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Core Knowledge
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Robert Pondiscio

The Core Knowledge Blog

Does TFA Dampen Civic Engagement?

by Robert Pondiscio
January 4th, 2010

Tags: civic engagement, Stanford University, Teach for America, Teaching
Posted in Research and Reports, Teaching | 2 Comments »

Critics joke that TFA stands for “Teach For Awhile.” But a new study suggests a more troubling and counterintuitive phenomenon. A Stanford University study shows TFA grads are less likely to vote, give to charity or be otherwise civically engaged than those who dropped out of the program, or those who were accepted into the program but declined the offer. Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, says the reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America’s approach to the issue of educational inequity, according to the New York Times.

The study, “Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Youth Service: The Puzzling Case of Teach for America,” is the first of its kind to explore what happens to participants after they leave the program. It was done at the suggestion of Wendy Kopp, Teach for America’s founder and president, who disagrees with the findings. Ms. Kopp had read an earlier study by Professor McAdam that found that participants in Freedom Summer — the 10 weeks in 1964 when civil rights advocates, many of them college students, went to Mississippi to register black voters — had become more politically active.

“While Teach for America graduates remain far more active than their peer group, the findings indicate that the program neither achieves an earlier organizational goal of ‘making citizens’ nor produces people who, in great numbers, take their civic commitments beyond the field of education,” writes the Times’ Amanda Fairbanks, herself a former TFAer.

“It’s hard to see the incredible outpouring of interest among this generation and think of it as a lack of civic engagement,” Kopp tells the Times. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if this study looked at Teach for America’s core mission, by evaluating whether we are producing more leaders who believe educational inequity is a solvable problem, who have a deep understanding of the causes and solutions, and who are taking steps to address it in fundamental and lasting ways.”

The Danger of “High Expectations”

by Robert Pondiscio
September 2nd, 2009

Tags: Gary Rubenstein, high expectations, Teach for America
Posted in Teacher Training, Teaching | No Comments »

High expectations? Not so fast, says teacher Gary Rubenstein, who points out that the standard advice to have high expectations for their students is “one of the most dangerously misinterpreted pieces of advice given to new teachers.”

The reason the advice ‘have high expectations’ is dangerous is that new teachers, in trying to follow this advice, commit one of the worst mistakes a teacher can, teaching over their heads. The advice should be ‘Have realistically high expectations.’ This would force the new teacher to consider that there is such a thing as too high of expectations, and to try to learn what sorts of things are realistic.

Set the bar too high and students won’t rise to your high expectations. “They lose confidence in themselves and, more importantly, they lose confidence in the ability of their teacher,” notes Rubenstein, whose blog is filled with great advice for new teachers. “Once they decide that their teacher is not competent enough to make ‘appropriate level’ lessons, they stop listening, start talking, and make it impossible to teach.”

No Room at the Inn

by Robert Pondiscio
May 11th, 2009

Tags: hiring freeze, New York City, Teach for America
Posted in Education News, Education Practice, Teaching | 6 Comments »

No real surprise, given the parlous state of the economy and employment, but NYC’s Department of Education has ordered principals to fill teaching vacancies with internal candidates only. The news has left would-be teachers, including those hired by Teach for America and the New York City Teaching Fellows scrambling for jobs, reports the New York Times. The city will hire about half its usual number of educators from TFA and the Fellows program.

New York schools–especially struggling schools–looking for new teachers will likely have to fish in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool, which consists of educators who are unemployed but still on the City’s payroll. In most cases, ATR teachers were working at schools that were shuttered or downsized. However, Gotham Schools notes a report by The New Teacher Project, which found that “teachers in the pool were six times as likely to have been rated unsatisfactory by a principal as teachers who hold positions.”

No matter how you slice it, the hiring pool from which principals can hire has just become reed-thin. “The fact remains that, if the city weren’t forced to pay ATR members indefinitely, perhaps a substantial percentage of teachers could still be new hires (or, maybe, the freeze wouldn’t have happened at all),” writes the New Republic’s Seyward Darby “In good economic times or bad, on financial, pedagogical, and political levels, the ATR is simply unsustainable.”

Record Recruiting Year for TFA

by Robert Pondiscio
March 10th, 2009

Tags: Teach for America
Posted in Employment, Teacher Training | 1 Comment »

Bad economy? President Obama’s call to national service? The disappearance of the investment banking industry? Whatever the reason, applications to Teach for America have hit 35,000 this year–up 42%. That includes 6 percent of the graduating classes of Stanford University and UC-Berkeley, and 11 percent of Ivy League school seniors, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Bad Economy Good for TFA

by Robert Pondiscio
December 8th, 2008

Tags: eduwonk, Teach for America, Washington Post
Posted in Education News | 2 Comments »

Teach for America got Page One treatment from the Washington Post on Saturday. Competition for slots in the program is way up, in part because of the economy. Nearly 40,000 applications are expected for about 5,000 teaching slots.

