A college student’s experience is full of all sorts of wonderful little ideals of learning, free thinking, nurturing hopes, and developing skills to help change the world. The popularity of youth service programs reinforces the commitment to those ideals. A new study on Teach For America—the two-year teaching program aimed at eliminating education inequality by sending its corps of young people to revitalize struggling schools across the nation—could challenge our expectations of the program. The study, “Assessing the Effects of Voluntary Youth Service: The Case of Teach For America,” written by Stanford professors Doug McAdam and Cynthia Brandt, shows that those who complete Teach For America are actually less active in areas of civic involvement, charitable giving, and even voting than those who dropped out of the program or declined their acceptance. At the University of Chicago, where Teach For America is the second-largest employer of graduating seniors, this may strike an unfortunate blow to the reality of our ideal.
Teach for America itself is not doing badly by any means. They’ve had record numbers of applicants for the past two years, with a 70 percent increase in applicants from 2006, and a very respectable applicant class at that. Eleven percent of all Ivy League graduates apply to Teach For America, and 14 percent of UChicago’s class of 2009 applied. Corps members can proudly boast a 3.6 average GPA, and 1344 average SAT score, and 89 percent of them held leadership positions at their universities. The top schools from which TFA draws most of its members are among the most elite in the country, including Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Columbia University, Northwestern, UPenn, Boston College, Brown, William and Mary, and Princeton.
The focus on achievement and the elitism of the institution, however, may in fact be a force against them. Compared to grades and commitment to leadership, commitment to public service among applicants is practically reversed. Only one in 10 members say they were interested in the teaching profession before joining TFA, and the incentives applicants receive to take part in the program place a real doubt on their commitment to teaching beyond the experience. Teach for America is eager to note its “partnerships with more than 200 graduate schools” that “offer a range of benefits for corps members and alumni,” as well employer partnerships with Accenture, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, J.P. Morgan, and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Though reputable education institutions such as Edison Schools, KIPP, and Wellstone Action are also listed, there is an obvious imbalance in the set of partnerships that cannot be ignored in light of the imbalance of both applicant goals and alumni experiences.
“The confusing thing is why are these things offered if they really do want to do this so people will become committed to teaching,” says Billy O’Connell, a fourth-year Classics major in the college who applied to TFA, but was not accepted. There is a common, if unspoken, understanding that participation in the program provides a beneficial platform for future graduate, law, or med school plans, as well as lucrative career goals. Especially at UChicago, where our heavily academic tunnel vision seems to inevitably drive us towards graduate education, these kinds of benefits are especially pertinent. The program’s design likewise appeals to those looking to avoid the current difficult, and particularly terrifying, job market. Not only is the TFA experience highly respected among employers, it provides a convenient two-year paid solace before entering the real world. “I think, in comparison to other programs, it is much more elitist and some people, even if they don’t admit it to themselves, are going through with it because it gets you all these great connections,” O’Connell stated in a recent interview. “By putting all these extra corporate incentives out there, what they do is get people interested in the corporate incentives.”
Applicant disparities aside, the experience of teaching in some of the poorest and most struggling urban and rural schools in the country should abruptly wake anyone who accidentally stumbled into public service on their path to personal success. Unfortunately, Teach For America reports both a low retention rate of members after the two-year commitment, as well as significantly high levels of disillusionment with the education system. The Stanford study now shows these sentiments towards civic service run deeper than just education. Due in part to the types of individuals TFA recruits, corps teachers most likely have little to no experience teaching, let alone in difficult environments, and the first few months of teaching can be one of the most difficult and frustrating experiences for the individual. “It’s not that easy for anybody, and for an urban environment there are just a whole slew of different things you have to consider that those of us raised in an elite institution might not think about,” says Justin Huang, a fourth-year sociology major and member of the University’s Urban Teaching Education Program (UTEP).
UTEP, a two-year master’s program in education that focuses on urban education in Chicago, drastically differs from TFA, which provides only five weeks of summer training for teachers before dropping them, often alone and unsupported, into these extremely difficult environments. What results is a 61 percent retention rate for teachers after five years. Comparably, after the initial two years of training that gives graduates a master’s in education, UTEP teachers have cohort supervision and support for three years after they begin teaching. UTEP has a 95 percent retention rate for teachers after five years, and 91 percent are still teaching in Chicago. These high levels of commitment can be attributed to the significant training and support networks that Huang says are necessary to teach effectively in urban schools.
“The idea that like, I can train people for rural schools and urban schools, and urban schools anywhere, is a little misleading because every city has its own problems, every city has its own history,” he continues, “We’re focused on Chicago specifically; that helps us stay committed to the cause, because we’re so well prepared for Chicago teaching….But I feel like TFA is a much bigger program with a much broader focus and you just lose a lot more.”
These losses do not outweigh the benefits of the Teach For America experience. Reading levels of students taught by a TFA member increase an average of 1.5 grade levels compared to their peers, and those members that do take advantage of the career benefits hold valuable positions to advocate for education through law, business, and public sectors, if not directly teaching themselves. It is equally difficult to criticize any public service, especially considering the amount of involvement and exposure TFA provides to students who would otherwise hesitate to make such a serious commitment.
