There are other advantages also. One of those is the fact that TFA teachers are being hired in districts in which thousands of teachers are being laid off. One example is New York City.
…why is the city preparing to bring in more NYC Teaching Fellows and Teach For America recruits, and place some of these teachers-in-training in high-need positions like special education, when they’re letting go of teachers they already have? Seems like it would be more cost-effective, and practice-effective, to retrain teachers with classroom experience to fill these roles, than to put completely green teachers in classrooms with some of the highest-need children. (Speaking of costs, if I were a New York City parent and/or taxpayer, I’d also be up in arms about the $20 million being spent on consultants to recruit new teachers in a time of teacher layoffs! How many current, beloved teachers could you retain with that money??)
From the New York Daily News:
Even as the threat of thousands of teacher layoffs looms, the city is preparing to hire 500 new ones for next fall, officials said.
Critics wonder why the city has accepted the new recruits – 400 from New York City Teaching Fellows and 100 from Teach for America - to work in shortage areas like special education instead of retraining teachers on the payroll.
“It’s mind-boggling that they’re hiring when I may lose my job,” said Marquis Harrison, 25, who started in the city schools with Teach for America nearly three years ago." Speaking of NYC layoffs..Teach for America appears to have morphed into what it was not intended to be. It is becoming a way to replace long-time experienced teachers with new ones trained in only 5 weeks. The school districts are finding more and quicker way to lay off existing teachers to bring in the TFA teachers. Those who planned a lifetime in teaching, who have devoted themselves to it...are being laid off or fired. Many of them are being replaced by TFA recruits for which the district has to pay a fee.
Already many of these TFA teachers are being laid off along with the more experienced teachers, and a new crop is ready to take over. It is the end of teaching as a profession. That has been one of the major goals of the reformers. If you do away with the idea that teachers are a profession, a career...then you can quickly turn it into a temp situation. No benefits, no pension, just a job like any other.
It is turning out to be the case that one of the major reasons that graduates are flocking to TFA is that it allows them to postpone payment of their college loans or have them reduced in amount. That's a pretty big deal with so few jobs on the horizon. They should be upfront about that, I think.
Why Teach for America (TFA) needs so much fundingI am having a bit of a problem trying to figure out why Teach for America (TFA), supposedly a non-profit organization, needs so much funding. As reported in the Wall Street Journal on 7.10.10, Teach for America received $21 Million per year in federal appropriations and also received private donations from wealthy contributors such as Eli Broad, Doris and Don Fisher, and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. In 2008, the New York Times reported that TFA’s budget was $110 Million (5.8.08). That is a pile of money for a non-profit.
One other point that concerns me about Teach for America has to do with the “servants’ heart” issue. I know that TFA recruits teachers who have gone to Ivy League Schools and that these TFA teachers typically go out into the low-income schools to teach for two years, and I also know that TFA teachers receive the full salary and benefits paid by their school districts. However, these TFA teachers have the added bonus of loan forbearance on their college loans (temporarily postponed or reduced). With Harvard (and other Ivy League schools) now costing upwards of $200,000 for four years, I can see why TFA teachers might elect to go into the program, particularly with the downturn of the economy.
What I want is for the TFA program to be honest with the public and to admit that most TFA teachers are using the program to help them to cope with their heavy college loans, particularly now that those high-paying jobs for college graduates are becoming harder to find.
I also know that TFA proudly reports that 39% of their classroom teachers stay in the classroom after their two-year stint, but that figure is based upon one lone study done in 2000 – 2002; much has happened in our country since that study was performed.
A TFA blogger has some very interesting criticisms of the group and what it is becoming.
What happened to my TFA?In the past year, however, I’ve gotten pretty critical of TFA and other members of the new education reform movement. The question is: Why did I join TFA in the first place if I differed so much with their ideology?
The answer is that back when I joined in 1991, TFA was a very different organization with a very different mission. The premise back then was that throughout the country there were many school districts that were desperate for teachers. I was told that in Houston many students would not get a regular teacher — instead, they’d have a rotating group of temporary substitutes. By joining TFA, I could be a stable presence for a group of kids who would otherwise be reminded every few days that nobody wants to teach them.
..."But I’ve seen more recently what started as PR and taking care of the organizations self-interests turn into something that I honestly believe is dangerous.
By exaggerating their success, they have gotten the public to believe that kids would be a lot better off if we got rid of all the old lazy teachers and replaced them with these TFA dynamos — not admitting that most TFA corps members are not very effective, especially in their first year.
TFA has spawned so many charter schools each with their own PR machines and has fueled a movement that actually threatens public schools. Many of these charter schools kick out the hardest-to-educate kids so they can get their statistics up. In doing so, the self interest of growing a charter network is completely contrary to the TFA goal that one day ALL children …
Rachel Levy, former teacher and writer, has a lot of ideas about TFA at her blog All Things Education. This is an excellent article about the original intent of TFA and what it is now.
