Man, if I were all of you, I would think I was a bitter ol’ 20 year old who doesn’t like anything. I don’t blame you. But of course, that is not true (although I know many of my friends would beg to differ), I like many things. I just do not like lies, I do not like people being manipulated, and I especially do not like counter-productive approaches to “fixing our education system.” As you may have noticed, educational equity is kinda-sorta really important to me.
A few days ago I sent out a Tweet and Facebook status on how excited I was to meet other students who also did not support Teach For America. With that being said, I was not surprised when my phone started blowing up from Facebook messages, comments, and tweetbacks (you would’ve thought people were accusing me of being the devil!). So rather than responding to each one individually, why not write an entire post?
To clarify early, I am not here to destroy or take down TFA. I simply do not support their approach. My goal of this post is to force others to question what they believe in. I am not telling anyone what to think, I am just putting out facts that aren’t easily recognized. If there is one thing I hope others can take away from my post, it is to compel others to start questioning everything.
Note about this blog post: I published this a little early before sending it out via social media because I wanted to gain some feedback before it hit the masses. One new and current TFA member read through my post and sent me her feedback. As a TFA member herself, she is a skeptic as well. I included her notes throughout the post just to provide perspective.
Reason #1: Students who go into TFA have good intentions, and that’s what scares me.
“I get a little nauseous on behalf of the bright-eyed young idealists who announce their plans to conquer educational inequity with such conviction. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to see them, because I recognize in them a less damaged version of myself.” – Former TFA corps member
As I said before, I believe students who go into organizations such as SFER and TFA have good intentions, but that’s what’s so concerning. Students who genuinely want to make a difference are being made a fool–I was one of them.
Many people don’t know, but TFA was my life-long goal the second I discovered it my freshman year in college. I thought it was a path paved from the gods above. Going into underprivileged schools? Only the elite of the elite get accepted? Heck yea, how could I not want to be a part of TFA?! Then, back in January, I saw Nancy Carlsson-Paige decline her nomination for an Education Award because of its organization’s collaboration with TFA, and I was beside myself. As I read more into her reasoning and did more researching myself, I was livid. TFA decorated their organization, twisted my intentions, and made me support something I would never stand up for.
It’s critical we look beyond glorified missions. We must try to understand fully what type of impact the organizations we support are making. If this applies to you, why do you support TFA? Why do you want to join? Great. But I promise, if you look around a little more, there’s much more out there than TFA.
[Note from current TFA corps member: “You’re right that there are more organizations out there with the same end goal of TFA, but they are SO much harder to find on your own, which I think is why people choose to apply to TFA anyway; it’s the path of least resistance. AND TFA makes it so easy; they have campus recruiters on all of the major colleges whose sole job it is to get the best and the brightest to apply.”]
And, to those going into it because they aspire to be lifelong educators, here are words from TFA’s CEO, Wendy Kopp, herself: “TFA is not a teaching organization, but rather a leadership development organization.” If leadership is what you want, please go somewhere else. Don’t put students’ lives at risk just because you want to become a better leader.
Reason #2: Old TFA corps members are speaking up
I’ve never been a TFA corps member, so I fully understand my perspective is limited. To level my argument, I’ll let some of the ones who have experienced TFA first-hand speak for themselves:
Why I Quit Teach for America – TFA used to be a solution to a problem of teacher shortages in high-need areas, but now it has itself become the problem. I won’t pretend that quitting wasn’t selfish, but I haven’t regretted it for a second. I quit for myself, to save my health and sanity.
Occupy TFA – One of the ironies of TFA is that while they select corps members because of their leadership potential, they also expect those same future transformational leaders to be very obedient followers during training.
I’ve Always Hated Teach for America – I joined Teach for America when I graduated from undergrad with the intention of using it as a tool to get me in a school and teach for the rest of my life. Much to my surprise, I found out rather quickly how TFA has no intention of creating life-long educators.
Why I Don’t Teach For America Anymore – Another not so ugly truth is my students are not charity cases. They deserve a legitimate teacher, not some idealistic graduate student barely scraping by with her sanity.
Why I Did TFA and why you shouldn’t – If I were ‘America’ I would have this to say to TFA: While I appreciate your offer to ‘teach’ for me, I’ve already got enough untrained teachers for my poorest kids.
