Many students at OU might be considering whether or not they should apply for Teach for America. Teach for America is a program which takes recent college graduates and places them in schools in poor communities. The idea is that doing so will somehow better education equity in these poor communities which will have long-term impacts on the success of the pupils.
Students with some desire for social justice consider joining the program to help decrease poverty by creating better college opportunities for poor children. The problem is that there is no compelling reason to think that Teach for America helps do this at all.
Let’s look at the underlying premise of the program: if we take well-off college kids and put them in low-income public schools, this will help the students in that school do better.
There is absolutely no reason to suspect this would be the case. This idea rests on the assumption that students in poor communities do poorly because of bad teachers and the assumption that recent undergraduates are somehow better than traditional teachers.
In reality, the reason why students from poor communities do poorly goes way beyond teacher performance. Poverty causes havoc for home situations. Impoverished communities are more prone to drug abuse, crime and many other distracting conditions. In addition, schools in poorer communities have less funding which decreases the number of instructional tools they are capable of acquiring. In short, it is the conditions of poverty that lead to low student achievement, not teacher quality.
In addition to this fact, why would a recent undergraduate from OU be a better teacher than any other teacher? Of course some recent undergraduates might be better than some teachers, but if Teach for America is to serve any real purpose, it should be the case that, on the whole, recent undergraduates are better than traditional teachers.
There is no compelling reason to suspect that recent OU graduates would be better teachers than any other teacher. The empirical studies on the efficacy of Teach for America teachers are split, but even the studies that show a positive impact, only show very slightly positive impacts. A study conducted in 2004 found that Teach for America teachers had no effect on students’ reading levels and only a slightly positive effect in students’ mathematical literacy.
But even if Teach for America did somehow significantly increase the quality of education and even if this did somehow mean all of the students involved were able to go to college and get degrees, what would be the impact of this? Some narrow-thinking individuals have this idea that what causes poverty is poor educational opportunities. Those who can go to college and get degrees make more money than those who do not, so surely if we just made it so that everyone could go to college, poverty would be solved!
The problem with this kind of logic is obvious. Ending the cycle of poverty does not end poverty, all it does is redistribute it. So long as there are more people than jobs, there will be poverty. So long as there are jobs which do not pay a living wage, there will be poverty. Increasing educational opportunities does not do anything to solve these actual problems.
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.
In sum, Teach for America is not nearly as good of an idea as it first sounds. It has a limited effect on the poor students it reaches, does nothing to solve systemic problem which cause the poverty it is trying to combat and causes the unemployment of real teachers who might need a job. If you choose to do Teach for America, do it to build your resume, not out of a concern for social justice.
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nutmeg 2 years, 2 months ago
There are many things in this article that are just plain untrue. Expect a lengthy letter to the editor.
William 2 years, 2 months ago
Let this article stand as an example of short-sighted empiricism taking blows at the greater good.
TFA is a genuinely good thing, not just by principle but by method as well.
If you do not gather this by looking into the facts and speaking to TFA teachers, then first question whether you are employing a bias of cynicism before you take sides.
gazelle 2 years, 2 months ago
Brandeis, poverty is not going away! So if there is such a thing as completely incoherent nonsense, it is your emphasis on poverty. Something is better than nothing. Stop tearing down and provide one single example of what can be down to combat the problems at these schools besides somehow miraculously curing poverty. So perhaps we should think of ways to start improving the quality of education instead of waiting for your pipe-dream of utopia. On another point, do you have any idea how often it is that TFA teachers are given jobs while other teachers are fired? Is it a widespread trend or did you just happen to find the right article to support that biased argument of yours?
