Why We Partner with Teach for America: Changing the Conversation (original) (raw)
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Teach For America and Teacher Education
Teach for America (TFA) is a marvel at marketing, offering elite college students a win-win option: by becoming corps members, they can do good and do well at the same time. Teacher education (TE) programs are in a hopeless position in trying to compete with TFA for prospective students. They cannot provide students with the opportunity to do well, because they can offer none of the exclusiveness and cachet that comes from being accepted as a TFA corps member. TE has always offered students the chance to do good, but this prospect is less entrancing when they realize that TFA's escape clause allows graduates to do good without major personal sacrifice. More than that, it promises to be a great career booster that will pay off handsomely in future income and prestige. In short, the competition between TFA and TE is a case of "heads they win, tails we lose."
Teach for America and Teacher Ed: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
Journal of Teacher Education, 2010
Teach for America (TFA) is a marvel at marketing, offering elite college students a win-win option: by becoming corps members, they can do good and do well at the same time. Teacher education (TE) programs are in a hopeless position in trying to compete with TFA for prospective students. They cannot provide students with the opportunity to do well, because they can offer none of the exclusiveness and cachet that comes from being accepted as a TFA corps member. TE has always offered students the chance to do good, but this prospect is less entrancing when they realize that TFA's escape clause allows graduates to do good without major personal sacrifice. More than that, it promises to be a great career booster that will pay off handsomely in future income and prestige. In short, the competition between TFA and TE is a case of "heads they win, tails we lose."
Teach For America: A Review of the Evidence
National Education Policy Center, 2010
Teach For America (TFA) aims to address teacher shortages by sending graduates from elite colleges, most of whom do not have a background in education, to teach in low-income rural and urban schools for a two-year commitment. The impact of these graduates is hotly debated by those who, on the one hand, see this as a way to improve the supply of teachers by enticing some of America‘s top students into teaching and those who, on the other hand, see the program as a harmful dalliance into the lives of low-income students who most need highly trained and highly skilled teachers. This policy brief offers a comprehensive overview of research on the TFA program.
Teach For America: A Return to the Evidence
National Education Policy Center, 2014
Teach For America (TFA) receives hundreds of millions of public and private dollars and has garnered acclaim for sending college graduates, who do not typically have an education background, to teach in low-income rural and urban schools for a two-year commitment. The number of TFA corps members has grown by about 2,000% since its inception in 1990. The impact of these transitory teachers is hotly debated. Admirers see the program as a way to grow the supply of “outstanding” graduates, albeit temporarily, as teachers. Critics, however, see the program as a diversion from truly beneficial policies or even as a harmful dalliance into the lives of low-income students who most need a highly trained, highly skilled, and stable teacher workforce. Despite a series of non-peer-reviewed studies funded by TFA and other organizations that purport to show benefits of TFA teachers, peer-reviewed research on their impact continues to produce a mixed picture. The peer-reviewed research suggests that results are affected by the experience and certification level of the TFA teachers as well as by the group of teachers with whom those TFA teachers are compared. The question’s specifics strongly determine the answer. The authors recommend a shift in focus for TFA from a program of mixed impact to one that makes measureable changes in the quality of education in America. Recommendations for policymakers and districts are provided.
Bringing Teach for America into the Forefront of Teacher Education: Philanthropy Meets Spin
Critical Education, 2013
This study examines the practices utilized by TFA from its inception in 1990 to create its brand and how these practices have transformed TFA into a cultural icon within the national landscape of teacher education. Well-funded through both philanthropic foundations, corporate sponsorships, and federal monies, TFA's use of its organizational and political networks, as well as the media, has enabled it to position itself discursively as a leader in the preparation of teachers in the U.S, resulting not only in transforming state and national discussions about teacher preparation, but in establishing a network of elites with a particular ideology of schooling for impoversihed students.
Campbell Systematic Reviews
BACKGROUND Description of the Condition Research shows a shortage of effective teachers in many rural and urban K-12 public schools serving the highest proportions of high-poverty students across the US (Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2006; Peske & Haycock, 2006; Monk, 2007). This shortage has persisted for decades (Darling-Hammond, 1984; Ingersoll 2001; Ingersoll & Perda, 2010). In the past decade, alternative route teacher preparation programs aimed at addressing this shortage proliferated across the United States (Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2007). Alternative route teacher preparation programs seek to increase the supply of teachers more rapidly than traditional teacher preparation programs (Hess, 2002; Raymond & Fletcher, 2002; Blazer, 2012). Although their requirements vary widely, most of these programs are shorter, less expensive, and more practically oriented than traditional teacher preparation programs (Blazer, 2102). These programs also vary widely in their selection criteria for teacher candidates, approach to training these candidates, notoriety among education stakeholders, and evidence of their effectiveness (Hess, 2002; Kaine, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2007; Constantine et al. 2009). Teach For America (TFA) is nationally recognized as an alternate route teacher preparation program that has sought to address the shortage of effective teachers specifically in high-poverty rural and urban schools across the US (Teach For America, 2010). TFA stands out among its peer preparation programs for several reasons. TFA is the largest source of new teachers and is the largest recipient of philanthropic funding for teacher recruitment for K-12 education (Blazer, 2012; Mead, 2015). Since 1990, TFA has recruited, selected, trained, placed, and supported approximately 25,000 new public school teachers (corps members) in the highest-poverty school districts in rural and urban areas. As of 2010, TFA corps members, represented between 10-15% of all new hires in high-poverty schools in the 35 regions served by TFA. In the 2013-14 school year alone, 11,000 TFA corps members reached more than 750,000 students in high-poverty K-12 rural and urban schools. 1 TFA is also the most publicly visible and widely debated alternative route teacher preparation program as noted by the Conner P. Williams (2014) article entitled "Stop Scapegoating Teach for America." 2 Finally, TFA is the most evaluated program of its kind. There have been multiple quasi-experimental and experimental studies conducted on the effectiveness of TFA to improve student outcomes. However, this body of primary studies has not yet been 1 Data from a randomized controlled trial conducted in 2004 of students in 17 study schools with TFA corps members were on average 66% African American and 25% Latino/Hispanic. Approximately 95% of students in these schools received free or reduced price lunches, and began the year, on average, at the 14th percentile compared to the national norm (Decker, Mayer, & Glazerman, 2004).