Teach For America

[GoodGame]

Downtown is in TFA so that means it's awesome by association.

That, and the mission statement is good.

 

[Brock88]

Hi, I'm waiting for someone to reply to my help topic and thought I'd throw in my thoughts here because so many people think its a good program.

I can't say that I know a lot about this program, but on the face of it it looks like it will never work.

The "problems" in the ghetto don't have anything to do with bad teachers.

 

[Mandeville]

I think we greatly err in writing off a lot of these kids as not suited to college, considering the handicaps we put on them.

I am curious because as a teacher you are presumably learned in a specific area of the arts, sometimes two disciplines if you are a high school teacher. Naturally you enjoy the subjects you studied and have sought a career as a teacher. I am questioning whether or not as a teacher you would be inclined to encourage children to follow your own career path?

You believe we err in 'writing off kids' but I am curious as to why you think a young adult who pursues a different career path other than University has been written off?

This attitude worries me especially and I think it was partially what the OP was hinting at.

 

[El_Machinae]

It seems that after two years, someone is just figuring out how to teach. Is there some type of mentorship or some way of getting a knowledge-reserve in the teachers?

 

[Mathilda]

If I get in, I'm sure I'll be able to help my kids by making their parents understand the value of education, and getting them off the crack, once they see how happy and successful I am!!

How are you planning to achieve that?
By smiling a lot?

 

[Masquerouge]

TFA might be good, but the OP looks like a joke. Particularly revealing is the line Mathilda quoted in the post just above.

 

[nihilistic]

Well, we're already seeing improvement with kids from TFA classrooms. Its not on a national scale, because its only recently been a really big program...but as more TFA Alumni move into district leadership slots (Super of DC schools, schoolboards across the country), the hope is that we'll see more reforms.

I also don't really know how you can make a claim about students being insufficiently good before 5th grade anyways. Elementary kids are just kids.

You mean you have anecdotal evidence? But anyway, I'm not saying that the return is 0, but that ROI is much higher if the effort is spent elsewhere.

As for the problem with the students, I think you will see once you meet them. The problem has always been that they aren't allowed to fail, and they know it. You may not see it too early in elementary school, as it may not have developed yet, but by the 5th grade it should be apparent. Most of these kids do not want to learn, and consequently spend the day figuring out how to amuse themselves by calling attention to themselves and disrupting/harassing everyone else. The problem gets worse as the kids grow older. Thank goodness the worst I've experienced is in junior high, because as I understand, the real nightmare begins in high school.

Maybe you've grew up in a better environment and was spared of that nightmare, but I hardly know of anyone who have been through crappy inner city public schools who've ever made the claim that the students there are blameless.

 

[downtown]

You mean you have anecdotal evidence? But anyway, I'm not saying that the return is 0, but that ROI is much higher if the effort is spent elsewhere.

No, I mean there have been university studies. There are a few on the TFA webpage. The results are very localized, but there is a ROI.
[/QUOTE]

 

[pau17]

I also don't really know how you can make a claim about students being insufficiently good before 5th grade anyways. Elementary kids are just kids.

Actually, isn't elementary school the critical period? I thought that they had figured out that the biggest impact of dollars spent on educational reform was in the earliest years and that Obama was going to focus on that for that reason.

In my memory at least, elementary school was completely indicative of future academic success. My Korean friends were dominating the multiplication tables when the rest were just learning how to do it. I asked once how one of them got through the math tests so quickly, and he said, "while you are writing the answer to a question, you already start looking at and solving the next one." This from a 7-year-old! Public school too.

What bugged me is how much people, parents and teachers alike, treated elementary school as some important socializing period, where kids had to "have fun" and everyone was "special" no matter what, and tantrums were treated with "please" and "don't do that" instead of discipline. Kids who get out of elementary school without solid reading and math skills are hopelessly behind without really strong intervention or huge attitude changes, the degree of which has to be greater and greater the later it is, and thus less probable of happening. Their skills just build exponentially, or flounder, and elementary school is where it all starts. The kids I knew that had their act together at 6 years old did well; those who didn't struggled.

There are some that really tried and had trouble, and were deserving of more attention and help, but I have absolutely no sympathy for the vast majority that I know had good backgrounds yet treated school like a game. My personal experience aligns with that of Nihilistic; kids usually just don't want to learn and nobody has the hutspah to make them.

