Policy: Teach For America

There was a time when underfunded urban school districts needed teachers.  Partly as a response to this need, Teach For America (TFA) was established by Wendy Kopp in 1989 to fill those vacancies.  By selecting high-performing college graduates and giving them 5 weeks of training, many of these openings were filled with America’s best and brightest.

A poorly performing economy and tax cuts have put thousands of fully trained teachers out of work.  Our country is awash in unemployed teachers: mostly recent college graduates.  One might think TFA would wither away when its teachers are competing with fully trained, credentialed teachers.  Not so.

TFA has become the poster-child of the current high-stakes testing strategy towards improving education.  In the past 18 months, TFA has received over $200 million dollars from the US Department of Education, the ultra-conservative Walton Family Foundation and several other sources.  When a district hires a graduate of the 5-week training program, the district pays the TFA teacher a starting salary, and TFA gets $5,000.  TFA is not withering.

TFA claims that its teachers are superior to traditionally trained teachers. However, the nation’s top educational researchers challenge these claims.  All this has created a loud din that has drowned out the real needs of the country’s poorest students: to be elevated from poverty.

If the topic of conversation is to be which system, TFA or college credential programs, produces the best teachers, perhaps we should look abroad.  In countries where students are out-performing US children, the teaching profession is an honored and respected career choice.  Teachers typically have masters degrees and rarely leave the profession.  Here, 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years.

Maybe we should ask ourselves if TFA improves the teaching profession and brings more honor to teachers, or if it does the opposite?