The disillusionment, frustration, and decline in civic involvement reported by TFA alumni is, quite frankly, easily avoidable, and has no place in a program that otherwise could be the culmination of all our wonderful university ideals. The recruitment demands have built a reputable group of participants, but have also established a brand of elitism that sells its incentives to those who are willing to commit to teaching for the greater, more personal gains earned upon completion. Teach for America needs to shift the focus from achievement and academic merit towards the applicants’ true desire for and dedication to teaching and civic service on a great scale. They need to stop selling success and start sustaining it by fulfilling the meaning of the public service it seeks to achieve.
—Emily Kaiser is a fourth-year in the College majoring in sociology and an editorial board member.
I think Ms. Kaiser is missing the real vision of TFA – which is not necessarily to keep corps members in education (which, honestly, it does an exceptional job of since more than 60% of all TFA alumni are still working in education – when originally only 10% of those people ever considered education as a career). TFA’s real mission is to “build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort”. Yes, keeping great people in education is one way to meet this goal, but anyone actually involved in education will admit that only so much can be done from the inside. The TFA alumni that become advocates for education outside the education sector are just as important. Anyone who joins TFA thinking only of reaching their personal goals, leaves TFA as a changed person. People who are already interested in education are not the people that TFA are recruiting, because they already plan to be involved with the cause. TFA really kind of WANTS the selfish people, so that they can be converted. And trust me when I say that once you have taught in these schools for two years, you will never NOT be an education advocate – no matter what your career choice. Take it from me (a second-year corps member going to business school next fall), I will never stop working to increase educational equity. And that’s something I would never have said two years ago.
Kaiser and the Stanford researchers have part of their story wrong–it starts with their initial assumptions about what Teach For America is and its organizational mission. Unlike the study’s authors and Kaiser assume, the mission of Teach For America is not to develop a cadre of people who are civically involved or who practice good financial stewardship, nor are they seeking to find recruits that will stay in their classrooms beyond the two year commitment. I’m sure they’d welcome their alumni to do any of these things, but that’s not what they set out to do, nor is it by what they should be evaluated. I invite the researchers and Kaiser to visit the Teach For America website to read both its mission statement and its theory of change, then perhaps a more suitable set of research metrics and a more informed opinion could be developed. The point is that we would never (or rather, we should never) evaluate an organization based on performance indicators that have nothing to do with the core of the organization’s work. It doesn’t make sense. We wouldn’t assess the Peace Corps as an organization based on whether or not its alumni practice charitable giving or are civically engaged in later years so why would we do this for Teach For America?
I do, however, wonder to what extent the underlying intentions of applicants has changed with Teach For America’s increased credibility and marketability and if this has any bearing on the commitment that alumni have to drive efforts from their various fields to eliminate educational inequality.
As a 2003 corps member, I would like to point out a couple of things. Teach for America was never about people becoming committed to teaching. It was not a program to recruit top people to stay teachers. It was to expose people to educational inequalities and based on their previous leadership qualities to go out into whatever there intended career paths to keep education in mind. Many corps members have stayed in education in one aspect or another either in policy, law or such. Your article fails to mention that. I am not sure what statistics you have but in my region of Atlanta, most corps members in 2003 are in the education field in some aspect…many are still teachers! Former corps members are making significant changes in education in policy, charter school creation and have been innovative in education. That was the intention of TFA to have people thinking about education in whatever field they chose.
As for me, I planned to attend law school after my commitment, I stayed beyond my commitment like most of my corps. I now have my master’s in ed. policy. Not in my initial plans, but TFA changed my perspective. My overall mission.
I still teach seven years later and I will leave next year to get my PhD in education.
I’m very interested in the source of the data regarding student’s reading level growth as compared to non TFA peers. How is it that teachers with less training, teaching in the most challenging environments without support are achieving this? Is this TFA’s data? This doesn’t make sense to me. Are they talking about students who were reading at below-grade level? It concerns me when this kind of data is thrown in as if it is fact without any supporting documentation.
My son applied to TFA. He graduated from a prestigious college with honors, summa cum laude. He had so much to offer. He is well educated, speaks Spanish (not his language), a great athlete. His dream was TFA. He talked about TFA all thru college. TFA TURNED HIM DOWN.. So he taught in a Los Angeles city school (who had an armed guard on duty). He was a great teacher and of course was offered a full time job. When he left and went to law school he told the students they must graduate and he would be at graduation to congratulate them. At the graduation his students came up to him and said you really came to graduation!. Please do not promote TFA because they are not chosen because of great credentials or grades.
Great, a policy wonk factory for education. Just what we need more of. Not.
We already have too many people only slightly involved in education making decisions about how we teachers should be doing our jobs.
I’m not surprised by anything in the article but the writer’s surprise at their findings. Few applicants to TFA expect to be there long term, it’s just a stepping stone to greater things for them. Who really wants to work in an inner city school for the rest of their lives for low pay in a run-down environment. But participants get to make a difference for a couple years and get something great to put on grad school applications while urban students get a better education than they would have otherwise, everybody wins.