I have considered TFA, jury is still out as I am talking to people and seeing how much latitude and freedom I can have in order to make a change. *whip cracks*

 

[Perfection]

So is my sister, so by very virtue of being associated with my bloodline, it is beyond awesome, it is beyond awesome, it is divine.

More like it being associated with your sister.

 

[Earthling]

Thanks for the answers downtown (and to other folks' questions too, they had some of the same queries I would). I'm still curious if you know a bit more about their admission process. More specifically, since they now have somewhere in the ballpark of 25-30K applicants and only a few thousand accepted, do you know the general reason for this? Is it because they are just want to be very competitive/selective (which likely contributes to their reputation) or because they don't have enough funding or places to send more teachers?

To respond to some other discussion just about education in general, I too am dismayed by the lack of standards many schools have. "Aren't allowed to fail" as nihilistic put it seems very accurate to me just from what I have seen and experienced in schools, and in short there is no doubt that grade inflation is massive in comparison with a generation or two ago. I've read a couple articles of disenchanted/complaining alumni (or dropouts) from TFA because they weren't able to establish their own standards in classrooms. This is another thing I wonder about the two-year program (and again, it's not TFA's fault, but is an issue for its overall effectiveness) because a single teacher can't change a large trend of subpar standards. So I guess another question is just how concentrated TFA are in individual schools - if it's just one or two of them amidst the rest of the system I can see problems.

 

[downtown]

Actually, isn't elementary school the critical period? I thought that they had figured out that the biggest impact of dollars spent on educational reform was in the earliest years and that Obama was going to focus on that for that reason.

Oh, please don't misunderstand me. You are absolutely correct. What I meant to say is that its really hard to make sweeping statements about "the quality of students" when we're talking elementary school kids. Kids mature at different rates, including academically. Do 2nd graders in the inner city act out in class? You bet...and they do in sunny white suburbs and in rural areas. Its cause they're kids.

It *is* critical that elementary education be good...if kids fall behind enough at the early stages, they aren't going to be good students 7-12, and then, its sometimes too late.

TFA certainly takes elementary school seriously (and I do too). I don't really think the blame rests much on the little kids though if a 2nd grader is failing. An 8th grader? Sure...but when a 2nd grade kid can't read, then parents, teachers and administrators are the ones who have failed.

 

[downtown]

Thanks for the answers downtown (and to other folks' questions too, they had some of the same queries I would). I'm still curious if you know a bit more about their admission process. More specifically, since they now have somewhere in the ballpark of 25-30K applicants and only a few thousand accepted, do you know the general reason for this? Is it because they are just want to be very competitive/selective (which likely contributes to their reputation) or because they don't have enough funding or places to send more teachers?

TFA only accepts people who they think are going to meet their criteria. If out of those 30K, 25K meet them, then they'll take them all. If only 3k do, then we'll just have a really small corps that year. Quality of Corps is way more important to the group than filling numbers. TFA doesn't believe that they alone are the answer to our education ills. They are just a small part.

TFA places WAY more importance on leadership skills, and the ability to overcome adversity than it does for things like GPAs. They don't want the kid who scored a 35 on his ACT but has never failed at anything or overcome a major, non-academic challenge A lot of very, very smart kids from very good colleges don't get in, but they'll take more balanced candidates from other backgrounds.

 

[nihilistic]

No, I mean there have been university studies. There are a few on the TFA webpage. The results are very localized, but there is a ROI.

OK ... on their webpage: http://www.teachforamerica.org/

There are several links:

NYT & WSJ - softcore fluff pieces, did they copy verbatim from some press release?
Education Next - there might be data, but it's presented in a condescending pre-school-report-cardish way, leading one to think that the data may not be all that reputable as well
Some Spanish Site - didn't bother with babelfish as it seemed like fluffy manure too
US News & World Report - another fluff piece, wouldn't trust us new & world report even if it wasn't fluff
Business Week - piece was on padding resumes
Data Chart - again, it's on which college sent more warm bodies to pad their resumes at TFA, not about the output

Their wikipedia page does cite some studies but gives no statistics about the improvement, but gives a detailed account of annual budget, personnel, and reach of organization. Again, the pattern seems clear: the project seems to be about effort and investment, not results and returns.