Reason #3: 5 weeks of training are simply not enough
I cannot stress this enough. First, the lack of proper training often throws teachers in classrooms where they are poorly prepared. A former TFA corps member and current education reformist, Michelle Rhee, said she “was incredibly bad” her first year.
The time teachers spend on struggling in the classroom is valuable learning time students cannot get back. Yes, I understand there are cases where teachers get it on their first shot (so much kudos). But why, why, why insist on risking it? These students aren’t laboratory rats to perform experiments on. We don’t have this kind of time to wait around waiting for TFA to perfect their 5 weeks of training–it’s been 20 years already.
Would you want a doctor who has only had 5 weeks of training? And if your response was, “But that’s different,” then that’s a problem in itself.
The fact that our nation fails to take the profession of educators seriously is one of the main reasons that has allowed our education system to become what it has. My point is, TFA is another attack on not only teachers, but current students who are in the education field. It deprofessionalizes the teaching profession. It takes away our dignity. From the perspective of a student studying education, it’s insulting. It’s basically saying that what I choose to study for years as an undergrad, as well as put myself in debt for, are things that can be learned in 5 weeks.
[Note from current TFA corps member: “I totally agree that 5 weeks is not enough time. My problem — one that so often gets overlooked in criticisms of TFA — is that we totally and completely screw over the summer school students. These are kids who NEED the very best teachers…and they were given a brand new, learning as we go, ‘fake it til you make it’ teacher? Are you out of your mind?!”]
Even further, TFA puts the most inexperienced teachers in the most high-need schools. Through mentoring students from high-poverty areas, and attending their student panels, I often ask, “What advice do you have for current and future teachers?” Their response: “Get experience. Please.”
Reason #4: 2 years (if you make it) are also not enough
TFA corps members go into high-need, underprivileged schools for 2 years. I don’t know how many are familiar with such environments, but many of these students already deal with instability. I cannot see the benefit of throwing teachers (with minimal experience) in there who are going to come, know they are going to grow close to students, and then leave in a few short years. In a study done by the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Teach For America, “an estimated 56% of TFA teachers left their initial school within their first two years of teaching.”
But why does the amount of years a teacher teaches matter? A study by researchers from the University of Michigan, Stanford, and the University of Virginia found that:
Though there may be cases where turnover is actually helpful to student achievement, on average, it is harmful…Implementing such policies may be especially important in schools with large populations of low-performing and black students, where turnover has the strongest negative effect on student achievement.
According to TFA, nearly two-thirds of corps members continue working in education after their two years. Yet the same Harvard study found that 24% of the teachers are predicted to have remained in teaching beyond 6 years — and by the end of 6 years, fewer than 10% of the original group are predicted to have remained in their initial school.
I want to make a note that some who enter TFA may not stay in the education field, but go into their next careers with more concern for education–which I think is great. But TFA shouldn’t be what introduces the issues in our education system. If TFA had 90% of their corps members staying in the education field after their 2 years were up, then it would be a totally different story.
Reason #5: Where is the student voice?
One thing TFA does do is provide research. Unfortunately, I do not have time to go about and read through every single one of these pieces of evidence to see if they are credible or misleading. But, I have to give them credit for providing it.
I also want to make note on their videos. It’s great to see the TFA corps members’ videos throughout their website speaking on behalf of the success. But what I think would really make them credible is hearing the students’ perspective–after all, it’s about the students, isn’t it? Let’s hear from them.
With that being said, maybe students in these urban schools don’t want TFA corps members. A student who has TFA corps members in her school wrote a poem called “Hallelujah, the Saviors are Here”:
“Only see them for 2 years because we’re just a stepping stone so they can get to their prep schools…It’s time we refute these self-proclaimed saviors and put our faith into the true educators…and not the ones trying to do the black community a couple favors.”
Reason #6: TFA & charter schools
I honestly didn’t even know TFA supported charter schools until a current TFA corps member brought it to my attention. She emailed me questioning why I didn’t support TFA, because she is also skeptical:
My most serious concern with TFA is the emphasis they place on charter schools. I think that the more focus there is on charter schools and school vouchers as reliable options for our educational inequality woes, the less of a focus there is on what we actually need to do – fix our public school education system. In my opinion, charter schools are actually extending the achievement gap, not closing it as they are credited with doing, because even to just apply to one parents often must have the knowledge, resources, and time to make it happen.