impatient_with_ignorance 2 years, 2 months ago
Matt continues his well established tradition of negativity, and his habitual pattern of having many more opinions than data. His charge that school districts lay off teachers and then replace them with TFA volunteers is very serious and I challenge him to produce and/or cite any evidence that this has happened. In the actual cases I know, school districts using TFA volunteers have actual shortages of teachers, and no teachers in many classrooms, so they employ long-term temps or even import foreign nationals to fill unfilled positions (Baltimore for example imports dozens of Filipino women to teach math in its low-income, minority-dominated schools, with mostly very poor results). And instead of having problematic advice for groups to which he does not belong (absurdly advising OU graduate TAs and RAs to unionize in this time of budget cuts and mass lay-offs of adjuncts and cuts in the number of assistantships), I challenge Matt to describe his preferred tactics for advancing the social justice goals he pompusly identifies: what is he going to do to reduce "unavoidable unemployment and low-wage jobs" ??? TFA volunteers at least actually are trying to do something, they are on the front lines, in some cases they are able to make some very positive difference in the lives of young Americans who have very little support or encouragement, and they obviously are doing something that takes courage and commitment. That an ostensibly left-wing undergraduate philosophy major pontificates from the sidelines, with criticism and negativity for all and wildly unrealistic recommendations for others is more than a little annoying, although of course it comes with the territory.
JJanowiak 2 years, 2 months ago
I think it's unfair that you reduce educational opportunities to a strictly economic variable (an small one at that). It's not important how specifically educational opportunities are related to poverty - although I think the connection is bigger than you claim - but, at the heart of it, having a better educated populace is worth something in its own right and if you believe in the value of public education you must also believe that it's only fair for poor minority students to have the same opportunities as you and me.
The negativity in the comments here is interesting because I've seen literally dozens of pages cataloging the bad experiences of fresh TFA recruits. Most new teachers simply aren't equipped to be dropped into a ghetto classroom and deal with the problems that come with it. White, educated, middle-class white graduates have this idea of the possibilities of education but, IMHO, once the system has failed these kids in the very early grades, most of them are driftwood by high school.
This editorial is way more powerful read alongside an article in last week's NYT Magazine about building better teachers. The reason all of these new teachers have a rough go of it is because our national teacher education system is deficient. Read it at nytimes.com
ab167 2 years, 2 months ago
To be clear, TFA does not employ just any ol' undergrads. They are pretty selective. So, these are students who, were education their intended career, would be able to get jobs in wealthier school districts, as well-qualified teachers are apt to do... except in the cases of social-justice-minded people like those who apply for TFA. Whoops.
What are the names/publications of these elusive studies you semi-cite, anyhow? The Daily is absolute crap about making its columnists give usable citations (when they give any, that is).
brandeis 2 years, 2 months ago
"So if there is such a thing as completely incoherent nonsense, it is your emphasis on poverty."
Sorry that I am worried about real things instead of side issues that help absolutely nothing. Once again, more education does not even put a dent in poverty levels. It achieves nothing. You see that people with higher education have better jobs and you assume that therefore higher education will lead to better jobs. But in fact, the reason higher education leads to better jobs is because so few people can access it. If tomorrow you made it such that everyone could get a college education, you will still have just as much poverty as you do today. So what is the point of all of this?
"So perhaps we should think of ways to start improving the quality of education"
I agree. Since TFA clearly does not do this, then where do we go next? Look at the empirical studies on it. It does not improve quality of education at all.
"Is it a widespread trend or did you just happen to find the right article to support that biased argument of yours"
I found the article when trying to fact check the column. So yes, I was looking for an article that said what the columnist claimed was true. And lo and behold USA Today had just such an article. If only the people here who are claiming he is wrong would have done the same, we could have had a better discussion in the comments instead of people claiming the facts in the column where wrong (since they aren't).
Finally, there are many possible ways to put a dent in poverty. Here are some terms you can search for information on: Basic Income, Living Wage, Repeal Taft-Hartley Act, end Free Trade Agreements that do not come with labor conditions, socialism, social democracy. You should be able to find more information after reading about those things enough to satisfy your appetite for solutions, although I imagine that you do not want real solutions because real solutions would require you to come to conclusions about the nature of our society that you would never be willing to do: namely that capitalism leads unavoidably to poverty and unemployment, and that our political institutions as they stand are designed and controlled by wealthy elites.
