachers at my wealthy suburban high school taking a leave to go teach in the inner city for 2 years.</p>

<p>“Some 30 percent of teachers new to the Chicago Public Schools—although not necessarily new to teaching—leave within the first five years, according to a CATALYST analysis of School Board data.”</p>

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<p>

Who in the world ever said that??? Even TFA itself doesn’t take this position. I think your own biases are at work here. Which is fine - we all have them. But I’ve seen the pro-TFA folks on this thread responding with sincere respect for current teachers, even in the face of some very hostile posts. I’ve felt lots of contempt for TFA, and for “Ivy upper class kids,” from you.</p>