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Recently spotted online has been views against Teach for America. These opinions have always existed but with the recession they have been amplified as veteran teachers feel as if they are pitted against Teach For America. I will argue that some traditional teachers, teacher unions, schools of education are against Teach for America not for valid reasons of quality education but out of sheer animosity towards the fact that individuals are coming to their professions in droves and are driving them out of a job due to lower labor cost and equal if not better learning results.
It will make people upset when they are directly faced with a challenge to how they do things. Career teachers, and teaching colleges are very committed to the traditional way of education in America. You take some education classes as an undergraduate and go to a teaching college in order to prepare for a lifetime in the classroom, along the way pruning yourself or a particular career and spending lots of time student teaching. Unions will be there to protect your wages and ensure that your salary goes up year after year with no link to performance.
Teach For America appears to have an opposite view that young energetic high achieving professionals and college grads can be put in the classroom for two years and create huge advancements in the quality of education in low income schools. What they have done has worked. With an army of support Teach for America is able to support its teachers with advisors who coach and observe 20 other corps members. Feedback is continuous, training is rigorous, and corps members are held to very high standards to create success.
This model of success is the exact opposite of what traditional teachers face. The critical career teacher who we will call Ms. Jones is pissed to see that the teacher next door who we will call Ms. Dawson is supported by a alumni network of high achieving professionals across the country, has a personal advisor to see that what she is doing will create success for a student, lots of experience with technology and modern teaching tools and finally has youthful optimism and drive. Ms. Jones is mad WRONGLY at the fact her colleague just started and has already pulled up the reading level of her students and openly plans to go to Harvard Law when she is done with her service. That teacher is mad RIGHTLY so, that on top of that she has no likelihood of getting laid off for her two years of service, just graduated top of her class from Stanford, and has no children to support, no mortgage to worry about, or husband to support who just got laid off.
In today’s tight economy school districts are further inclined to say “screw the unions and Ms. Jones” who’s students performance has remained flat year after year on standardized test. Ms. Jones with 50k salaries and skyrocketing healthcare cost. Hello top college graduates and professional leaders. Teach for America with its deep coffers is able to provide incentives in addition to the 4k annual Americorps stipend.
Districts have suffered from the unfunded mandates of NCLB. They cannot afford to re-teach the senior Ms. Jones. Here is an organization that has what the new generation of teaching requires. These corps members are willing to work 60+ hours a week to get higher test scores for their students. I cannot say that for a career teacher in many low income schools. Districts can save money on paying corps members less while getting higher level teachers from Duke, Yale, Cornell, Michigan, and Carolina to name a few.
This flexibility to do whatever it takes ticks a lot of career teachers off like Ms. Jones. Not only are they loosing their jobs to younger folks such as Ms. Dawson, they are loosing their jobs to a youthful generation scared that they are going to end up on the street are living with their parents unable to pay their student loan debt. These kids are DYING to do anything not only to land a good paying teaching job but also to invest in their country while boosting their own chances for future success by participating in the hottest, most competitive, and prestigious program for young college graduates today.
For the time being Teach For America is reversing the trend. Young and inexperienced is great at least in this area currently. I cannot tell you one field where college graduates can even hope for employment. But now there is one where being senior really doesn’t mean you are desirable. The unions need to adjust and career teachers need to think about how they are going to compete. There will be more layoffs while the ranks of Teach for America will grow exponentially.
The anger is wrongly placed. It should be focused on why Teach For America corps members are so desirable not the fact that corps members are young and didn’t go to teaching school. Perhaps the argument should be directed at the unfunded NCLB mandate. Pointing towards the federal government and states which should be sending money for re-training for career teachers and boosting their support to the level at which TFA provides to their corps members. In the meantime STOP breaking down Teach for America because of reasons of professional jealousy.
