I would like to say that this is not a dig at those who dedicate part of their lives serving the most disadvantaged as teachers in some of the most destitute schools that are almost universally situated in impoverished, inner-city neighborhoods. I commend those individuals who opt to serve as educators via the "teaching/teacher corp" programs across the county. I received a phone call today from a friend who is with a number of Amherst alumni and current students who have chosen such a path; they are now enduring both the long days of teaching summer school and Mississippi's sweltering heat. With that said, however, this post expands upon a question that has stayed with me since my graduate seminar, Social Structure and Culture in the Study of Race and Urban Poverty (which has helped me crystallize my thoughts on a number of issues), with Sociologist William Julius Wilson this past semester: what are the unintended consequences of these programs on the populations which they were created to serve and empower?My co-blogger, Jeremy, was in the class as well and we had some pretty heated discussions about some of the books we read as this survey course touched on topics on urban poverty from cultural continuities and the lasting impact of slavery (Orlando Patterson's Rituals of Blood) to the underground economy of poor neighborhoods (Sudhir Venkatesh's Off the Books). The one book that spawned the lasting thought that pushed me to write this post that I just cannot shake is Columbia University scholar Kathryn Neckerman's Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education. In Schools Betrayed, Neckerman, analyzing historical data on Chicago public schools from 1920 – 1960, aims to highlight the ways in which schools themselves—taken as individual institutions—were betrayed by intermediary actors—school board officials alongside education policies drafted at the state level but carried out blindly by local actors. She shows that these race-neutral policies enacted did not have race-neutral outcomes: the dovetailing of school policy and ecological conditions sowed the seeds for the then and present-day deplorable conditions of inner-city schools. The installment of tracking or dual time programs in schools, for examples, were not race-based but the implementation of such policies had negative effects on students' academic preparation and future employment prospects, especially Black students because of the schools they attended.
Ok, so why do I bring up Teach for America, The Mississippi Teacher Corp, and the many others across the nation? It was because of Neckerman's particular analysis of the impact of teacher placement on the students, family, school, and community as a whole. Of the policies that she outlines, I believe that one of the most detrimental consequences from these policy changes was that which caused teachers to cycle in and out of certain classrooms and certain schools, principally those which served predominately Black and low-income communities. Trust is an understated factor in schooling. And the way in which policy was carried out severely weakened the trust between teacher and student, teacher and parent, teacher and school, and even the trust between teachers themselves. In other words, after these teachers "did their time," they could transfer to "better" schools and leave their troubles (and the troubled) behind. This is what made me think of the present state of programs like Teach for America and other like organizations. To put it bluntly, this book made me further question the efficacy of programs like Teach for America and the like: the inexperienced teachers (inexperienced with respect to years of teaching experience not intellect or drive), short-term contracts, and location of placement. Some point to the cultural differences between college students and those from inner-city schools. I believe that, although one barrier to be sure, it would be a bit short-sighted to stop there. As I stated above, the cycling of new faces in the classroom via these programs is what concerns me the most.
Clearly there are many success stories for those on the rosters of such organizations. The teacher of the year for Miami-Dade Public Schools is a Teach for America placement. For continued excellence, let us not forget the Teach for America alumni who started the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools where economically disadvantaged students are performing on par with their middle class counterparts. But while we celebrate the success, we must not forget the number of people who stop after a month, a week, or those who make it only one day. I do not have the statistics on this; I just have anecdotal evidence from my interviews with Teach for America representatives before I was offered a position in Miami (I did not accept the position because similar thoughts passed through my mind then).
I bring up this point to caution us to think of the consequences of the short term contracts of Teach for America and like organizations. These programs are so appealing to college students, some of whom use Teach for America as life "pit stops" or use such programs to pad resumes or "give back" without exactly knowing the lion's den they about to enter into. Nevertheless, the students in the schools see eager faces one moment and then look around the next and that face is gone. I am not saying that we are better without these programs. Surely Not! I just do not want to be ignorant of the disappointment of being let down when that the legal contract ends or when that "social" contract runs its course. But, the question becomes, what's the alternative? I would appreciate any comments on the issue brought up here or any thoughts on such programs.
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What are the alternatives?
