I posit that the end result is that people who want to be urban teachers permanently will join TFA anyway, but that they are also attracting a large number of people to at the very least fill the gaps in the ranks of the national urban teacher corps. I should also add that it has been my experience in the Baltimore corps that a large emphasis actually is put on staying in Baltimore City classrooms beyond the 2 year commitment.

The obscene turnover in urban teaching would be there with or without programs like TFA, and I believe it would be even worse without TFA. The problem isn’t TFA, the problem is the horrific lack of support and resources, as well is the incredible strain put on people who step into the profession.

Then there seems to be this rival between Kacie and JulieG about who is “tougher?” or cares more and who is willing to put up with more shit–as teaching is tough and Kacie might not want to deal with that shit for quite as long as JulieG?

It seems apparent that you’re both working your asses off. I wonder, JulieG, if rather than telling people who weren’t going to go into the classroom in the first place (but who have the support of a national organization that is constantly striving for higher student achievement above all else) to STAY out all together, your job might actually benefit from them coming in. TFA isn’t in the business of taking jobs from good teachers. They’re in the business of both educating students and THEN reforming education. I mean…Ms. Marsh from Memphis says that she’s going to policy school after two years in the classroom. Wouldn’t you rather people making ed policy have some experience in the classroom than not?

And wouldn’t you rather TFA tell her it’s OK to go in and make gains with students for two years (as indicated by the several studies cited in other posts) than NOT?

Does it really threaten the profession for people to come in and start to respect the hell out teachers and then leave to go make it a little less difficult for teachers and students to be successful in the long run?

I was raised by public school teachers and attended public schools K-12. Kentucky’s schools are actually pretty solid, and I was able to take several classes in Television-Production; I was a good student and I received a scholarship to a top private university to study film. During my undergraduate work, I decided I didn’t want to make a career on a set, that I DID want to go to law school, and that I needed to take some time beforehand to do something important while I had the time and energy.

Enter Teach For America, an organization that I knew to be flawed but solid nonetheless; for the first time in my life, I felt like I could honestly endorse a non-profit because everything they do is so transparent. Your quips about the quotes on the website are somewhat amusing to me, as though it were a dirty secret that we try to convince people who wouldn’t otherwise be teachers to come and teach. Obviously that’s what we do, and I don’t think that an organization so honest about what it does–and in the public interest, at that–should be harangued.

I am now teaching three self-contained 8th grade math classes at a middle school in the Bronx. I’m not a great teacher–I feel like I’m failing my 29 students each day–but every single administrator and teacher at my school has told me that I’m the best math teacher my kids have had. PERIOD.

Also, I am not an anomaly within the system. The independent research shows that, regardless of the intangibles you discuss, students who have Teach For America corps members achieve AT LEAST as much as their peers in math and reading, even if the students have a veteran, fully certified teacher. http://www.teachforamerica.org/research/studies_student_outcomes.htm

Yes, it is atrocious that a 22-year-old film major can be the best math teacher a 16-year-old overage student with a severe emotional disorder has ever had. Yes, it would be better if I didn’t “leave” my students after two years, but, if everything continues as planned, they’ll be GRADUATING FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL AND GOING ON TO A HIGH SCHOOL because they are being taught by three different Teach For America corps members. They won’t see me again next year because I’m doing my job now to make sure they are prepared for the next stage of their academic career. Obviously that isn’t always going to be the case–promotion doesn’t lead to a new school in every grade–but you sure are making a mountain out of a molehill when you look at the whole picture.

This is the state of our current education system: last year, my boys had a woman who hadn’t taught or taken a class in math for more than 30 years, and the year before they had a string of “permanent substitutes.” At least I passed the AP Calculus test with a 5 within my students’ lifetimes. It sickens me to think that I am considered “qualified” to teach my kids, but I also know that my principal was not going to find a more “qualified” teacher willing to work in her school.

Your entire post is based on the presumption that there are enough certified, effective teachers just WAITING to enter the field of education and take the jobs which are being stolen by Teach For America corps members. The simple fact is that if I hadn’t been convinced to teach in New York City by Teach For America, my eighth grade students would never have learned how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, let alone evaluate expressions with integral exponents like they did on Friday.

As someone else said, why is perfect really the enemy of good?

I don’t hope to have the whole answer, but even a program with admitted flaws like TFA is better than doing nothing. If you have a better idea, please bring it into the open, get it to policy makers and legislature, tell me and I’ll vote for it- god knows we need it.

So imagine being able to teach for (arguably the hardest) first two years of teaching, to become financial analyst. It seems like those TfA’ers are moving up in the world, so I guess I would be mad too if I saw all these well educated grads surpassing you in their careers.

At least you have job security as a blogger right?