Also, no one is claiming that the impact is zero. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. The questions are these:

1. Are the results significant enough to justify the effort?
2. How much of the results are caused by what factors? For example, how much of the results are caused by the teacher being new (read: not burnt out yet by being in one of those crap schools)?
3. Are the positive or negative externalities? For example, what is the cost of replacement of educating a good teacher only to have him/her being burnt out by sending him/her to a crap school?
4. What is the opportunity cost of not sending these willing teachers to teach students that want to learn?

I presume (because this is just a guess) that if the total cost-benefit analysis is done, TFA will turn out to be a worthless enterprise.

P.S. Dont take this as a personal insult. I'm just cynical like that.

 

[Ecofarm]

Where'd the OP go? Is he someone else?

 

[pau17]

Oh, please don't misunderstand me. You are absolutely correct. What I meant to say is that its really hard to make sweeping statements about "the quality of students" when we're talking elementary school kids. Kids mature at different rates, including academically. Do 2nd graders in the inner city act out in class? You bet...and they do in sunny white suburbs and in rural areas. Its cause they're kids.

It *is* critical that elementary education be good...if kids fall behind enough at the early stages, they aren't going to be good students 7-12, and then, its sometimes too late.

TFA certainly takes elementary school seriously (and I do too). I don't really think the blame rests much on the little kids though if a 2nd grader is failing. An 8th grader? Sure...but when a 2nd grade kid can't read, then parents, teachers and administrators are the ones who have failed.

Oh, ok. My apologies.

But I still don't think they have to act out. Lagging behind academically is one thing that deserves help and support; being a brat does not have to be tolerated nearly as much as it is. Reminds me of this, a crude way to express what I am saying:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SKtaVPaamU

I mean, on the one hand, being squirmy is part of being that age, but on the other, learning new things is always an adjustment and if you let them kick and scream without consequences (and "take a time out!" is not a consequence, it's enabling or toleration at best), they will keep doing that as long as they can. ADHD is no joke, but acting out just because needs to be stomped out.

 

[Traffic_Kopp]

Sorry guys I was busy the last two days finishing my application.

You were doing well until you revealed your bigoted view of the poor, ie." getting them off the crack". I don't really those sort of ideas are wanted by such an organisation.

But yeah, sounds like a plan.

Wheres the bigoty there? Are there not drug problems in poor areas?

Oh the irony. Please tell me this post is a clever joke? (The relative merits of TFA aside).

LOL those SUPER DUMB Ball St. grads, they are such loosers WTH no kidding man lets get rid of them and replace all teachers with super smart dudes like me and you right! LOL OMG

LOL I KNOW RITE?

Internet jargon aside (which I threw in there to liven the mood), the general point still stands.

Noone goes to TFA for the big bucks. They go for four reasons (in various proportions):

1) Resume, politically especially
2) To give back to their community
3) To challenge themselves
4) To make a difference

Don't forget the sweetheart deals with graduate schools and major businessmen!

Just kidding. I'm doing it for these reasons...mostly the last three, but 1 helps too. Dunno about politically, I don't think too many people from TFA go into politics?

Traffic, I think that you need to reread TFA's mission again. With that attitude, no matter what your GPA is, or where you went to school, you aren't getting in. We value all who are engaged in this work...and I saw quite a bit of Yalies crash and burn at Institute last year.

By the way, I'm a corps member, and I went to Ohio State.
Ohio State? You must have had like a 4.0 GPA and been president of everything. Or are you Black?

Yeah, I read Someday All Children Too, but if the status quo was doing such a good job WHY WOULD WE NEED TO GO THERE?

Hi, I'm waiting for someone to reply to my help topic and thought I'd throw in my thoughts here because so many people think its a good program.

I can't say that I know a lot about this program, but on the face of it it looks like it will never work.

The "problems" in the ghetto don't have anything to do with bad teachers.

What are the ghetto problems then?

 

[illram]

Sorry guys I was busy the last two days finishing my application.


Wheres the bigoty there? Are there not drug problems in poor areas?



LOL I KNOW RITE?

Internet jargon aside (which I threw in there to liven the mood), the general point still stands.


Don't forget the sweetheart deals with graduate schools and major businessmen!

Just kidding. I'm doing it for these reasons...mostly the last three, but 1 helps too. Dunno about politically, I don't think too many people from TFA go into politics?

Ohio State? You must have had like a 4.0 GPA and been president of everything. Or are you Black?

Yeah, I read Someday All Children Too, but if the status quo was doing such a good job WHY WOULD WE NEED TO GO THERE?