ReplyDeleteWell, you could pay teachers six-figures a year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1
Or you could start a program like Harlem Children's Zone.
The problem you bring up is a not a problem of Teach For America or Teacher Corp. The problem is teacher shortages. When you see teacher union critiques of programs like Teach For America (often TFA exclusively), they're usually attacking the idea that "untrained" TFA teachers are better that new teachers with degrees. That, and these teachers leave after 2 or 3 years. But up until very recently, most of the noise wasn't about taking jobs that union teachers need or deserve, because there TFA and Teacher Corp fill in gaps in the most needy schools.
Like most professions, as teachers get older and more skilled, they usually want cushier, better-paying jobs. Could you imagine William Julius Wilson working at a community college?
As you mention, trust has been an issue for awhile, and teacher turnover has been high in needy schools for quite some time. These teacher programs, for all their flaws, serve as a temporary stop-gap for schools and districts that need an influx of talented teachers who want to be there.
If these programs disappeared tomorrow, what would happen to the trust then? These teacher programs shouldn't be blamed for a larger structural issue that needs to be addressed. Getting the best teachers into the neediest classrooms. TFA certainly doesn't have the best teachers, but the organization does attract policy attention to how a particularly strong teacher can affect change in a classroom and a school.
Maybe until things change, that's worth as much as trust.
Correction:
ReplyDeleteInstead of saying "These teacher programs shouldn't be blamed for a larger structural issue that needs to be addressed."
I should have said "These teacher programs shouldn't divert attention from a larger structural issue that needs to be addressed."
Steven, I agree with what you say. Teachers deserve more money and also, in my opinion, other incentives because they do the work that literally and figurative serves the nation. I hope that the post did not come off as an attack of Teach for America and other like organizations. What I was simply getting at was the parallel that I saw when reading Neckerman's book. I am not sure what she would say about TFA but the thoughts came to my mind.
ReplyDeleteThe rotation of teachers--which is at the core of the parallel--is one of the things that most concerns me. I agree that TFA and other ogranizations are a stop-gap that is getting media and policy makers' attention and am glad that it is doing both. I really am trying to piece together my thoughts on programs like this that go beyond the company line but also not so against them that one becomes blinded by the good they do.
I think your correction is on point (a point that I was about to bring up). That is why I ask about alternatives because I see how such a potentilly powerful stop-gap can, in time, start to do more harm than good. It is like the social experiment equivalent of diminished returns; when will the strucutral changes come to alleviate us of the sore that keep putting bandaids on.
I really want to highlight Anthony's comment that "a potentially powerful stop-gap can, in time, start to do more harm than good." As someone who is entering a teacher education graduate program (I refrained from applying to TFA), I constantly get asked, "Have you considered TFA?" TFA is the first thing that people think of when they hear that I want to teach. It seems to me that the public's knowledge of the strengths of the program has limited people's imagination of the routes to become a prepared teacher and of the reforms necessary for improving public education. This is what scares me, that alternative teacher programs ARE diverting attention from larger structural issues. While we can applaud some TFA accomplishments, we have to remember that broader reforms still need to be made and that bandaid programs could become harmful. This means that, though we are being polite, someone must eventually criticize these programs.
ReplyDeleteLike you wrote, Steven, one problem is teacher shortages. Now how do we solve that? I am not sure of the full answer to this question, but-- from my experience-- teacher financial aid would certainly help. Unfortunately, teacher loan forgiveness programs do not recieve nearly the amount of publicity as TFA might. Consider this: http://calstate.edu/TeacherEd/scholarships/information.shtml
I know where you're both coming from, and want to add to the discussion:
ReplyDeleteDrawing the parallel between Neckerman (who focused on internal school policy between 1900 and 1960) and non-profit teacher-placement programs today highlights continuity. Or, to put it better, it highlights the continued issues of teacher shortages and high turnover in needy/disadvantaged schools. So, maybe this isn't TFA specific, but rather a long-standing, cumulative problem with teacher retention in disadvantaged schools.
That said, it still brings up a lot of questions: 1) How many TFA teachers remain teaching after their TFA contract expires (I think like 60%? At least that's what they report); 2) How many non-TFA teachers in inner-city schools remain there after 2 years?; and 3) How has long-term teachers actually played out in inner-city classrooms, in a real sense?
