My TFA colleagues are truly an exceptional group of young, bright, and talented individuals. Many of them go on to enter medical school, law school, graduate schools in varying specialties, and other highly acclaimed programs. However, as bright, talented, and promising as they are, my point is already made in the idea that they almost always, without fail, go on to do something else.
For the vast majority of TFA members, teaching is a brief stop on the road of their lives. It is not, and never has been, their ultimate goal. For those few who do stay in the field of teaching, even fewer remain in a public school setting, most electing to join this charter school or that. Hence, one of my main criticisms of the TFA program is that it deeply destabilizes schools that already experience far higher than average instability.
As has been alluded to in earlier articles, the lives of urban students are often rife with instability. Some are combating homelessness; others are teen mothers or fathers; most are living in heartbreaking and soul-crushing poverty. For many of them, the neighborhood school is one of the few places where they can come into contact with trained professionals who will treat them with dignity, respect, and regard. Even more so than in the suburban areas, our students need stabilizing influences, though predictably, they are often the very last to receive them.
Urban schools appear to be the crucibles of the state department of education. Perhaps the thinking goes, "Well, they're already failing. We may as well experiment with this program or that. After all, things can't get any worse, right?"
Unfortunately, I must dissent from this last consideration. Scary and surprising as it may seem, things in urban areas very much can get better or worse. I have seen cases of both in my tenure as an urban educator. And in many cases, this improvement or degradation of school quality runs hand in hand with some new state mandate. My goal here is not to unnecessarily criticize the state department of education, but perhaps to encourage them to proceed MUCH more slowly and carefully in their efforts to reform our largest, most ailing districts.
At any rate, this article is supposed to shed some light on TFA teachers, so back to it. These young people are deeply intelligent and often very, very talented. On the other hand, their tenure is often all too brief, exacerbating a culture of instability which already persists in urban areas. As Ravitch has pointed out, a large study has now compared TFA to non-TFA teachers, and discovered no appreciable difference in the quality of these two groups. That is, in addition to their destabilizing impact on an already unpredictable system, TFA teachers demonstrate no significant benefit over non-TFA teachers. Perhaps this is owing to the fact that TFA provides a paltry six weeks of training before throwing their fresh recruits into some of the toughest classrooms in our country. Perhaps it is the tacit disrespect communicated in thinking that six weeks is adequate to train a teacher, but for whatever reason, while I admire and regard TFA teachers highly as individuals, I don't feel that the TFA program offers anything more than a band-aid approach to staunch the veritable hemorrhaging of educational difficulties which preside in urban areas.
Sincere reform efforts might instead try to recognize, recruit, and SUPPORT teachers who take on the additional challenge of teaching in the urban classroom. They would seek candidates who really wanted to become teachers, and even ideally those who almost felt as though they had a "calling" to work with our nation's most disenfranchised. They would perhaps offer these candidates additional compensations for the special effort which is required to teach in our country's most challenging classrooms. All is all, sincere reform efforts would shift the conversation once again to the idea of education as an INVESTMENT rather than an EXPENSE.
I wonder if you too have noticed the incredible shift in perspective and policy regarding education in our country. When I was younger, education was thought of as an investment in our children, our country, and our way of life. It made sense that if we wanted to see our American way of life perpetuated and enriched, that we would have to invest in raising our children to appreciate the values which we ourselves as Americans hold so dear. Now-a-days, funding education seems to be little more than a dollars and cents game whereby every penny is pinched and budgets are reduced year after year. If nothing else, let us remember that our ideas inform our policies, and our policies enact our goals. If we see education as an expense, then we will constantly be on the look-out for new ways to slash those costs. On the other hand, if we care about our country, our children, and even our way of life, perhaps reframing educational spending as an investment will help us to appreciate the true intent of offering a free, public education to every child.
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