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As a former Teach For America teacher and current UW grad student in public policy, I felt compelled to respond to Hannah Shtein’s piece “Teach For America applications too close-minded” (Nov. 11). She appears to have drawn several inaccurate conclusions about Teach For America’s selection model based upon one applicant’s answer to one question.
Teach For America’s vision is “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” About 50 percent of students in low-income communities will not graduate from high school. Excellent teachers are needed to solve this problem. This is why I joined Teach For America.
Teach For America has studied its most effective teachers since 1990 to understand the skills needed for teachers to excel in low-income communities. These qualities go beyond “a desire to remedy the achievement gap.” From this research, the organization developed a detailed selection model that chooses individuals who have demonstrated past achievement and leadership, persevere through challenges, exhibit strong critical thinking, have the ability to motivate others, possess strong organizational skills, work relentlessly to close the achievement gap and have respect for students and families in low-income communities. From 20 years of research, Teach For America created a framework for excellent teaching called Teaching As Leadership that drives all the professional development provided to me and others. All this is done to ensure that highly capable teachers perform at their highest ability, which translates to students achieving their highest level possible.
In 2007, I was placed on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The impact I was able to have on my students was huge. One of my students starting with basic picture book reading level in fourth grade was transitioning to chapter books by the end of fifth, something she swore she would never do. Such an impact is far from unique. Independent research shows the effectiveness of the program’s teachers in the highest-need schools. For example, a 2008 study published by the Urban Institute found high school students taught by Teach For America teachers outperform their peers, even those taught by fully certified teachers, and the positive difference of having a Teach For America teacher was two times greater than having a teacher with three or more years experience.
Spending the past two years with students who never thought they could graduate high school, let alone attend an institution like UW, has driven me to influence public education policy. My experience has profoundly changed me, as it did for my fellow Teach For America alums. That’s why nearly two-thirds of alumni are working full-time in the field of education. In addition, a growing number of alumni are pursuing politics as an avenue for change.
To me, the data concerning corps member effectiveness and the stats about alumni working for educational equity is the evidence supporting Teach For America’s selection model.
Sara Kock
UW graduate student in public policy and 2007 Teach For America alum
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Bravo, Ms. Kock. I think most critics of Teach for America (TFA) forget about the lasting impact TFA has outside of those two years of teaching. TFA alumni are running charter schools, are members of school boards, are shaping educational policy in the public and private sector, and are running entire school districts both large (Wash DC) and small.
If teachers didn’t possess all those qualities that TFA was searching for, there is a very small chance that they would be continuing in the field of education after there challenging two years in some of the toughest teaching conditions.
In this generation, teachers (especially college education majors) are quitting the profession in less than 5 years, and those numbers get worse in urban areas. And most of those teachers NEVER return to education. With TFA as Ms Kock mentioned, most members find a career in education, fueled by their two years and that desire to close the achievement gap.
So, perhaps it isn’t so close minded that they weigh their mindsets so strongly.
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kock..ha.
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I think we need to keep in mind that Teach For America has expanded into saturated markets where many young adults from schools of education cannot find teaching jobs. Instead of inner city schools hiring people who went to college to pursue education as a career, they often feel required to hire a certain amount of TFA canidates. Furhtermore, schools feel pressure to dismiss older teachers to make room for this tremendously political force that is TFA. As a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Eduaction, I can tell you first hand that I have seen TFA hire canidates over me and my classmates in schools we sought to work in. In cities like New York and Minneapolis, a teacher hire freeze was implemented on all outside hires yet, the city of New York still decided to take 50 percent of TFA canidates it said it would. I’m sorry this is an injustice to those who spent often more than four years to complete UW Madison’s grueling education program. TFA is making teaching no longer a career profession but simply a resume booster so TFA canidates can get into good colleges and work in things like public policy. I find it hard to believe a TFA canidate is more qualified after several week crash course in teaching than a pool of graduates from Madison that spent more time in classrooms than any education school in the country. Almost all UW-Madison programs make students spend 2-2.5 years working in schools. I believe this point about TFA is often overlooked. I do not doubt that is does great work to underserved areas but the program has expanded into markets too fast and it is now stealing jobs, especially in the economic current economic recession.
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And where are you now? A great deal of research suggests it takes years to become an effective teacher. TFA is an organization people going to graduate school can put on their resumes. TFA hardly serves the communities it claims to. TFA does not provide proper training and does not bring high quality teachers in who are in it for more than two, maybe three years. If TFA does anything positive, it provides wealthy post-college students with an eye-opening experience. Teaching should be left to certified teachers. People who care enough about children, families and communities to devote their lives to educating children. These are the same people who graduate with a degree in education. These are the same people who should be recognized as professionals- in the same way society views doctors and lawyers. One cannot become a teacher overnight. It�s arrogant that an agency thinks they can throw some English majors into the classroom and hope to transform communities.