Theoretically, we all have idealized notions of long-term teachers as offering stability etc, but recent conversations with folks that have actually taught with unionized teachers don't have many nice things to say about their (general) work ethic. I might lose my "liberal sociologist" card here, but teachers unions have been, in practice, pretty damn problematic.
So, there are two fundamental questions, related but distinct: Are we better off without TFA? (I say no) And does TFA cause some sort of social harm to students, many of whom already come from unstable homes? (Maybe, but any issues they cause is a drop in the bucket).
It's easy to question TFA when we have never taught a day in our lives, let alone 2 years. I used to subscribe to the "Well, there are larger, structural issues that TFA ignores" mantra, but have since changed my mind a little. That's not TFA's mission. Do they facilitate distrust among students? No more than baseline levels of distrust already present in these neighborhoods and schools. My main issue is not with the program itself (anymore), but with their marketing strategy: "Hey, teach for two years, change some lives of poor people of color, then go off to graduate school! You will feel so good about yourself!" This kind of weird self-esteem, psychological pitch is troubling, but this has more to do with recruitment than the actual structure of the program itself.
Drawing the parallel between this and the Neckerman book suggests that the problem is not TFA; the issue is trust and teacher retention. So the alternatives should address the trust and retention of all teachers in these schools, not just pick on the only program that actually convinces people to go teach in these schools.
Jeremy, points well taken. Again, I hope that this post was not me saying “TFA sucks.” It does not. I think it serves a public good. I cannot state this clearly enough (I am not saying that you were implying that but I want to be sure that the post is not being misread by others).
ReplyDeleteBefore I begin, I will also say that the current state of teachers is not the best in the world either. Sometimes the best thing to happen to these students are the teacher corp participants who enter into their classrooms and, in very real ways, their hearts and lives. What I wanted to do in the post is spark conversation about this natural duality: the structural issues surrounding education in inner-city schools as well as the more, as Steven points out, humanist side of the equation. I spoke more to the humanist side in the post so that the structural conversation can be hashed out in the conversations that ensue (in other words, keep in the background as the very setting we are building our dialogue upon). So I thank all thus far who have contributed to this conversation.
Phuong brings up a good point about how the public views these programs in the interpersonal interaction between students interested in teaching and TFA. It is almost like the nation has become similar to religious zealots with respect to programs like TFA, its either you are a believer or not. The traditional route, as Phuong intimates, has the potential, in the public eye/sentiment, to become the road less traveled. What are the implications of short term placements? Jeffrey Canada argues that it takes four years to become a good teacher (a comment he made when receiving an honorary degree at Amherst in 2008) and programs like these are not as effective.
With respect to never teaching, I am saying that this criticism need not necessarily apply here. How many scholars who study poverty had to do homework in the dark because the lights were out until the Friday of payday or had to skip school for a week to have a legitimate excuse to miss the due date of a project because couldn’t afford the materials for the project? Does it help? Yes. Does it preclude us from entering the conversation? No. So I think the question is how much does the company slogan play out in real life and what are the outcomes—social and symbolic—of such a mantra. (Also just want to note that we are speaking about all teacher corp programs like TFA not just TFA).
Bringing it back to the individual level of concern, I wanted to say something else about trust.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, somewhat ashamedly, that I did TFA for about 6 months before quitting. (As a side note, Jeremy, I agree with you about the recruitment/actual purpose problems of TFA 117%)
But from my limited experiences as a "teacher" (I use this word loosely as I was quite bad at it), there are definitely issues as a result of teacher turnover, but I don't think that trust fits exactly. Trust is just part of a larger basic agreement between student and teacher. There has to be trust, high expectations, and a certain level of dependency.
As a teacher, the students should confidently know that you're going to show up everyday and that you're going to challenge them. And these students will test ALL new teachers to see if these teachers are up to the task of teaching them. Students don't know if you're TFA or not. When I taught, the teacher right next door to me had the same students (he taught math; I taught language arts) and he was a new teacher too. We commiserated daily. We faced the same challenges. And the students treated us quite similarly.
