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Teach for (Some of) America: Too talented for public schools

Ohanian Comment:
People who love Teach for America and people who detest it should be honest about it. Here are the facts:


• Some Teach for America recruits enter teaching in tough situations, rise to the circumstances, and become excellent teachers.


• Many Teach for America recruits use the experience as a resume-building gambit before finding something "better" to do, such as pursuing a business or law degree.

Of course applicant numbers are up. Has the editorialist considered the job market? Hiring freezes? Vanishing career opportunities? A guaranteed two-year job and subsidized Master's degree looks better and better.

Where are the Doctors for America in poverty-ridden regions lacking enough medicos? How about Lawyers for America? Newspaper Editorial Writers for America?

I got into teaching through the back door--when New York City was so desperate they issued emergency credentials. With my MA in medieval literature, I had much less preparation than a Teach for America entrant. I went home and cried every night.

We moved, and, in financial desperation, I applied for a public school teaching job--and was hired--I'll never forget telling my husband. He was high up on a ladder painting our house. "I got the job," I announced. And burst into tears. The very idea of returning to such a tough profession overwhelmed me. But I didn't cry nearly so much that year. And by the time I'd been teaching five years, I began to feel I had a talent for it.

I remain grateful that there was a back door to let me into teaching. It never occurred to me that such a pathway should be anything but an emergency in special circumstances. As it happens, I am under the long-term care of a Physicians Assistant. She works in a group with orthopedic surgeons, has very specialized training and knowledge. I think this offers a good model of differentiated professionalism.


Editorial

Here's a quiz: Which of the following rejected more than 30,000 of the nation's top college seniors this month and put hundreds more on a waitlist? a) Harvard Law School; b) Goldman Sachs; or c) Teach for America.

If you've spent time on university campuses lately, you probably know the answer. Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market.

So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of Teach for America teachers they will accept, typically between 10% and 30% of new hires. In the Washington area, that number is about 25% to 30%, but in Chicago, former home of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it is an embarrassing 10%.

This is a tragic lost opportunity. Teach for America picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money. More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it. Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment to a teaching career. But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that "TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."

It's true that only 10% of Teach for America applicants say they would have gone into education through another route, but two-thirds stay in the field after their two years. One program benefit is that its participants don't have to pass the dreadful "education" courses that have nothing to do with what they'll be teaching. Those courses are loved by unions as a credentialing barrier that makes it harder to get into teaching.

Some districts may be wising up. Mississippi's education superintendent has asked Teach for America to double the size of its 250-member corps in the poor Delta region and is encouraging local superintendents to raise hiring caps. Since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has also sharply increased the percentage of corps members among its new teachers, to 250.

But why have any caps? Teach for America young people should be able to compete on equal terms with any other new teaching applicant. The fact that they can't is another example of how unions and the education establishment put tenure and power above student achievement.

— Editorial
Wall Street Journal
2009-04-25


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