Grace 2 years, 2 months ago
I taught in an urban public school district for a number of years before coming to OU. I received a degree in Education before venturing into the classroom.
Over these years I saw a number of TFA members come and go. Some were fine, but most seemed lost in the classroom and displayed an inability to control their classroom. Without the ability to control a classroom all education is lost. Though the intentions of TFA members are good, there is no way that the training provided by TFA can replicate what a formal Education degree can provide.
Further, TFA is a cheap alternative. As we are all aware, many school districts are facing budget cuts. A neighboring urban school district used TFA members as an easy alternative to paying the quality teachers they had and the qualified recent graduates they had given contracts to. In voiding these contracts, the district violated an agreement they had with a nearby university's intensive urban education program. This program had their students in the urban classrooms observing, student teaching, and learning how to deal with the unique pressures that urban schools present. These educated teachers, along with other 1st-5th year teachers were let go not because TFA provided better educators, but because the district could pay them less.
Needless to say, a year after this debacle the school district is still not able to meet AYP, but they will soon be closing 28 schools. The lesson here is that cheap labor is not quality labor.
There are a number of issues with Teach For America (including it being a for profit company)that make situations like these even more outraging. If you want to teach and make a difference so much, then enroll in some education classes here at the university before you decide to displace quality teachers and provide sub-par educational environments to the children who need quality most.
brandeis 2 years, 2 months ago
This is the study on efficacy done by Mathematica Policy Research in 2004: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/teach.pdf
To sum up:
non-TFA reading: 27.61 TFA reading: 28.17
This difference is considered statistically insignificant.
non-TFA math: 28.01 TFA math: 30.44
This difference is statistically significant but is still extremely slight.
Here is a USA today article detailing TFA teachers displacing real teachers: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-07-29-teach-for-america_N.htm
Relevant quote from a superintendent confirming what bruenig says:
In March, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools Superintendent Peter Gorman told board members he was laying off hundreds of teachers but sparing 100 TFAers because the district "made a commitment to this program." Gorman noted that TFA teachers "are placed at schools with high populations of underprivileged students where the placement of personnel has proven to be difficult."
Relevant quote from union leader which is completely consistent with what Gorman is saying above:
Not so fast, says John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, the USA's largest teachers union. Last May, he sent a memo saying union leaders were "beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire TFA college grads due to a contract they signed."
nutmeg 2 years, 2 months ago
As an incoming Teach For America corps member who did her homework, I take issue with these untruths and misrepresentations. The premise of TFA is not to “take well-off college kids and put them in low-income public schools” in order to “help the students in that school do better.” The premise of Teach For America is to take motivated college grads (from diverse backgrounds – why did Mr. Bruenig continually say “well-off”?) who are passionate about decreasing the achievement gap and directly placing them in schools where this problem is most prevalent. TFA’s mission is to decrease the achievement gap between socioeconomic classes. The organization does not ever claim that corps members are “better” than traditional teachers. The whole idea is to serve the underserved, meaning that corps members are filling teacher gaps and teaching in schools that often hire long-term subs. In fact, TFA’s original mission was to fill teacher gaps, especially in low-income areas according to the Educational Policy Analysis Archives. The more direct mission of working to solve the achievement gap is taking this a step further by becoming a part of the movement to fight inequity. I agree that poverty has a huge impact on student achievement, but I do not believe that poverty directly effects achievement. Instead, it is the nature of the schools lacking resources in areas of poverty that effects students’ performance. Yes, poverty causes “distracting conditions” for a healthy learning environment, but the mission of TFA is not to solve poverty. I believe that the benefits of improving the sad state of disproportionate public education in this country are far-reaching. Of course there will always be poverty. But it is unacceptable that fourth-graders in low-income areas are already 2-3 grade levels behind (National Center for Education Statistics). It is completely untrue that schools fire teachers in order to hire TFA corps members. As previously stated, there is a dangerous teacher shortage in low-income areas. I’m not sure where Mr. Bruenig got this idea. Hopefully, there will be a day when TFA does not need to exist. As for the effects that TFA teachers have on their students, there have been positive and negative studies. First of all, I would recommend looking at a study from The National Academies, “the country’s leading science advisory group” according to the New York Times, that found that Teach For America teachers had a greater impact of students’ test scores. However, study or no study, I think that the practice of sending smart and energetic leaders to underprivileged schools, where highly qualified and experienced teachers often prefer to avoid, is a positive impact. It is part of TFA’s credo that corps members hold their students to high expectations. This is what I believe in. This is why I joined Teach For America: to fight for educational equity. -Megan Morgan 2010 TFA Corps Member
brandeis 2 years, 2 months ago
All one needs to do to acquire evidence of why TFA does not work is to read Megan Morgan's completely incoherent misspelled nonsense.
