Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
Not being an educator, my knowledge of Teach For America (TFA) has been scant. Basically: it was a component of the Americorps program created during the Clinton administration, and plugged willing but un- or under-qualified young people into vacant positions in low income schools for two years. Identify schools that need teachers and have energetic, idealistic recent college grads work to make a difference. Sounds great.
Teach For America
It turns out TFA has taken on an new role in the last few years, though. Last week the #ResistTFA hash tag on Twitter started trending, courtesy of Students United for Public Education. SUPE supporters criticized TFA’s modest five weeks of training for recruits and questioned the adequacy of their preparation.
TFA defenders quickly responded. One asked“why do principals and schools still line up to hire TFA corps members when they have the chance?” Instead of considering that a lower paid and non-unionized workforce might be attractive for strictly administrative reasons, the author claims TFA recruits interview better because (among other reasons) “They don’t cry during interviews” and “If I check them out on Twitter, they’re not tweeting about loving beer or about how they want to be rescued by Prince Charming” (these lines were not, praise Jesus, written by a man).
Others endorsed TFA as a “pipeline for education reform”1 and cited a Department of Education (DOE)study (PDF) that argued for its effectiveness. There might be an element of self-fulfilling prophesy about this, though. In a long, thorough examination of the billionaires behind the attacks on public education, Joanne Barkan writes how DOE head Arne Duncan has his thumb firmly on the scales in favor of business interests:
Nothing illustrates the operation of Duncan’s “open for business” policy better than the administration’s signature education initiative, Race to the Top (RTTT). The “stimulus package” included $4.3 billion for education, but for the first time, states didn’t simply receive grants; they had to compete for RTTT money with a comprehensive, statewide proposal for education reform. It is no exaggeration to say that the criteria for selecting the winners came straight from the foundations’ playbook (which is, after all, Duncan’s playbook). To start, any state that didn’t allow student test scores to determine (at least in part) teacher and principal evaluations was not eligible to compete. After clarifying this, the 103-page application form laid out a list of detailed criteria and then additional priorities for each criterion (“The Secretary is particularly interested in applications that…”). Key criteria included
  • (C)(1) Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system
  • (D)(2) Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance [this is followed by criteria for evaluating performance based on student test scores]
  • (E) Turning around the lowest-achieving schools
  • (F)(2) Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools and other innovative schools
States were desperate for funds (in the end, thirty-four applied in the two rounds of the contest). When necessary, some rewrote their laws to qualify: they loosened or repealed limits on the number of charter schools allowed; they permitted teacher and principal evaluations based on test scores. But they still faced the immense tasks of designing a proposal that touched on all aspects of K-12 education and then writing an application, which the DOE requested (but did not require) be limited to 350 pages. What state has