The Seattle School Board is seriously considering canceling its 3-year contract with Teach for America after only 1 year, according to this piece from 360 Education Solutions, which describes itself as
advocate in the search for quality online teaching degree programs. As an advocate group founded specifically for educators, we provide you with the support and information needed to help you achieve your teaching certification and educational aspirations.
The article begins as follows:
In a long line of criticism and challenges that Teach for America has recently faced, the Seattle School Board is reconsidering its current three-year contract with the organization after its first year with board members questioning the training and effectiveness of teachers from the program as well as the need for them.
The contract, which was signed in 2010, was instituted because of a perception of a shortage of qualified teachers, something current board members do not necessarily feel is still true.
Among the comments by Board members:
“We have many really good teacher training programs in our city that are providing us with a pool of very qualified teachers. We do not need teachers who have only had five weeks of training,” Sharon Peaslee of the Seattle School Board said to KUOW News.
Peaslee also said there was nothing innovative about TFA:
“It’s a shortcut, and that’s not the same as innovation.”
Another Board member questioned the minimal 2-year commitment required of TFA:
“They can be the greatest people in the world, but how long are they gonna be there?” Seattle School Board member Betty Patu, one of those seeking to end the TFA contract, said to The Seattle Times. “That's almost as important as being a great teacher.”
I have a couple of observations below the fold.
First, the article notes that TFA has had trouble expanding in the Northwest, so the impending loss of the contract in Seattle (a majority of board apparently agreeing to its termination) does serve as a stumbling block.
However, the Dean of the College of Education at the University of Washington, Tom Stritikus, is a former Teach for America teacher (in Baltimore). I am not questioning his qualifications as dean - his doctorate is from Cal Berkeley and he has been on faculty at Washington (located in Seattle) since 2000, receiving his appointment as Dean in 2010.
I do not know if the Dean's background is in part how TFA got into the Seattle schools. One might wonder whether he would seek to challenge the board on its decision to eliminate the TFA contract. Stritikus is highly respected among people in colleges of education, and his school is also highly regarded.
As for Teach for America,
1. GiveWell.org does not give them their highest rating as a charity, noting among other things that for the corps members who started teaching in 2009 TFA spent $38,046 for each one (perhaps an inflation, dividing total expenditures by entering corps members). GiftWell says of TFA "we do not have a concrete sense of how it would use additional donations."
2. Various financial filings to the IRS and to New York State show an operating budget in excess of $170 million a year for a teacher corps of around 10,000. Recent filings have shown financial assets of over $300 million.
3. Teach for America continues to benefit from positive and often uncritical press coverage. Those offering a view contrary to the dominant narrative, even if those views are well grounded in research, have trouble being heard - here I cite in particular the work of Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford and Barbara Torre Veltri of Northern Arizona.
4. While few TFA alumni remain in the classroom for extended periods - the original commitment is for 2 years, and very few stay beyond a 3rd year - many remain involved in education. I have no criticism of those like Stritikus who obtain the normal professional training and become university educators. I do question whether the two years that is the total teaching experience of the vast majority of alumni serves as a sufficient basis for people to believe TFA alums are qualified as experts on teaching. Thus it is troubling to see how many wind up in positions of influence where they can advance the ongoing mission of TFA and preclude voices that are critical. Increase numbers of TFAer have run school systems (Rhee and Henderson in DC, for example), state departments of Education (Rhee's ex-husband Kevin Huffman in TN), or serve as things like legislative assistants with the brief for education on Capitol Hill (I have encountered them in numerous offices in both chambers of the Congress).
We do need to improve the quality of our teaching corps. That requires not only better recruitment, but better training, better induction, better support during the early years, better supervision. Teach for America is able to recruit many potentially outstanding teachers, at least based on undergraduate academic records, but it has done a poor job of preparation - 5 weeks intensive training is simply insufficient to prepare people for the demands of the classroom. When increasingly the mentoring during the beginning period is being provided by TFAers who themselves had only 2 years in the classroom, the approach is further flawed.
People connected with TFA have begun to speak out. Gary Rubinstein, who as an alumnus used to help recruit for TFA, has become very critical of the organization. Barbara Torre Veltri, who used to work with the recruits, now serves as aconduit for the voices of many of the TFAers who have become disillusioned with the organization.
When a school district lays off fully credentialed teachers in order to maintain the level of TFA corps members it has recruited, there is something skewed in what is happening.
Seattle is the first school board of which I am aware to move in this direction. We will have to see if they will be an outlier, or if this could be the beginning of something more broadly based.