Debate over Teach For America has resurfaced recently in response to Amanda Ripley’s Atlantic Magazine article “What Makes a Great Teacher?” Ripley reports that some surprising characteristics, such as teachers’ extracurricular college activities and life satisfaction, are likely to foreshadow teaching success, while things most people assume to be important, such as prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood, prove irrelevant.
From here, the floodgates opened with contributors and respondents ramming not only data-driven test scores, which TFA uses as a performance metric, but also Ripley’s views. Diana Senechal writes in The Core Knowledge Blog (in reference to TFA’s goal to drive up test scores), “But are [TFA corps members] prepared to teach Victorian poetry, medieval history, or trigonometry? Have we even thought about what they will be teaching?” Senechal continues, “What makes us love teaching is not only the interaction with the students and the satisfaction of helping them learn, but the subject.”
Critics like Senechal fail to mention a critical gap that TFA fills: staffing urban schools at key times.
Urban schools often have sizable teaching shortages late into the summer before the September start date. It isn’t uncommon for schools to have high vacancy numbers with only a month before classes commence. Urban districts are plagued by an inefficient hiring process that often does not begin offering candidates positions until mid-to-late summer. While strong candidates may hope to teach in urban districts, they are inclined to take jobs in more organized districts where jobs are offered months before.
This leaves principals in a precarious position with a discouraging dilemma. Who’s left to pick from? Weak candidates that didn’t get picked up by other schools or districts? Or the untested, gritty kids backed by ongoing TFA support?
It’s important to be selective when choosing our teachers, but by the time hiring takes place, principals struggle to find strong candidates. Candidates that are available as September rolls around are available for a reason. At least principals can be comforted by the fact that TFA delivers willing educators at the last minute.
If Senechal is right, and TFA Corps members do not master their subject, then the best the program can be is a band aid for a bigger problem in urban education. But vacancies are happening now. Students need teachers now. Districts and principals hiring TFA corps members (in increasing numbers) are essentially saying they’ll take their chances with the eager young recruits who score high on “grit” and “zest for life.” At least they want to be there.
TFA shouldn’t be criticized without discussing the vacancy gaps. But even if school districts become more organized, and HR starts hiring earlier, there’s still room for alternative teaching programs.
First, it makes teaching a sough after profession. TFA, with acceptance rates lower than most graduate programs, is considered a highly laudable achievement. Prospective teachers avoid education degrees knowing a more prestigious option remains. Education reformists stress human capital, and anything that gets the best and brightest excited about teaching is valuable.
School choice and diversity of programs is another popular reform. If school diversity is celebrated, it follows that there should be an assortment of teaching methodologies. Some applicants should be trained classically through education programs; others can be trained through alternative means. Principals should have a choice of hiring a faculty with varying skill sets.
Naysayers argue TFA brings untested kids in as teachers. Young and inexperienced, maybe, but they’re also eager and optimistic. Teachers need to believe they’re making a difference. “Change-the-world” excitement isn’t naïve—it’s essential. It’s what drives student motivation.
It drives reformists, too. Isn’t that why we’re here? We know a difference can be made.
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.
I think districts want to hire Teach For America teachers because the program has research showing its teachers are effective in driving student achievement. That’s the bottom line.
This is an odd defense of TFA. Mr. Tsin’s argument essentially boils down to “gritty, optimistic untested TFA corps members are the best option to fill vacant positions in hard-to-staff schools in the desperate hours before the school bell rings each fall.” OK, fine (let’s hope they bring a little more to the party than that). But Amanda Ripley’s piece, which started this debate and prompted Diana Senechal’s thoughtful response, purported to be about “What Makes a Great Teacher.” Not, “Who’s the Best Available Warm Body.” Excitement and motivation is a start. But that’s not the same as great teaching.
Dan, you’re right to praise TSA members’ enthusiasm and desire to change the world–both very important virtues. As far as making teaching a “sought-after profession.” There may be a bit of a double-edged sword here. The media portrayals of TFA sometimes put teaching on a parallel with missionary work, which is really a sign of how far teaching has to go until it achieves the dignity of some other professions. At times, they also implicitly lower the standing of accomplished teachers who are veterans of those struggling schools. Those are real pitfalls for journalists describing TFA, and they’re not always as sensitive as they could be.
