The author notes that TFA has been criticized for not retaining recruits, but offers defense that some have stayed a few more years or risen to positions of leadership in the administration. I do wonder, though, how many--if any--TFA recruits actually choose careers as regular classroom teachers.

It doesn't sound like any have done so. Yet TFA is inundated each year with applications from seniors graduating from Ivy League and other top universities. Is a Princeton graduate going to commit his life to working in the trenches where actual change occurs? No, he's going to be one of the string-pullers, someone with a much larger salary than the useless teacher he originally came in to show how it's done, Ivy League style. He'll help us further the capitalist project by running schools like highly driven corporations and performing personality tests(!) prior to consideration for employment.

A Princeton grad won't stick around because he didn't go to Princeton so he could be an under-appreciated, underpaid and undervalued teacher. That's why the TFA teachers who have stayed in education have risen to administration or even started "chains" of schools (more consumerist lingo--as if schools were fast-food restaurants or department stores--evokes images of "profits": we are now turning knowledge into a product; school=Starbucks.) Teachers get no respect and even less pay, but thank God we have the privileged richies from Harvard and Yale to swoop down from on high to fix everything so they have something noble and prestigious to put on their resumes when they apply to law school or to become investment bankers. I just find it depressing that this is touted as one of our best hopes for educational reform.

Well, if there's one thing this article teaches us, it's that maybe if we really did treat teachers as respected and educated professionals who could expect to at least, some day, be able to pay off their student loans as well as for the continuing education and multiple degrees required by most states, results might happen in the classroom.

2 of the veteran teachers at my school got their start in TFA. The 2005 national teacher of the year was a TFA alum. If Teach for America's recruits are leaving the classroom because they think they're too good for it, why are all the other new teachers leaving in nearly equal numbers? Your obvious disdain for the Ivy League (which, incidentally, makes up a small proportion of TFA's members) is obscuring what you should really be focused on- results. I suggest you do a little research into the KIPP schools before you dismiss them with a bizarre comparison to Starbucks.

By the way, TFA's "personality test" for recruits is nothing more than a sit-down interview... something employers (including principals) tend to use pretty often when selecting new hires. And, if you have never taught in an inner-city school, I can assure you that nobody who was just in it to "build their resume" would make it past the third week on the job.

Do you think that school administrations are currently well-run, on the whole? If not, why object to TFA alums moving into administration?

What exactly do you envision as "treating teachers with respect?" Providing professional management, development support, and performance feedback certainly sounds respectful to me.

Any suggestions from your corner, or just gripes?

It seems to me we are all just talking impressions and not facts. Has anyone sited a peer reviewed study comparing TFA, traditional ed colleges, privates, night school, etc success? Success at staying in the field? Success at student achievement (measured in multiple ways...not just standardized testing)?

I'd be curious to see the results. My impression is that TFA folks would be less likely to stick around, but fairly successful in the classroom while they stayed. However, keep in mind that most new teachers are less effective than experienced ones (I can't site the research here, but I believe the research does support it.)

I also think the original poster, despite his obvious dislike of Ivy League types, is on to something. TFA is with it's limited training (one summer) and placement in troubled schools is supporting the test driven, administrative oversight model of education. I'm sure many TFA candidates imagine themselves starring in Freedom Writers, but that's not the system they are entering.

As a former TFA in rural Arkansas who has stayed past his two year commitment and is not an ivy league grad, I can assure everyone that there are much easier ways to pad a resume for law school than to teach in the Delta. The TFAs that do join for the resume building usually don't make it out of our summer institute. If you want intense, go spend July in Houston at the TFA summer institute.

I agree that TFA is not the magic solution to fix education in America. I wish education majors from good schools would come to my small town in the Delta and teach for 30 years, but they won't. One administrator from my district told me how she gets laughed at (literally) by education majors at recruitment fairs at Arkansas colleges. I can understand why. A first year teacher in Bentonville, AR makes more than a 10 year vet in my district.

There are a lot of serious problems in our education system, and TFA won't solve many of them, but don't make us the object of your ivy league resentments.

I sometimes say that "I have been in public education since fifty years before I was born"---counting parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Have myself taught elementary school for seven years, have been an elementary principal, college professor, janitor.

I never have known a time that there has not been a strong, repeat STRONG array of criticisms as the education "establishment," "our schools," "educationists," and the like.

"TFA" sounds like a good idea to me, though maybe tinged with elitism. Also, in this country it seems to me that an emphasis of results, or outcomes, should not be accepted without scrutiny. WHAT results, outcomes; and what balance with other desirable results and outcomes?

Aren't we concerned with values and attitudes as well as skills and knowledge? What about civic duty?

The original and proper title, and Thoreau's preferred title for his great essay was "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." [emphasis added]. I would like some consideration: What saving balance of that spirit can and should be infused into TFA.? And how do it? Doesn't dedication deserve prestige?

A decades ago I wrote a poem, sort of a credo:

A Prayer for Those Who Teach and Those Who Learn

Children, I have my integrity.
And strive for your whole health.
I am not concerned with great matters,
or with pretense
But to give genuine service.
As you are safe with a good teacher,
So I am sustained by the truth.
We will trust in the truth
From now on and forever.
(after Ps. 131)

I have a son who may become a high school mathematics teacher, though he will never be an ivy league student. I would like for him to be interested in TFA, and have a decent chance of attaining to TFA. He might extend this family tradition of being in public education to "...since a hundred years before I was born." Could be.

More citizens would be helped if fewer resources were diverted from public education into private schools (into "charter" schools?)---also, I think, diminishing these diversions would help the body politic, and finally would help our standing among all nations.

Which is to say: The relentless criticism of public education should be tempered by thoughtful consideration of the facts. All the facts.

One measure of prestige is the amount of money attracted.

The problem with Teaching is its a money losing profession for new students. Look a 4 yr degree is gonna run you anywhere from 15k -100k plus you gotta get that stupid teaching certificate which is like another yr of college, so a prospective student teacher is already in the whole for on avg 50k before they even start teaching.

Now except for Cali and NY most teachers (even with a Masters) are only making 35k-45k starting and they still will be required to take more classes (which the schools don't pay for) in order to move up the ladder and since most school districts all keep the pay low, you cant really switch jobs and make that much more.

By comparison, a flunkee GED person who becomes a cop or fireman will easily be able to make over 100k (with overtime) in there first yr have a awesome pension and have no student loans.....

Gee and I wonder why we have a hard time finding teachers??? It simple economics, as a career its not worth it anymore.

Wow...experienced cops and firemen in my state don't make 50K, let alone 100K. Generally, they're not "GED flunkies" either.

It seems like it would be tough to attract the best and brightest to teaching when college costs and loans are so overwhelmingly high. However, one thing that I have noticed with my most recent student teachers is an even deeper dedication to the profession because of those loans--they've got a lot more to lose if they don't put their investment to work.