In part because of the dearth of other job prospects in the sagging economy but mostly because the program has captured the imagination of a generation of student leaders bent on doing good, some graduates of the nation’s elite universities are fighting for low-paying teaching positions the way they once sought jobs on Wall Street.

The bad economy angle notwithstanding, the Post story mostly covers familiar territory and reports “research into Teach for America’s effectiveness has been inconclusive, but at least three major studies in the past several years indicate that students taught by its teachers score significantly lower on standardized tests than do their peers.” That’s enough to set Eduwonk’s teeth on edge.

In fact, while there has been a lot of “research” into TFA the methodologically most solid studies have shown that TFA teachers are as good or better than other teachers, including veteran and traditionally trained teachers. Mathematica (pdf) and Urban Institute/CALDER are the two best examples — and those are independent analyses not TFA studies.

One angle not discussed in the Post piece, or anywhere else that I’ve noticed. If the recession is driving more recruits into TFA, might it also mean that a lot of teachers who might have left for greener pastures in flush times are staying put?

Obama, Reformers and TFA

by Robert Pondiscio
October 24th, 2008

Tags: Linda Darling-Hammond, Mike Petrilli, Obama, Teach for America
Posted in Educational Policy | 2 Comments »

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, who seems to have turned all his thoughts of late to the machinations of a future Obama administration’s education policy, raises an interesting question about the place of Teach for America and other reform efforts in Obama’s pantheon.

On the one hand, Barack Obama has praised Michelle Rhee, the poster-child for Teach For America’s impact on American education. Several of his advisors are drawn from the group’s alumni and friends….So why on earth is the campaign allowing Linda Darling-Hammond to play surrogate for the Senator and say nasty things about TFA in high-profile events?

Darling-Hammond is TFA’s most notable critic, and has long argued that alternative certification programs ill-serve poor and minority children.

Someone—probably Barack Obama himself—is going to have to make a decision about whether to embrace reform (and in this case, TFA) or embrace the union-and-ed-school establishment (and in this case, LDH). If he wins the election and appoints Darling-Hammond to a senior position, we’ll know which way he’s decided to go.

Back in 2005, Darling-Hammond said of TFA, “While a band-aid on a bleeding sore is helpful in a crisis, healing wounds of inequality and poverty is also a policy problem worth solving.” Thus it’s likely that the scenario described by Petrilli will be portrayed as a false dichotomy. Still it’s safe to say there will be people with very different views of the world vying for a place at the table.

TFA=AOL? OMG!

by Robert Pondiscio
September 12th, 2008

Tags: alternative certification, Teach for America
Posted in Teacher Training | No Comments »

A-Rus at This Week in Education wonders if alternative certification programs like Teach For America are becoming the “AOL of teacher preparation programs — once innovative, and for a time dominant, but now increasingly outmoded.” He posts a picture of those once-ubiquitous AOL discs to drive home the point.

The cutting edge of teacher prep now seems to be the residency model popularized in Boston and other places, and heralded in a recent report cited by EdWeek (Urban Teacher Residencies Touted). The other reason is that people like Barack Obama are talking about residency programs, not alt cert. TFA has grown tremendously in recent years, and had a lot of Republican support. I’m not sure it will have a similarly privileged position in an Obama administration.

Wasn’t it just last night that both Obama and McCain were pledging to boost America’s commitment to national service? McCain touted TFA by name from the stage at Columbia and Obama has put forth a plan for “universal voluntary citizen service.” Aren’t we looking at a need for 2 million teachers in the next decade? Aren’t lines of applicants still failing to form outside struggling schools?

We needn’t lose sleep worrying about TFA’s decline. Russo did make me feel nostalgic for the AOL discs, however. I used them for coasters.

Don’t Hate, Appreciate

by Robert Pondiscio
June 20th, 2008

Tags: Teach for America
Posted in Teacher Training | 1 Comment »

Quick and the Ed’s Kevin Carey turns in a nicely written analysis of why Teach for America rubs some folks in education the wrong way:

I think there’s a sense among some that TFAers are parachuting into the teaching profession for a little while, grabbing a piece of moral authority, and then using it to further their already-privileged lives. A teacher like my aunt reading about state dinners for Prince Charles and limousines lined up outside the Waldorf-Astoria might wonder, not unreasonably, why it never occurred to all those rich and famous people to recognize or support her lifetime of service.

Another issue, says Carey is professionalism. It’s hard to argue that teaching should stand alongside law and medicine in professional stature when, as one commenter puts it “professions do not assign novices primary responsibility.”

Hyperbole Watch

by Robert Pondiscio
June 18th, 2008

Tags: education media, Teach for America, unions
Posted in Teacher Training | No Comments »

In an op-ed touting Teach for America earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal noted, “Unions keep saying the best people won’t go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make.”

Really? Which union keeps saying this. Names and dates, please.

Someday Every Child….Will Rock!!!

by Robert Pondiscio
June 6th, 2008