No wonder the 2004 study I posted above shows that students of TFA teachers do not improve their reading; their competitively-selected teachers do not yet know the difference between 'effects' and 'affects'.
Additionally, the people they choose are clearly totally clueless about poverty. To say something like the only thing that poverty does to AFFECT students is by indirectly decreasing resources in the school is absurd. The home environment is massively important when considering an individual's success and the conditions of poverty make that environment very hostile as bruenig points out in his article. Obviously Mrs. Morgan's privileged life has not given her access to this information which is yet another reason why she will not be able to relate to her students.
All of the other things she points out are empirically proven false in my previous post. Students don't do any better and schools are laying off teachers while keeping on TFA
Lastly, it is true that well-off students do it because well-off students are the only ones without the crushing debt that would therefore allow them to work at such low union-busting wages.
lateacher 2 years ago
Teachers with degrees in education and degrees in content specific areas are losing their jobs RIGHT NOW because they are not protected under contracts like TFA teachers. These are teachers that would have stayed with the system for 25 plus years and had families to support yet because of a contract with TFA, these professional teachers lose their jobs to TFA's with no education background teaching classes not in their educational background who will leave after their commitment to TFA and never teach again. A GOOD teacher uses the first couple of years to hone their skills taught over a period of time while becoming a PROFESSIONAL teacher. The TFA program gives no stability to the schools administration.
artemis 1 year, 12 months ago
The last line in the article rings very true. I have numerous friends that have gone into TFA and have come out "feeling like they gained something" and I believe that they truly have. TFA is a great training and growing ground to understand the real world a little more and to push yourself beyond limits that you may have never imagined. However, ALMOST NONE of my friends have stayed in education. All went on to medical school, law school, business school, and graduate schools. The few that stayed in education moved away from their original low-income school districts to other districts that have "better working conditions" and were relieved to finally find a "normal teaching job." The truth is that TFA is a great resume builder and a great stepping stone for the individual. It's a stepping stone organization. However, it's principles do not promote social justice because they do undercut traditional teachers that have considerably more experience with this art. TFA's contracts are set for two years and I MUST EMPHASIZE that most people move on after the two years and this is an absurdly high turnover of teachers. TFA teachers are a low budget solution in the unfortunate climate where education is suffering from even more budget cuts.
For those that asked for the proof, the Mathematica Policy Research post above answers it all, especially since it was done in collaboration with TFA. They have every reason to support TFA (especially when publishing their findings) since they have conflict-of-interest since TFA is offering them data that they use in the analysis to determine TFA's effectiveness. The ironic thing is that we need to remember that "significant" and "statistically significant" are very very different things. I am a researcher myself and I find that that the fallacy of equating the two are severe. Brandeis rightly points out that the gains made by TFA in math are “statistically significant” but a comparison of the actual difference shows that the difference is essentially minuscule. We can become emotionally charged in our biases but the data clearly shows that, despite TFA's greater talent pool, they are not practically any more effective than teachers that come from a "control pool." Teaching is more than just academics and that it truly is an art.
After reading all of your posts and looking at the data (that was supported in part by TFA themselves), it's clear to see that TFA really is a great opportunity for personal growth but it is more effecting at building resumes than re-building education.