Teach For America: From Service Group to IndustryAlthough Teach For America began twenty years ago as a well-intentioned band-aid, it has morphed into what is essentially a jobs program for the privileged, funded by taxpayers and wealthy individuals. TFA was originally designed it to serve a specific need: fill positions in high-poverty schools where there are teacher shortages. A non-profit organization that recruits college seniors primarily from elite institutions to teach for two-year stints in high-poverty schools, preceded by five weeks of training. TFA has grown from 500 teachers to more than 8,000 teachers in thirty-nine rural and urban areas. As TFA is expanding, it is no longer just filling positions in shortage areas; rather, it’s replacing experienced and traditionally educated teachers.
TFA makes it possible for some corps members to put off pursuing jobs in corporate law and finance until after they have “made a difference” for two years; perhaps at that point corps members and their peers have more distance from undergrad idealism.Perhaps to ease the transition to jobs in the private sector, financial institutions, as Goldman Sachs, have established partnerships with TFA, to provide summer internships. Furthermore, TFA has partnerships with hundreds of graduate schools which offer TFA alumni benefits such as two-year deferrals, fellowship, course credits, and waived application fees. With education reform having become the new cause célèbre among hedge fund managers, Oprah, national journalists, and Hollywood types such as Davis Guggenheim, I can’t see TFA losing popularity any time soon. Many TFA applicants should indeed be applauded for their nobility, but I’m not so sure that is the beginning and end of all of their motivations. Is twenty-five percent of Harvard University’s graduating class so purely well-intentioned?
And the group is openly pushing their recruits, though they must realize now that experienced teachers are being laid off or fired in order to hire the TFA recruits.
More seasoned and more rigorously trained teachers continue to be pushed out in favor of TFA teachers. This letter by such a teacher in Baltimore is just one example of a teacher who had a hard time finding a job in a district that has a high number of TFA teachers. According to Barbara Miner, whose journalism investigating Teach for America can be found in Rethinking Schools, Dallas, Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and DC all laid off teachers while sparing TFA-ers. When ex-Chancellor Rhee declared a RIF (Reduction in Force) in October 2009 due to alleged budget shortages, 229 teachers total lost their jobs, but only six of them were from TFA. Seattle Public Schools recently signed a new contract with TFA, despite parent opposition and despite recent layoffs of veteran teachers. The state Education Board in South Carolina recently approved guidelines that would allow TFA recruits to apply for teaching positions, thirty percent of which would be for elementary school positions, where thousands of teachers have recently been laid off.
The teachers' union in Kansas City, Missouri, supported Teach For America as a way to fill gaps, but teachers there recently protested the district's plan to fire 87 non-tenure teachers who have been deemed effective while bringing in 150 Teach For America recruits. Teach For America's regional director Alicia Herald confirmed TFA's new mission: "We're no longer here to fill gaps. We're here to provide value." There was 50 million from the federal government for TFA, while they are having trouble paying unemployment benefits for the jobless.
TFA teachers cost taxpayers more money than traditionally educated teachers. The afore-mentioned review shows that the average cost of a TFA teacher is $70,000 per recruit. Public school districts are paying twice for recruiting: from $2,000 to $5,000 to TFA per recruit plus funding recruitment by their internal human resources departments. Recruitment costs should be one-time expenditures, but at the current rate of attrition, districts must pay anew every time a TFA teacher leaves. According to Barbara Miner’s investigations, on top of their school district-paid salaries, Teach for America candidates also receive taxpayer-funded Americorps stipends, plus because of their TFA member status, they qualify for funding that people who take traditional teacher training routes don’t. Finally, TFA receives millions in local, state, and federal dollars. TFA annual reports show that about a third of costs are borne by the public—add in a $50,000,000 grant they received from the Department of Education this past spring, and that share has probably risen. How can the federal government subsidize a jobs program for the privileged as it struggles to extend unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs?
The political arm of TFA, called LEE, lobbies to water down teacher certification requirements.
LEE is funded by "Goldman Sachs, Visa, the Walton Family Foundation, Monsanto—parties who promote deregulation of the markets and in whose interest it is to break up the only viable unions left, those of the public sector."
Many who join TFA do so in a sincere effort to help the children in inner-city schools. There is a problem with that, though. The goals have changed as the role of TFA has morphed into something else. It has become a way
to replace experienced teachers who have worked their way up to higher salaries.On top of failing to make a dent in poverty, Teach for America actually detracts from social justice by hurting real teachers. Teach for America students take low, entrance-level pay while also receiving a government subsidy for their salary in the form of Americorps stipends. Schools lay off teachers and then hire Teach for America teachers to fill positions that real teachers would otherwise be filling. Teach for America teachers are undercutting the wage needs of real teachers and causing them to be laid off as a result.
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