By no means was I implying that TFA corps members have not mastered their subject. I was questioning TFA’s large-scale attempt to identify in advance the personality traits of a “great teacher” without regard for subject matter.
If this is a response to an emergency need, that’s one thing. But to treat teaching as a generic skill is to make the problem more severe still.
This is not TFA’s doing alone. Our lack of curriculum has made it so that new teachers who expect to teach grammar and literature end up teaching watered-down “literacy”; prospective history teachers end up as social studies cluster teachers and permanent subs; and even math teachers have to spend a lot of time on nonsense.
To try to find the “type” that can succeed under these circumstances–and to call this type a “great” teacher–is to demean and distort education. Many TFA corps members are knowledgeable, energetic, and dedicated; that’s not the point. The point is that TFA’s recruitment formula reinforces a curricular void and possibly disfavors many talented people.
“Change-the-world” excitement isn’t naïve—it’s essential.
Definitely, I just hope that teachers learn the story of the young bull and the old bull, and don’t get burned out.
I guess I hadn’t noticed the conclusion that “prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood, prove irrelevant.” That sounds wierd to me. I also wonder whether they had a bias, seeing that their candidates come from the elite educational world. I can see the extra curricular activity and the reslience conclusions. You have to listen and you have to like being with people in order to teach. Perhaps if you’re a “people person,” then you just want to learn how to communicate with all types of people. Still, I suspect they are playing around with their data regarding experience with low-income neighborhoods.
When you compare TFAers with the people who are often hired at the last minute – or months into the school year – you are absolutely right. I’ve seen at least one great teacher hired at the quarter. But its hard to believe most, or almost all, of the personalities that get hired during the year. I’m reminded of Tr’s term for my state when thinking of the characters we’ve had to hire to get a warm body in the classroom, “a zoological garden of cracks.”
Worst, and I have no idea why, many of those characters get continuing contracts. Its so strange because typically in our states, these newcomers have no job protections. They can be dismissed at will, and then next year its like an awful movie, “theyre Back!”
I suspect tow reasons. Every principal I know works nonstop for 90 hours a week and never catch a breath. They go weeks at a time or months at a time without entering a classroom or allowing instruction to enter their consciousnesses. The best principal I ever met went weeks or months without going upstairs. She was too busy working her tail off.
In fact, that reminds me of a student who walked into class and said “This school is wack. Have you noticed that nobody upstairs cares?” He listened as I replied that most core subjects are upstairs; does he like English, math and science? Does he behave as well in those classes as in History or in extracurricular activies. And then he said, that’s why principals don’t go upstairs?
The second reason is that principals have already seen how slim the pickins are, and they have no reason to believe that a qualified person is going to apply. In the toughest schools, we all get in the mentality of just playing the cards we a dealt.
Neither will I defend Human Relations departments but Wendy Kopp on an NPR rerun was incredibly unfair to them, implying that HR caused the teacher shortage. Most absurd is the idea that you can attract talented teachers by adopting test score driven evaluations and using growth models for purposes that they are not valid for. During my eniter career, our HR depatment director has always been superb, not just good or grat. Having a brilliant HR department does not create an environment that can retain teaching talent.
If we want to improve teacher quality we have to improve the learning cultures of schools. Great teachers want to teach. Good teachers want to teach. Competent teachers want to teach. its easy to see who doesn’t want to teach and its not hard to get rid of them. Or I should say that if everyone in the toughest schools weren’t overwhelmed, it would be easy to get rid of them. Yes, some great teachers get get results in the anarchy of urban schools The key to that trick, I believe, is to concnetrate on reading body language, listen, roll with the punches, and don’t blame yourself for failures. When the kids see you working your tail off from bell to bell, its not your hard work or your knowledge of subject matter that are working miracles. The fact that you’re working so hard for them is seen as saying “I love you.”
And you also have to have plenty of jokes.