What are the ghetto problems then?

I am still just going to assume you are joking, because I don't like the idea of this persona of yours actually going into bad neighborhoods and "teaching" people.

 

[Bill3000]

This is an important article regarding Teach For America.

NEW YORK—Teach For America, a national program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in low-income rural and urban communities, has devoured another ethnic-studies major, 24-year-old Andy Cuellen reported Tuesday.

"Look, the world is a miserable place," said Cuellen, a Dartmouth graduate who quit the TFA program Monday morning. "All people—even children—are just nasty animals trying to secure their share of the food supply. I don't care how poor or how rich you are, that's just a fact. I'm sorry, but I have better things to do than zoo-keep for peanuts."

Just one of the 12,000 young people TFA has burned through since 1990, Cuellen was given five weeks of training the summer before he took over a classroom at P.S. 83 in the South Bronx last September.

"I walked into that school actually thinking I could make a difference," said Cuellen, who taught an overflowing class of disadvantaged 8-year-olds. "It was trial by fire. But after five months spent in a stuffy, dark room where the chalkboard fell off the wall every two days, corralling screaming kids into broken desks, I'm burnt to a crisp."

Cuellen said his TFA experience "taught him a lot about hopelessness."

"The cities are . .. .. .. .ed. The suburbs are . .. .. .. .ed. The whole country is . .. .. .. .ed," Cuellen said. "And there's not a goddamned thing you or anyone can do about it. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Or trying to get you to teach kids math."

According to Dartmouth literature, as a member of the ethnic-studies department, Cuellen learned "to empower students of color to move beyond being objects of study toward being subjects of their own social realities, with voices of their own."

Teach For America executive director Theo Anderson called ethnic-studies departments "a prime source of fodder."

"Oh, I'd say we burn through a hundred or so ethnic-studies majors each year," said Anderson, pointing to a series of charts showing the college-major breakdown of TFA corps members. "They tend to last a little longer than women's studies majors and art-therapy students, but Cuellen got mashed to a pulp pretty quickly. It usually takes ethnic-studies majors another year to realize that they're wasting their precious youth on a Sisyphean endeavor."

Continued Anderson: "Of course, we don't worry about it too much. Every year, there's a fresh crop to throw in the grinder. As we speak, scores of apple-cheeked students are hearing about TFA for the first time."

According to Anderson, a small portion of these students will lose interest after hearing horror stories from program alumni.

"But the majority of them will march on like cattle to the slaughter, thinking that pure determination and hope can change young lives," Anderson said. "I can hear their footsteps now, marching toward our offices like lemmings to a cliff. And believe me, we're ready for 'em."

Cuellen said he applied to TFA in search of a "character-building experience."

"I knew that teaching in a severely under-funded inner-city school would be challenging, but I wanted to get out into the real world," Cuellen said. "Well, breaking up fistfights between 8-year-olds all day long, I got a real ugly view of reality. Do you want to know reality? Look at a dog lying dead in the gutter. That's reality."

Although Cuellen quit the program early, his mother said he was with TFA long enough for it "to crack open his bones and suck out the marrow inside."

"Andy is a ghost," Beverly Cuellen said. "Those [TFA] people beat the idealism out of him, then they stomped on him while he lay there gasping for air."

TFA regional coordinator Sandra Richman said it is common to blame the TFA employees for the organization's high plow-through rate.

"Should I have said something to wake those kids up sooner?" Richman said, crushing out her seventh cigarette. "Probably. But listen, no one can tell you that you can't make a difference. It's something you have to figure out for yourself."

"You can only do so much," Richman added. "After a couple years of trying to teach our applicants about how difficult and depressing their lives will inevitably be—no matter what they choose to do for money—I just got burnt out. In the end, you've gotta resign yourself to failure and move on with your life."

 

[Earthling]

Just letting everyone else know (to save them the time) that this is an Onion article. However it doesn't change the fact that some school districts may be less receptive to TFA (I don't know much about it). Downtown mentioned DC reforms (and I've heard a fair amount over the past couple of years about how DC is aiming to reform its schools) but in some cities, one can see that TFA has a bare handful of people. So I guess the question of where they get the most support/where they can have more influence in the system is valid. I like their focus on New Orleans because that area is in desperate need, and see that a few cities have large programs, but otherwise what do they think of different areas and how successful they've been between them?