Tell Teach For America To Give Low-Income Children Of Color Well-Prepared Teachers

Teach For America, Give Low-Income Children Of Color Well-Prepared Teachers!

Dear Ms. Kopp,

In February 2011, you hosted Teach for America’s 20th Anniversary Summit in the heart of our nation's capital. Thousands of corps members, alumni and supporters converged on D.C. to celebrate, reconnect and hear your vision and goals for TFA’s future.

Unfortunately, instead of using that momentous occasion to announce the long overdue evolution of your teacher preparation model, you chose to double down on the status quo. The systematic assignment of brand new teachers with only five weeks of summer school training to Black and Latino children in our low-income communities is a bold injustice in an inequitable education system that denies our children the critical resources they deserve and need to reach their full potential. In administering an inadequate preparation program, TFA perpetuates the status quo educational inequity that assigns well-prepared teachers to middle class and wealthy White children and inadequately prepared teachers to our children.

In 2010, you announced an ambitious plan to double the number of corps members teaching in our nation’s lowest performing schools—an ill-advised expansion boosted by a $50 million taxpayer subsidy courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education. That is in addition to the many millions of tax dollars TFA receives annually from local, state and federal agencies.

By 2015, you aim to prepare at least 25% of all new teachers in our nation's highest-need school districts--districts that, in most cases, enroll high percentages of Black and Latino children living in low-income households. Furthermore, through "Teach for All," your international spin-off, you are rapidly exporting your five-week teacher preparation model to low-income communities around the world.

Ms. Kopp, as long as TFA operates in our communities, with our children, using our tax dollars, we will hold you and your leadership accountable for providing excellent teachers who are both academically accomplished and well prepared.

To that end, we the undersigned parents, students, concerned citizens and residents of low-income communities of color, educators (including TFA corps members and alumni), business owners, elected officials, advocates, academics, taxpayers, and other education stakeholders, demand that Teach For America evolve to adopt an extended clinical model of teacher preparation of at least one school year, and a required commitment to teach for at least four years, in order to equip your teachers with the experience, knowledge and skills they need to better educate our children.

Specifically, we call upon Teach for America to:

1. Adopt a 12-14 month, clinically based teacher preparation model (which might begin with your current five-week summer preparation program) and require that all prospective TFA teachers commit to teach for a minimum of four years (including the full year of preparation) in the district in which they were prepared;

2. Redirect the enormous amount of federal funding (our tax dollars) you continue to receive from the U.S. Department of Education (funding that should be used to plan and implement the evolution of your five-week teacher preparation model to a high-quality, yearlong program, not rapidly expand your inadequate model to more of our districts and schools);

3. Invest in research and development geared towards recruiting academically accomplished undergraduates and mid-career professionals, including increased percentages of Black and Latino candidates, who will make a minimum four-year commitment to serve in the districts in which they are prepared; and

4. Immediately stop exporting your current training model to low-income communities in developing nations. Children in those communities are just as valuable and worthy of well-prepared teachers as our children.

Why is this important?

Studies show that, on average, it takes TFA teachers roughly two years to catch up to their traditionally certified peers. However, just as they are hitting their stride, most of your teachers leave the classroom. The oft-cited statistic that two-thirds of TFA alumni are working in other positions in or related to education is little consolation. Certainly, we need education advocates in a range of professions, and advocates with classroom experience offer an indispensable (though often disregarded) perspective. But every education advocate’s agenda should include well-prepared, experienced, highly effective teachers so more of our children are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to become the primary advocates for their own schools and communities.

It is also worth noting that most TFA teachers did not grow up in low-income communities of color. Recruiting a teacher corps that more accurately reflects the demographics of our student population is imperative, but we do not suggest that teachers from different socioeconomic and/or racial backgrounds cannot or should not teach low-income children of color. We do, however, believe that it takes far more than a few weeks of multicultural training to prepare one to deliver excellent culturally and community relevant instruction that draws connections between our children’s every day experiences and interests and broader national and global contexts.

Nearly all Teach for America alumni will tell you that they would have been considerably more effective in the classroom their first year had they received a full year of quality, on-the-ground preparation, working under a highly effective veteran teacher as they honed their skills and knowledge. Disturbingly, many of your alumni believe that, without significant pressure, your leadership team will never extend the five-week preparation model, even if it would significantly benefit our children. For our children’s sake, we sincerely hope they are mistaken.

Clearly, the challenge of preparing teachers to serve low-income communities of color well is not yours alone—there are many other institutions, such as The New Teacher Project/Teaching Fellows and myriad university-based programs, that would better serve our children by adopting a rigorous, extended clinical preparation model offering intensive ongoing support. (The Urban Teacher Residency model of preparation, now seeded in cities across the nation, provides a promising alternative that TFA should consider adopting or adapting.) But Teach for America, an organization that has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, that seeks to portray itself as the vanguard of educational equity and civil rights in low-income communities and communities of color, and that exclusively targets our communities, bears a heightened obligation to offer our children only the highest quality educational services.

To ensure our children their inalienable educational rights, the choice between academically accomplished teachers and well-prepared, experienced teachers must be exposed as a false dichotomy. TFA’s emphasis on recruiting teachers who have themselves succeeded in the classroom is commendable. Our children deserve teachers with strong academic skills, and certainly there are teachers working in our schools whose academic skills (and ability to impart those skills) are lacking. But if cultivating and recruiting academically accomplished new teachers who understand the value of a rigorous, extended clinical preparation program and a commitment to teach more than two years presents a major challenge, let us not lower the bar for preparation, but instead focus our resources and energy on more equitable incentives and supports such as free or heavily subsidized preparation programs, career ladders and improved working conditions.

We are all working toward that day you envision when “all children will have an opportunity to attain an excellent education.” We hope you will join us by making sure the teachers you intend to place in our schools are properly prepared and evaluated before they assume responsibility for their own classroom and our children’s education.

Sincerely,

[Your name]