The points that detractors of Teach for America raise usually fall into one of three interrelated buckets, to which I want to explore potential rebuttals:
Critique #1
Teach for America belittles the profession of teaching
by treating it as a Peace Corps–style rescue mission rather than a true profession, with salaries appropriate to attracting solid candidates. “A frankly missionary program,” wrote Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond in an oft-cited 1994 Phi Delta Kappan article, “TFA has recruiters and advocates who have focused much of their attention on the advantaged college graduates for whom TFA serves as something useful to do on their way to their ‘real jobs’ in law, medicine, or business.” [Source]
Response to critique #1
There are two parts to this criticism of TFA. One: The low-pay of teaching “belittles” the profession. On the whole, I concur with the implied argument that teachers should be paid more. (I think teachers — from kindergarten through high school — should expect a starting salary of $80K, with opportunities to earn upwards of $150K for demonstrating exceptional teaching. But let’s not get distracted by the finances or logistics of such a proposal; we can do that another time. Today I want to look at a few of the arguments in favor and against Teach for America as an organization.)
But TFA is not responsible for the teaching salaries of its recruited teachers. They earn public school teaching salaries commensurate with the salaries of non-TFA-recruited teachers. So the salary argument has no point of entering the debate about the merits of Teach for America as an organization.
The second point concerns the outreach efforts of TFA, which detractors claim — by recruiting the best students from the most selective of colleges and by offering teaching as “something useful to do on their way to a ‘real job’” — belittles professional education.
This argument simply holds no water. For one thing, there is nothing wrong with treating — or even marketing — teaching as mission-based service. This is exactly what teaching is! It is not a job, like auditing; it is a vocation, a calling. Education is not a widget making business; it is a public good, a public service, that shapes the hearts and heads of our children. If teaching is a job, it is a job of forging relationships, shaping minds, and of empowering people to engage in deep, critical-thinking and community action. Nothing could be more of a mission-based service than teaching.
(What is belittling is the false assumption that non-profit, mission-based work only offers meager financial rewards.)
Management consulting firms like Bain, McKinsey, and BCG, along with Wall Street investment banking institutions and international hedge funds, all recruit the best and brightest minds from America’s top colleges and universities. Most of these new employees work “only” for two years in these positions before matriculating to business school or moving on to other opportunities. Some even leave these fields entirely. No one would argue that young recruits in consulting and finance related fields “belittle” these professions.
Critique 2
TFA-recruited teachers “only” commit to two years in the teaching profession. We don’t need a “short-lived import-export system; our schools require more than self-reflexive service for post-college wanderers.” [Source]
Response to critique #2
One-third of all teachers leave within two years [Source]; half of all teachers quit within five years [Source]. This data is for all public school educators! The all-too brief tenure of teaching professionals is not unique to Teach for America; teacher attrition is a national public policy concern. TFA is not an “import-export system for post-college wanderers”; the entire teaching profession is, regrettably, an import-export system for passionate educators.
At least with Teach for America, recruits commit to two full years of teaching in the most dire of all educational environments. Non-TFA teachers make no such commitment; they usually sign a one-year contract, but without the support network of the Teach for America organization, they could (and often do) leave after one academic year; some leave mid-year!
And even though the TFA service requirement is “only” two years, “two-thirds of its grads stay in the education field, sometimes as teachers, but also as principals or policy makers.” [Source]
Critique #3
TFA recruits cannot be effective classroom instructors because they “only” under-go a five-week training program the summer before their placement. “Real teachers,” on the other hand, have to do a certification program, which often takes one to two years to complete.
Five weeks of training is simply inadequate to equip recent college graduates, no matter how high-achieving and well-intentioned, with the pedagogical skills necessary to be an effective teacher, claim critics.
Response to critique #3
Data. From this month’s Primary Sources section in The Atlantic:
The Kids Are Alright
Critics of the Teach for America program, which recruits top college graduates to teach in poorly performing public schools, have long questioned whether the program’s instructors are properly prepared, citing evidence that links teacher effectiveness to experience. However, the first study to examine Teach for America at the secondary-school level, recently released by the Urban Institute, finds that its teachers are in fact more effective than those with traditional training—at all levels of experience. The study measured performance on state exams and found that students of Teach for America instructors did significantly better in all subject areas tested, and especially in math and science. The authors found that even though the program’s teachers are assigned to “the most demanding classrooms,” they’re able to compensate for their lack of experience with better academic preparation and motivation. As a result, the authors say, students are better off with Teach for America instructors “than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience.”