A couple of quick points against charters:
- Saves a few, while leaving many behind
- Supporters of charters claim they are performing better than public, when research proves there isn’t much of a difference
- Promotes segregation — documented by the NAACP, Huffington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the UCLA Civil Rights Project
Reason #7: TFA has donors from large organizations, corporations, and banks. Why are corps members asking for donations?
TFA’s donors include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and much more, who have donated over the past 20 years. Call me crazy, but this looks like a lot of money–and this isn’t even all the donors.
Regardless, over 600 TFA corps members are asking for donations on DonorsChoose.org. Meaning even though TFA has multiple large organizations donating millions to them, they can’t seem to afford basics such as scissors and construction paper.
Do not get me wrong, I think DonorsChoose.org is great. And it kills me knowing students don’t have access to such basic supplies. But think of all the other teachers and students out there who aren’t with TFA, who don’t have a big organization backing them up that gets funded millions a year. I’m not blaming the corps members for asking, I am questioning where the priorities of TFA lie. Why use money to give 9,000 new iPads out to TFA corps members, when the students you are supposed to be helping can’t even have markers?
[Note from current TFA corps member: “We, as TFA corps members, do not personally see any of that money. We’re completely on our own for financing this entire thing…TFA does provide you the opportunity to apply for transitional funding in the forms of 0% interest loans and (for a lucky few) grants – but these are only a few thousand dollars at max and most must be paid back within your 2 year commitment.”]
Reason #8: TFA makes way for a culture of racial oppression
“In many segregated urban schools, then nonwhite students face white teachers all day and often come to see them as a part of the structure of authority of the state.”
With schools more segregated than they were in 1968, and then glorifying a program that (even if unintentionally) makes whites — as the student above puts it — be “saviors,” TFA contributes to the growing racial dividing line. The structure of TFA puts forth the idea that those of color need whites to save them, it reinforces the idea that whites will always be above. I know this may not be the intention at all, but that is why we must reconsider the impact our actions are making. And as a former TFA corps member said, these students “aren’t charity cases.”
[Note from current TFA corps member: “TFA wants more diversity but expects its corps members to lay out literally thousands of dollars of their own money in the summer that is for most of us between college graduation and our first real paycheck. How can TFA expect college students who come from disadvantaged or low income backgrounds to even AFFORD to take on this job? It’s no wonder they’re severely lacking in diversity.”]
Reason #9: We are battling the symptoms, not the sickness.
Just because a student comes from a low-income background, that does not make him or her any less smart than those in wealthier areas. They deserve an equal chance. But we cannot just focus on the achievement gap alone. There are much greater problems at the core of “the achievement gap” that I feel many are not realizing. Many are stuck in the belief that schools or teaching alone can fix these inequalities–maybe that is possible, but it may not be the most efficient way to go. We can cure a couple symptoms here and there, but we cannot ignore the sickness expecting the symptoms never to come back again.
I know teachers alone can’t save the education system. With everything inside of me, I strongly believe we collectively as a nation must put education and poverty at the forefront of our concerns. TFA may be “saving” a few students, but there are too many students being left behind in the process. Why save a few when there is a way to save many?
Our country shouldn’t even need TFA. Why do dozens of large corporations have enough money to flood into this organization, but we have a million homeless students in our own country? On one end, we have students from high-poverty areas who come from broken homes, are surrounded by gang violence, do not have access to quality health care, and have the extra struggle learning because English is not their native language. On the other end, we have students who come from wealthier families, have access to advanced technology, and get the highest quality books. Regardless of these extreme differences from the start, our policy makers, reformers, and society as a whole expect students on completely different ends to excel at the same rate. To me, I just do not see how this is possibly “equal opportunity.”
TFA says, “Poverty is not a destiny,” ok. But poverty is promoting inequality. Research shows that relieving families of some of the stresses of poverty does help to raise educational achievement in students, so why are we ignoring the flashing red lights standing right in front of our face? Until you choose to acknowledge poverty as one of the key elements of our broken education system, then we will never reach our goal on closing the achievement gap. Period.
So now what?
One issue that has me stuck is, I provide facts, but what’s next? I’ve found that many hold similar views. But I do not want to take down or destroy any organization–that goal would just be too attack-driven, and not enough building-driven. I could spend the rest of my life spitting out facts or trying to “take down” organizations, or I could build the alternative.
And that’s what I want to do, and I can’t do it alone.
Keep fighting the good fight,
Stephanie Rivera
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