Some of these comments sound so smug…as if the TFA alum will really be in a position to affect education after they’ve done their two-year stint. I like the assertion by everyone that TFA was never intended to recruit ‘high quality candidates’ over the long term. Really??? The goal of influencing education through other venues, later, is too vague to have much meaning. It ends up as a do-gooder, feel-gooder program for privileged young adults.
By the way, where DID that stat that kids gain a year and a half in reading with TFAs over other teachers??? That’s pretty remarkable–if true. And if it’s true, then how? And if it is true, and this program was never intended to create career educators, then what’s the point of the program at all?
Jane-the gains in test scores come from state standardized tests. Students in TFA schools are almost always substantially behind grade level. The growth comes from the difference between scores at the start of the year, and at the end.
It is worth noting that retention rates for urban schools among first year teachers are low across the board. Rather than disparaging TFA’s somehow low retention rate (its actually better in the first two years than the average, in many TFA cities), they should be applauded for bringing in many talented people into education who typically would never be there. Like others have said, 60% of CMs stay in education, often in administration (not just wonkery)
Haters gonna hate though I guess
As a therapist with many TFA teachers in my practice, it has been my personal opinion that TFA does not prepare its teachers well enough nor provide enough support once these young men and women enter a difficult teaching environment. I have observed occassions when TFA should have stood up for the teacher but have been afraid or negligent, leaving the teacher out in the cold. In one instance the teacher was fired for her administration’s incompetence.
Being intelligent allows you to problem solve. I went through teacher training. I did a two year Masters’ Program when I decided that a PHD in biochemistry didn’t earn me a job I wanted. I have taught non-readers who were 16 years old how to read. I have no training in how to teach reading. All I have is three children whom I have taught how to read (one of whom also has autism.) Anything which gets intelligent people in the classroom — even if for a short period of time — is beneficial for children. ALSO, we need non-teachers who understand that teaching is not an 8:00 – 3:00 job. Teachers work long UNPAID hours. We are blamed for all sorts of things we have no control over.
…”it provides a convenient two-year paid solace before entering the real world.”
As a second year special education teacher and corps member, I work from 6:30 in the morning until 5:00 p.m. (extended days, Monday-Thursday) and teach Saturday school from 8-1. Regardless of what I choose to do next year, I am responsible right now for the success of my students. Whether they’re unmotivated, unable to read anywhere near grade level or living in a run-down house with no electricity, should they fail to achieve grade level mastery, I am the one who is held accountable. Some days are definitely more challenging than others, but it’s what I signed up for and I don’t regret it.
Certainly everyone who teaches will have a different experience based on where they are and what they’re teaching and how they deal with the stress of the job.
One thing I can assure you though, is that for no one is this a break from the real world.
I think Ms. Kaiser’s post misses some important points about TFA. I have responded on American Education Review’s blog (google search: American Education Review).
The core problem with Teach for America is that it seeks to reinforce a system that is fatally flawed, our public education system. This system has been captured by a unionized public-sector bureaucracy that makes progress impossible. TFA is but a band aid on a gaping would.
Better to put our resources into charter schools, which are private-sector, can be union-free, and are usually full of educational entrepreneurs. These schools out-perform public schools everywhere, even when the kids are from worse backgrounds.
And the next step, of course, is school vouchers.
Other comments have already taken care of this for me but you missed the point–TFA *wants* people who will go on to to careers in politics and finance. They are not trying to make you a career teacher but rather show you what kind of people need help and basically breed a flock of unpaid lobbyists in positions of power.
This is basically exactly how it was explained to me when I interviewed with them…it is not like they are trying to hide their goal.
Are the gains made by students taught by TFA teachers retained? If the goal of TFA is to produce people who want to changed the educational system, do they have statistics to prove that they are making a difference?
TFA was intended to aid in the privatization of public schools in part through the de-professionalization of teaching. That TFA has such incestuously close ties to Goldman Sachs–the Robber Baron of Wall Street is also a sign that this program should be viewed with a discerning and suspicious eye. I have seen TFA members who had promise as teachers, but lacked the background a teaching credential with extensive student teaching would have provided. I have seen far too many TFA members who were as arrogant as they were untalented. The very audacity of ANYONE to take a classroom minus the teaching credential that should be required to PROVE they are ready–is an insult to the very communities TFA purports to ‘serve.’ I am tired of seeing POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJORS teaching 1st grade for instance. These ‘talented’ Ivy Leaguers should go to the wizard–and find a conscience. It is absolutely UNETHICAL to foist unqualified people in teaching positions–ESPECIALLY in impoverished districts. I want and DEMAND for the children in my impoverished district to receive what the children of Presidents receive–fully qualified teachers–and not a flock of arrogant, ambitious wanna be’s using our children as a career stepping stone to that cozy Wall Street office. I find it equally ironic that the VERY CORPORATIONS WHO REFUSE TO PAY THE TAXES WHICH SUPPORT THESE SCHOOL DISTRICTS–push TFA. Face it folks, it’s Goldman Sachs big joke–they don’t pay taxes and they get the ‘tax credit’ for their ‘charitable’ actions. HYPOCRISY–THY NAME IS TFA.