Oh, wow. I feel bad for the many experienced and excellent teachers who will read this article in The Christian Science Monitor which reports that those inexperienced teachers participating in the Teach For America program are actually helping their students get higher test scores at the end of the year than their more experienced colleagues. Ouch!
The explanation seems to be that Teach for America teachers are very carefully screened and selected from among the top college graduates around the country. I guess this would be an argument for making the teaching profession more competitive so that only the best teachers end up in the classroom, but of course, there are some serious problems to address before that is likely to happen. (there’s already a teacher shortage, teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and the pay is not enough to inspire competition for those jobs)
Oh, and there’s this:
Some critics of TFA say it contributes to the inexperience and turnover at high-needs schools, since it only asks for a two-year commitment. But TFA officials say their teachers come back after the first year at a higher rate than other new teachers in high-poverty schools (91 percent versus 83 percent). Two-thirds of alumni are studying or working in the education field, even if not in the classroom.
1 Comment
April 9, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I’m not at all surprised to see this. A big problem for U.S. teacher training schools is that they fail to attract the best and brightest of students. The best and brightest go to fields that provide more satisfaction in terms of pay, personal development, intellectual stimulation, cultural desirability, and so forth.
TFA deserves kudos for making a measurable impact. Now, the challenge for the rest of us is to make the necessary changes to transform teaching into a desirable profession.