—“Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School,” by Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, and Colin Taylor, the Urban Institute and the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research
Quick thoughts
I am a bit curious by these critiques leveled against Teach for America by certain educators. Their criticisms, while rooted in seemingly intuitive assumptions (Of course a two year teaching program is better than a five-week cram program!), also seem to be motivated, a bit or in part, by ego and insecurity. They seem to want to create/preserve the illusion that teaching is some kind of alchemy, the secrets of which are passed-down by experts in sanctioned institutions and require one to two years to truly master.
Maybe. But this is not the only way that teachers learn to be teachers. It might not even be the most effective way; it is certainly not the most efficient. It’s not even a sufficient way of teaching teachers, just as graduating from an MBA program neither promises nor precludes ambitious entrepreneurs and visionary leaders from opening their own small businesses or serving as CEO of Fortune 500 companies.
Teaching is a skill. But it is equal parts — maybe primarily — an art. The passion? The charisma? The communicative ability to be an effective educator? Can’t be taught. It’s in you… Or not.
Teach for America screens the best and the brightest minds in the country, assesses their passion and ability to teach, and has grown to become one of the largest and most successful teacher recruitment and placement organizations in the country. And they do this not by offering higher salaries, nor cushier teaching positions. No, TFA takes could-be and would-be Yale Law School students, Wall Street wunderkids, and Peace Corps volunteers and places them in the most severely depressed classrooms in the most under-resourced schools in the most fractured school districts.
And the results — better classroom performance by students; an indelible and intimate portrait of a too-often broken education system by TFA teachers — speak for themselves.
Teaching is something we should be encouraging people of all stripes, backgrounds, and experiences to explore, especially among the most successful and ambitious soon-to-be and recent college graduates. Teach for America is at the center of the village it takes to raise a child.
Related reading: “Amazing Teacher Facts,” an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America’s five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation’s worst public schools. These young men and women were chosen from almost 25,000 applicants, hailing from our most selective colleges. Eleven per cent of Yale’s senior class, 9% of Harvard’s and 10% of Georgetown’s applied for a job whose salary ranges from $25,000 (in rural South Dakota) to $44,000 (in New York City).
Hang on a second.
Unions keep saying the best people won’t go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What’s going on?
It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of “education” courses to be certified.
The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a “band-aid.” One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom. However, it turns out that two-thirds of its grads stay in the education field, sometimes as teachers, but also as principals or policy makers.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter that they are only in the classroom a short time, at least according to a recent Urban Institute study. Here’s the gist: “On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers’ effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience.”
Jane Hannaway, one of the study’s co-authors, says Teach for America participants may be more motivated than their traditional teacher peers. Second, they may receive better support during their experience. But, above all, Teach for America volunteers tend to have much better academic qualifications. They come from more competitive schools and they know more about the subjects they teach. Ms. Hannaway notes, “Students are better off being exposed to teachers with a high level of skill.”
The strong performance in math and science seems to confirm that the more specialized the knowledge, the more important it is that teachers be well versed in it. (Imagine that.) No amount of time in front of a classroom will make you understand advanced algebra better.
Teach for America was pleased, but not exactly shocked, by these results. “We have always been a data-driven organization,” says spokesman Amy Rabinowitz. “We have a selection model we’ve refined over the years.” The organization figures out which teachers have been most successful in improving student performance and then seeks applicants with similar qualities. “It’s mostly a record of high academic achievement and leadership in extracurricular activities.”
Sounds like the way the private sector hires. Don’t tell the teachers unions.
Play, think…
J.R. Atwood
It’s always a bit sad to retire a pair of running shoes, but alas, the time has come to move my Salomon XA Pro 3D trail shoes from my “running shoe” bin to my “general gym shoe” bin, also known as the place where running shoes go to die.
I read an interesting little blurb by 
