We can provide an excellent education for kids in low-income communities.” What recent graduate of education doesn’t want to embrace and advance this statement? This is the mission statement of Teach for America. The program, though well intentioned, is a threat to public education. It replaces qualified teachers with recent college graduates in underserved classrooms and uses tax dollars to fund pro-reform, pro-privatization education operations. TFA is a menace to the success of public education everywhere and, as a college student and passionate proponent of public education, I must alert you that TFA is recruiting on your campus!
Teach for America, a non-profit organization functions like a domestic Peace Corps for education. The program is intended to supplement classrooms with volunteers to augment the educational experiences of students across the country. Increasingly however, TFA volunteers are being used as replacements for experienced, qualified teachers because these inexperienced volunteers are paid far less than experienced teachers and as volunteers, are not entitled to benefits. Between 2008 and 2013, 324,000 teaching positions have been eliminated and numbers of TFA volunteers have skyrocketed. In 2013 The Chicago Board of Education announced the layoffs of over 3,000 school personnel due to budget cuts and then proceeded to increase its payment to TFA from $600,000 to nearly $1.6 million. TFA volunteers are a good financial deal for school districts but the educational ramifications have been disastrous. (Washington Post, September 10, 2013).
Volunteers are limited to two-year tours with the program and have neither the time nor the skills as first-time teachers, to develop long-term, trusting relationships with students. Districts cycle TFA teachers in and out of schools, eliminating the possibility of any real and sustainable progress. TFA perpetuates institutional racism by subjecting low-income and minority students to the teaching of inexperienced, temporary volunteers in place of professional teachers.
Utilizing TFA instructors provides a golden opportunity for public education reformers who seek to shut down struggling public schools and open for-profit charter or private schools. Students fail tests providing the district a reason to close schools and open charters or other education reform institutions. Teach for America is a major player in the for-profit education reform movement that has already shut down countless public schools and converted them to charters. “When these charter students ring up good test scores, nearby public schools look increasingly bad by comparison, which can feed momentum to shut them down, fire their teachers, or turn them over to private management” (Huffington Post, August 16, 2012).
TFA is an excellent idea as a supplement to education but the system is broken and TFA is being falsely offered as the panacea. The program’s prevalence in underserved schools will also perpetuate the historical underachievement of minority students by consistently placing their education in the hands of inexperienced college graduates.
It’s not that recent graduates of some of our countries finest educational institutions are not capable of becoming excellent teachers or that they do not have the talent or skills to be effective first-time teachers. Everyone starts somewhere, right? As young teachers we should always start by becoming certified to teach! TFA relies on exploiting the very creativity and enthusiasm of young graduates because we are so passionate about helping cure the ills of American education. What we don’t realize, unfortunately, is that by endorsing TFA, we become perpetrators of the problem as well. Often times TFA volunteers become discouraged and lose interest in continuing to teach because they are working in environments that are immensely unfair to them and their students.
TFA is a capitalist enterprise that is exploiting our passion as young educators. Let’s do something about it! Spread the truth about TFA among your fellow students and discourage them from enrolling as volunteers. Go to your administration and insist that they remove existing TFA representatives from campus and prevent any future representatives and advocates from scheduling information sessions or open houses. If TFA has campus events in the near future, there are still steps you can take to show them you are not interested! Occupy the stage at an info session to prevent the representative from presenting. Picket the TFA sign up booths on application days.
The National Honor Fraternity Phi Sigma Pi has also recently adopted TFA as its national philanthropy. If this frat exists on your campus, implore your school’s chapter to petition the national chapter to take TFA off its agenda.
It may be your senior year and if you don’t join TFA you’ll end up living at your parent’s house staring at a wall while your skills atrophy. So what can you do? First, get certified! Join the Peace Corps. Go to your local school and offer your skills by building an after-school or extracurricular program to enrich and supplement kids’ education that way. Make a connection and build on it. All passionate young educators have secret super powers and TFA is not an appropriate forum through which to exercise them.
Our students are our future and they deserve the best. Teach for America is undermining their potential to be great and as young students of education full of the fervor for social change and justice in education, let us be advocates for their success by stopping TFA NOW.
Sarah Dobbs is a freshman at Swarthmore college. Do you agree with her perspective? Is Teach for America a menace to the future of public education in our country? Please send all thoughts and comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
