I'm confused: what has TFA shown and how? That it can increasingly recruit higher and higher SAT-scoring and GPA-climbing students to teaching? Perhaps. That it is retaining teachers? Where did that information go? That it is helping to close the achievement gap? Well, I missed that too.
Wendy Kopp's organization does well to make attractive the teaching profession to some of the best and brightest. It is a shame that most applicants to TFA do not view their entrance into that program as an entrance into teaching, but instead a gateway to a world of elite connections. This is, perhaps, TFAs biggest challenge: what is attractive about teaching in these schools?
I think it would be wonderful for a change if we stopped extolling the virtues of do-gooders who go on to do-good at other jobs, never forgetting those kids they once taught, sending their donation every year to the public school down the street from their child's private school, and instead started looking at what kinds of teachers stay in these tough situations. For every Erin Gruwell, there are 10 teachers who stay, who learn to balance the demands of teaching, and who successfully prepare students for lives beyond their classrooms. How and why do they do that? What is difficult about duplicating those kinds of successes? And why don't we know what kinds of programs help to produce teachers that stay in the profession? I'm not sure this article has given me hope that TFA is one of those programs. Or, what about really dealing with the measures by which we analyze and assess "good teaching" and what retains teachers. Isn't this what's important -- the teachers who stay?
That kind of analysis demands a rigor beyond mere examination of how organizations and institutions of higher learning fundraise and convince philanthropists that they're making an impact. If TFA is doing this kind of research, if they are doing all that is necessary to keep their recruits in the profession, then I applaud them. But apparently, the general public will never know. One has to wonder, then, if the program isn't more concerned with producing the "aware" citizen, who can bring back to the general populace the same, oversimplified, tired argument about our lowest performing schools and students: there's not enough money and they just aren't working hard enough. So, Dr. Smith, would you be so kind as to donate to the afterschool program where I sit on the board?
What can we really do to raise our standards for schools, students, policy and teachers: stop blaming all of public schooling's problems on teachers, and instead work to find real ways that kids learn and teachers stay. I wish that's what this piece had been about.
