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E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2010 > July > 15 > Entry
More TFA debate
If you read yesterday’s post about Teach for America you should check out this response at the Fordham Foundation’s Flypaper blog.
In reaction to some comments here yesterday I think one of TFA’s issues relates to its own “mission confusion” you might say.
Is TFA’s goal to improve urban education directly by pumping a stream of good young teachers into under served classrooms to help kids achieve better? Or is the goal to give future elites in government, business, etc., some real life experience in urban education in hopes that they can use what they learn some day to affect policies and programs when they are in positions of influence?
Clearly, TFA wants both. But if it leans too far toward simply making all about the “experience” (which I think it is somewhat right now) that means TFA could lose its focus on serving the needs of the kids its participants teach. It also can more easily miss out on the chance to launch actual teaching careers for passionate people who will work in the field (like my friend “Jay”) but won’t likely be influential in policy making.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Scott Elliott
July 16, 2010 2:29 PM | Link to this
Yes, I should have said “high poverty” rather than “urban” because TFA does, indeed, work in high poverty rural district in additional to urban ones. Thanks Jamie.
By Jamie
July 15, 2010 6:01 PM | Link to this
Max, TFA does place in rural communities. Check out their website. I just met a young man who teaches in South Dakota on a reservation with TFA. Jamie Davies O’Leary
By Max
July 15, 2010 3:31 PM | Link to this
TFA’s ‘mission’ is, taking one of two choices offered here, dubious in that “to improve urban education directly by pumping a stream of good young teachers into under served classrooms to help kids achieve better” is a function of the erroneous presumption these are ‘teachers.’ This is not a sematical distinction but one with very distinct processes through which certified teachers are developed. This also tampers with any objective education reform if that’s possible. There many ways young college graduates can serve urban communities using their learned skills; practicing medicine, law, or teaching without certification opens the door to more problems than it could ever remedy or relieve. The future ruling ‘elites’ have other ponds to wade in for wetting their urban experience resumes. But, it is somewhat curious the emphasis on TFA is the urban setting and not the rural. If kids are the concern, then why are not ALL kids being addressed by TFA including those Native Americans on reservations? I think TFA can’t be accepted as anything more than a place for otherwise unemployable college graduates to hang out for a few more years on someone else’s dime. To extrapolate any possible benefit for this in education is just being pollyanna.