I was the fourth teacher to be in my position in 3 years and none of the teachers before me were TFA or part of a teacher placement program. Given this record, my youth, and interestingly enough because I was the only black teacher in my school, I got put through the ringer. They wanted to know how committed I was to them. Unfortunately, I couldn't live up to the challenge of giving them what they needed. I struggled to build the necessary repoire with them. They needed to be able to trust me, depend on me, and hold them to high standards. And I think my inability to do that had little to do with TFA or their training.
I also would say that most of the teachers in the school also were not particularly adept at building that repoire either. They were career teachers who had built the skills necessary to control a classroom and get some instruction across. They had been there for years and not built that trust either. I mean, the students could *depend* on the these other teachers to be there everyday, but that doesn't mean that the students *trusted* them.
Having 5 teachers in my classroom in 3 years clearly exacerbates this lack of trust. But that lack of trust is already there. The students know many of their teachers aren't the best, and they know when they're not getting the education they deserve. While interpersonal dynamics are at play here, (in this case), it's the structure that fails and not teacher placement programs.
Even if you stopped turnover, I don't think that conditions would dramatically improve. Would they improve? Yes, but it's a far cry from eliminating the achievement gap.
Also, one more thing. The new teacher who taught beside me was not TFA - he had an ed degree, and he still teaches at the school. I haven't talked to him for a while, but last I heard, thing were going okay. Kids still rowdy, but he gained some respect.
ReplyDeleteJeremy and I continued to talk via gchat about the post and I realize that my words may have gotten in the way slightly of the point I was trying to make. What I wanted to say is that embedded in the structure of program like these, one may argue, work against that interpersonal trust that could develop. Are the two somewhat antithetical to one another. The parallel I saw was not necessarily in form but in kind. I do not pretend to know what it means like to enter the classroom as teacher and hardly remember the details of a day as a high school student. The post was just to raise a question about function and form of such programs in light of Neckerman's discussion. And thanks again for the comments.
ReplyDeletei found this really interesting, especially the idea of putting in time to get where you really wanted to be. i work in public interest law, where attorneys get paid one third to one half of what private firm attorneys get paid. i often hear attorneys talking about putting in a few years at a firm to pay off the loans and get back to where they really want to be, in legal services working with and for low-income folks. while both groups are putting in time somewhere they don't want to be, the socioeconomic aspects are flipped.
ReplyDeletethe difference, of course, being that a city need astronomically more teachers than it does legal aid attorneys, so it makes sense to recruit teachers and can just rely on enough passionate people being willing to take low legal aid salaries.
People say a lot about TFA, but in reality they have the facts behind them
ReplyDelete-TFA has lower teacher turnover than the average new teacher teaching in an urban district
-Only 1/10 TFA recruits were planning on staying in education before they started teaching, but after their term, 1/3 stay in education, with many of those in actually in the classroom
-TFA teachers are competing with bottom percentiles of teachers in public schools for jobs. They are not taking away jobs from the best teachers. Most urban schools are staffed by the lowest percentiles of available teachers when looking at teacher quality metrics. That is not to say there are not amazing teachers in urban school (my mother is one of them!)
While many might not like TFA's recruitment tactics, it is kind of a "bait and switch": People will not join if you tell them that they should commit their lives to education. Instead tell them only 2 years and then they can go on to law school. Little do they know that at the end of the 2 years their lives have been changed and they are likely to stay in education or public service for the rest of their lives.
Previous comments have pretty much hit the nail on the head. One thing I'd like to add is: how quantifiable is the trust factor? If it can be quantified then we can prioritize and contrast it with the motivation, energy, and other positive factors that a TFA placement may bring into the classroom. I suspect that the positive factors would still outweigh the negative.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I don't get. I read that surveys found principals often like TFA teachers MORE than other teachers. So why aren't all teachers learning what TFA teaches to college graduates? I don't know how teacher education and certification works in the States though it's hard for me to believe they can teach people to be good teachers in 5 weeks, no matter how intense. I'm going to teacher's college in Ontario in September and it'll take 9 months.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if any of you saw this but Bloomberg.com did a feature on Amherst, my alma mater, and Teach for America. Again, my bias is not against the program as my school, president, and friends (some quoted in the article) support the program. The artcile can be found at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a.uf9rb_0Dv8. It gives some facts about the program as well.
ReplyDelete