<p>Young friend of ours, majoring in Engineering at Cornell, did summer internship working with innercity youth in DC. Should have graduated this year, but changed his school plans to a 5-year double degree program - engineering and teaching, with the idea of continuing the innercity teaching – just didn’t want to “throw away” 3 years of engineering school. Guess I shouldn’t be so proud of him, knowing that he has a back-up plan?</p>
<p>I would have loved for my children to have been exposed to a few teachers who were actually “expert” in the area they were teaching. It didn’t happen often, in their public school experience. And they attended top schools.</p>
<p>In Germany, the teachers are better educated – must have 4 year liberal arts degree in their “specialty”, followed by 2 years of teaching school. This approach also has drawbacks. Teachers are hired by the government, based on GPA and nothing else. And teachers are “civil servants” with job protection, so they have expertise in their subject matter, and “teacher training”, but they don’t necessarily love their jobs. Or love kids. But it pays well, is respected by the community, and they’ve already put in a lot of time, so there is no way they will consider changing careers at this point.</p>
<p>Finding people who are well-educated and willing to give teaching a try before making a career-long commitment seems like a step in the right direction to me.</p>
<p>If you think having professional teachers is important, then work for programs that raise the professionalism of teachers, don’t treat it like some hobby or part-time activity. One of the problems education faces is that too few people take what a teacher does seriously. For many people teaching is what someone’s wife does. The idea that some of you accept that anyone with a degree in anything can replace a qualified teacher is wrong. Of course being available, kind, brave and knowledgeble about a subject is important but it is also important to have an understanding of child development, abuse idendification and reporting procedures along with a host of education laws designed to protect the rights of students, and their parents.</p>
<p>I volunteered as a Sunday school teacher, Literacy volunteer, and as a parent in the classroom before I became a professional teacher. Being a volunteer is nice, but not a substitute for creating a profession that will attract the top to stay, not just visit.</p>
<p>This is a nice experience for the kids and it does build the resume. Sort of like an ambitious high school sophmore of a friend of mine who asked her father: “Does it look better on my Ivy league applications to work with the homeless or in an aids clinic.” Many of the Ivy kids have long been into resume building. </p>
<p>Hopefully their exposure to the poorer folks in society can have some positive effects as they get back on well paying career tracks. </p>
<p>Conservatives often try to use charity as an excuse to lower their taxes and not fund social serivice programs. Sadly paying volunteers for a year or two is no substitute for paying experienced teachers enough to stay in teaching.</p>
<p>I don’t know why it is assumed that TFA teachers are into “resume-building.” I would hazard a guess that while in college, they were heavily involved in community service, tutoring etc…
So they want to give back to society by teaching for a few years in inner-city or rural schools where none of the so-called experienced teachers want to go and they’re getting criticized for it? I really don’t get it.<br>
If experienced teachers were willing to fill those slots, TFA would not be needed, schools would not need to recruit math and science teachers from overseas. The reality is that teachers are like everyone else: they want to be in places where life is easier. Quite often, it has nothing to do with higher pay. I would not move to certain parts of the country for twice my salary.
Just ask the question: If TFA disappeared and all these graduates from top schools went straight to law school or med school, would inner city schools and remote rural schools be better staffed? And please remember the CCers who criticize others for pursuing careers that are low-paying and then depend on scholarships for their kids. Geez.</p>
<p>Well said, Marite. The highest paid entry salaries in NJ are in the inner cities, who still have the most trouble finding teachers, who choose to teach elsewhere despite lower pay scales. If they wanted to teach there, they’ll be welcomed with open arms. But not enough do. These TFA’ers are filling a gap. Additionally, they DO receive training in educational laws and procedures, and teaching methods, both before and during their first two years. And, as has been stated above, the program is very selective, and takes a tiny minority of those who apply. The cut is going to be greatly based on appropriate knowledge and experience, which many who apply do not have.</p>
<p>I frankly don’t see why a teacher should be threatened by this. They are not taking jobs from anyone; they are going where no one else is willing to go. Seems win/win to me.</p>
<p>It should be about the kids- if these volunteers are willing to teach in schools that professional teachers avoid, how can we criticize them for that?
