NYT: Teach for America...the Chosen Few?

madfloridian

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Wed Jul-14-10 05:07 PM
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NYT: Teach for America...the Chosen Few?

Hat tip to Susan Ohanian for noting this article about Teach for America in the New York Times.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America

Ohanian Comment: This should be a YAHOO! Michael Winerip is back.

As you will see in this piece, no one notices details the way Michael Winerip does. He is the master of the telling detail that will carry the message of the story.

Yahoo!!
On Education, a new column by Michael Winerip, will appear Mondays. Mr. Winerip can be reached at oneducation@nytimes.com.

She quotes a couple of incidents mentioned that show how hard it is to become part of the group. The requirements seem really over the top in some ways since only a two year teaching stint is required.

Alneada Biggers, Harvard class of 2010, was amazed this past year when she discovered that getting into the nation's top law schools and grad programs could be easier than being accepted for a starting teaching job with Teach for America.

Ms. Biggers says that of 15 to 20 Harvard friends who applied to Teach for America, only three or four got in. "This wasn't last minute --a lot applied in August 2009, they'd been student leaders and volunteered," Ms. Biggers said. She says one of her closest friends wanted to do Teach for America, but was rejected and had to "settle" for University of Virginia Law School.

Will Cullen, Villanova '10, had a friend who was rejected and instead will be a Fulbright scholar. Julianne Carlson, a new graduate of Yale -- where a record 18 percent of seniors applied to Teach for America --says she knows a half dozen "amazing" classmates who were rejected, although the number is probably higher. "People are reluctant to tell you because of the stigma of not getting in," Ms. Carlson said.

How in the world did such a group become so prestigious that there is a fear of telling anyone you are rejected. That should not be what teaching is about..it should not be a stepping stone for the TFA candidates.

But it seems to be just that. More from Michael Winerip at the NYT.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America

Scott Dalton for The New York Times
Julianne Carlson, a graduate of Yale, taught a prekindergarten class in Spanish last week at an elementary school in Houston.

Good, well-trained, experienced teachers are teaching all over the country. Trying to figure why what Ms Carlson does is any different that what those teachers do every single day....those career teachers who soon may lose their jobs while more TFA teachers are hired at a big cost to the taxpayers for recruitment.

Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Rosen, Ms. Carlson, Mr. Cullen and Ms. Biggers count themselves lucky to be among the 4,500 selected by the nonprofit to work at high-poverty public schools from a record 46,359 applicants (up 32 percent over 2009). There’s little doubt the numbers are fueled by a bad economy, which has limited job options even for graduates from top campuses. In 2007, during the economic boom, 18,172 people applied.

This year, on its 20th anniversary, Teach for America hired more seniors than any other employer at numerous colleges, including Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Harvard, 293 seniors, or 18 percent of the class, applied, compared with 100 seniors in 2007. “So many job options in finance, P.R. and consulting have been cut back,” said Ms. Carlson, the Yale grad.

I wonder if they are aware that while their "prestigious" butts are being hired that hundreds of thousands of experienced teachers will be laid off next year?

Getting a job on the back of other teachers is nothing to brag about.

They are an "elite brand"? Really. Dang, I was pretty doggone good teacher, so were my teaching friends....and we never ever thought of ourselves as "elite" or "special" or anything like that.

But there are other more material attractions. Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching. And in a bad economy, it’s a two-year job guarantee with a good paycheck; members earn a beginning teacher’s salary in the districts where they’re placed. For Mr. Cullen, who will teach at a Dallas middle school, that’s $45,000 — the same he’d make if he’d taken a job offer from a financial public relations firm. Ms. Carlson, who will also make $45,000 teaching first grade in San Antonio, said: “I feel very fortunate. I knew a lot of people at Yale who didn’t have a job or plan when they graduated.”

Yeh, well, those hundreds of thousands of teachers won't need a resume next year....their jobs won't be there.

The blogger called Stick with a Nose has something to say about all the "eliteness."

While all of the interviewees noted an interest in “giving back” to the community, it is clear that TFA is a means to an end for the majority of its participants, and this has real impacts on the public and charter schools in which they work. Research demonstrates that TFA participants under-perform traditionally trained teachers until they gain several years of real-world experience and complete the necessary course-work to earn teaching credentials. However, the problem with this is that the research literature also tells us that the vast majority of TFA participants do not stay in the profession long enough to reach that point. For TFA participants, the program is an exercise in resume building.

The reality of TFA is that it places under-prepared “teachers” in the toughest, neediest schools who rotate out before they can develop their skills. How advocates for this program can claim that TFA is a model for meeting the growing demand for qualified teachers to close achievement gaps boggles the mind.

Teach for America is a private company which gets paid thousands to recruit teachers for public schools. These are schools that traditionally recruited for free and hired their own teachers.

Many of us feel it is a back door way to get rid of experienced teachers who have worked for years to get good salaries, and replace them with people who want to build resumes.

Teach for America. A way to replace experienced, higher-salaried teachers?

Those who are thinking of participating in Teach for America with a social justice mission in mind should consider this. Although a far more daunting task for sure, those really interested in social justice should consider ways of solving problems like unavoidable unemployment and low-wage jobs.

On top of failing to make a dent in poverty, Teach for America actually detracts from social justice by hurting real teachers. Teach for America students take low, entrance-level pay while also receiving a government subsidy for their salary in the form of Americorps stipends. Schools lay off teachers and then hire Teach for America teachers to fill positions that real teachers would otherwise be filling. Teach for America teachers are undercutting the wage needs of real teachers and causing them to be laid off as a result.

Imagine this: a well-off college student takes a subsidized teaching position at an impossibly low wage and displaces actual teachers who might already be struggling to get by — all for social justice! For anyone who has any concern for labor rights, this is extremely abusive. Not undercutting wage demands of often unionized workers is rule number one of how to be a serious social justice advocate.

Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA, is married to Richard Barth, the founder of KIPP charter schools. They are the couple referred to as the "young social entrepreneurs." And they are reshaping the education system in the United States.