Many do go on to other careers, but many stay in education as well. Perhaps this should be a requirement of schools of education to show your commitment? I often hear complaints( from the teachers themselves) that education graduates get little to no classroom experience, being familiar with education jargon will only take them so far…</p>
<p>For the record, my USA Today All Star niece got into Ivies but chose not to go–for undergrad and med school. It’s not all about the ‘Iveies’ for her. </p>
<p>High achievers can have heart. She does–and always has.</p>
<p>If parents are going to be so cynical, they could at least qualify their statements with a phrase such as “some students MAY be resume building”.</p>
<p>This excerpt from an article talks about how uncertified teachers (including TFA college grads) performed worse than certified teachers. </p>
<p>The study linked the achievement data of more than 130,000 fourth and fifth graders to the certification status of more than 4,000 teachers in Houston, Texas. The students took six different reading and mathematics tests over a six year period, and those taught by certified teachers consistently out-performed the students of uncertified teachers.</p>
<p>I agree that it is bad to be too cynical. It is a good band aid type of operation to have these volunteers fill in. Enthusiasm can compensate for lack of experience in some cases. Hey, I would be pleased if my own son volunteered.</p>
<p>Just realize the limits of having some inexperienced kids fill in for a year or two. It is no substitute for paying teachers and increasing their prestige.</p>
<p>Leaving it to volunteer kids does reflect badly on our values as a society in comparison with many other advanced countries.</p>
That is a problem of the recipient school, not TFA per se. No certified teacher coming into our school would know what 3rd graders are supposed to learn without current teachers and principal telling them. We hired certfied teachers in August to start in September and they scrambled mightily.</p>
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<p>Apples and oranges, anyone? </p>
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<p>What negative effect, exactly? They may not be the best teachers, but do they inflict more harm on the students than a total lack of teachers? I have news for Ms. Darling-Hammond. A large proportion of teachers leave the field within five years and the cost of replacing them is… $8,000 to $48,000. </p>
<p>Some of the best teachers my S has had were new graduates (G’Town and Princeton, respectively). They were doing their practicum; in other words, they were not certified yet, and were not any more experienced than TFA teachers. But they knew their stuff and were full of enthusiasm. I wrote a glowing rec for one of them, unsolicited, because I was so pleased with what she had gotten my S to achieve. I would have cheerfully replaced some of the certified deadwood with this young woman.</p>
<p>I live in another advanced country and they have the same problem. Teacher burn out in tough, lower decile schools.</p>
<p>As for the stats…I wonder if they are including Catholic schools–which often hire uncertified teachers for lower pay. Stats aren’t my thing, but TFA kids are ONLY teaching lower decile kids. If the stats included public school kids at higher decile schools…then…they would be apples to oranges.</p>
<p>Finally, there is another level of person to person exchange happening when thousands of America’s best and brightest muck in, day in and day out, in bleak economic environments, interacting with younger students who have so little. The hidden social benefits cannot be counted by ‘achievement data’. </p>
<p>Find me the TFA kid who is slogging 1000 days to build their resume. I have to tell them this: “Idiot!”</p>
<p>Except as I said above, in many areas of the country, the highest pay is in these understaffed areas. Teachers with a choice, don’t want to teach there. Maybe it’s not a money thing, but a priorities thing.</p>
<p>I meant to say the article seems balanced. It is the study that is so badly flawed that it does no credit at all to the Stanford School of Education.</p>
<p>What author neglects to tell you is that any teacher hired before Feb. 2004 got grandfathered and got a 5 year extension to get their certification. </p>
<p>New Teachers coming into the must be provisionally certified before coming into the job.</p>
<p>Completion of a Baccalaureate teacher preparation program is required except for career and technical subjects within the fields of agriculture, business and marketing, family and consumer sciences, health, a technical area or trade.) An individual may qualify through interstate reciprocity. Three required exams: LAST, ATS-W and CST (except for Speech and Hearing Disabilities) National Board certification qualifies a candidate for initial certification.</p>
<p>NYC adopted a teaching fellows program:</p>
<p>The NYC Teaching Fellows is an alternative certification program that recruits, selects and trains talented individuals to become teachers in the NYC public schools. Participation in the Fellowship does not require teaching experience or previous education coursework. Fellows use their diverse experiences, knowledge, and achievements to positively affect the lives of students while working toward a subsidized Master’s degree and earning a regular teacher’s salary and benefits. While the Teaching Fellows program places teachers in many subject areas, this year the majority of Fellows will teach math, science, special education, Spanish, or bilingual education. Some candidates may be eligible for our Math Immersion program, a special initiative that helps individuals with math-related backgrounds gain the credits they need to teach math in the city’s schools. </p>
<p>The City has just offered NYC teachers a tentative contrat that has the following: </p>
<p>*Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced that a tentative contract settlement has been reached with the United Federation of Teachers on a contract largely based on the Report and Recommendations of the Fact Finding Panel appointed in the impasse between the United Federation of Teachers and the Department of Education. The agreement covers four years, four months and 12 days and includes a 15% raise in exchange for various reforms. They include: substantially increasing the time teachers spend on instruction and support activities by lengthening the school year by two days and teachers working an additional 50 minutes per week; empowering principals by extending their authority over teacher hiring; and improving school safety and disciplinary procedures by having teachers play a larger role in maintaining order in lunchrooms and hallways and expediting the process to remove teachers if misconduct requires it. </p>
<p>The term of the agreement covers a 52-month and 12 day period beginning June 1, 2003 and continuing through October 12, 2007. This collective bargaining agreement comprises two distinct time periods including two contract extensions. The first time period covers from June 1, 2003 through September 30, 2006, inclusive of a three-month extension. The second time period establishes the pattern for the next round of bargaining. The 3.25% wage increase effective October 1, 2006 consists of 3.15% in City funds and extra value generated by a contract extension of twelve days. </p>
<p>The principal features of the settlement, which include total wage increases of 15% for teachers and most titles covered by the agreement, are as follows:</p>
<p>From what my sister a new teacher, who came in to the sytem as a career changer into teaching and was offered her job (as a global studies teacher at an inner city H.S.) when she was still a student teacher (because as a student teacher had a 90% pass rate on the global studies regents) told me that most of the teachers are not happy and are looking to turn down the contract.</p>