Hylton signed up with TFA and has spent the last three years teaching in Indianapolis. The program puts college grads into struggling schools for a two-year teaching commitment after only a five-week training course.
“Right now, Ohio is just a raw exporter of these brains,” said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols, explaining the governor’s support for the program. “They will bring a lot of value to education in Ohio that until now had been shut out.”
Hylton, like many TFA “corps members,” says his experience has been life-altering.
Providing quality education to every student, regardless of their background, “is the most important thing for the future of our country,” he said. “(Corps members) have seen the inequity first-hand and will carry those experience with them the rest of their lives.”
TFA has some big-name supporters — including Bill Gates and President Barack Obama — but there are detractors too. Many traditional educators and teacher training experts call corps members “education tourists” who make short commitments to inner-city youth, sometimes replacing veteran teachers. Roughly 80 percent move on after three years.
TFA counters that young, traditionally trained teachers in inner-city schools have high turnover rates as well. The program was founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp to originally serve six metro areas and has spread to 41 regions across the country.
Patrick O’Donnell, who runs TFA-Indianapolis, points out that of 20,000 alumni, two thirds have remained in education, and about half of those still teach.
“It is a mission,” O’Donnell said, “not just a job.”
Scott DeFreese, academic dean at Indianapolis Public Schools New Tech High School, said TFA teachers are some of the most energetic in the school system and provide excellence in the classroom. But, he concedes, it often is “excellence on loan.”
Tony Bennett, Indiana superintendent of public instruction, said the presence of TFA over the last few years has helped bring about a “sea change” in the way the state attracts, trains and evaluates teachers. TFA alums hold top posts in state education policy, he said.
“My personal belief is the best way to improve quality education is human capital; having great teachers in the classroom,” Bennett said. “I’d rather have a great person in the classroom for three years and then move on than someone who is mediocre and stays for five to 10 years.”
Indiana lawmakers have dismantled traditional teacher union seniority rules and modified teacher licensing so it is easier to get TFA corps members in front of students. Plans to overhaul the teacher evaluation system are also in the works.
“TFA provides a great model of how to get talented professionals certified in a more efficient manner,” Bennett said. “We have schools all over the state looking to take advantage.”
In the near future, Bennett hopes the state will be able to more quickly provide help to struggling teachers and remove ineffective ones. “We want to find the best people, put them in the classroom, if they need help, get them help and if they can’t get better, replace them.”
Some of these same changes are in under way in Ohio. The legislation Kasich is expected to sign this week would grant an alternative teaching license to college graduates with at least a 2.5 GPA who prove they have “content knowledge” and complete a five-week TFA training course.
TFA success debated
The effectiveness of TFA-trained teachers in the classroom is debated. A study by the Tennessee State Board of Education found test scores in TSA-taught classrooms surpassed those of students taught by traditional teachers, regardless of classroom experience. However, a national study by the Education and Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder found students of first-year TFA instructors posted lower scores in reading and math.
A Texas study found lower test scores in TFA corps classrooms initially, but corps teachers improved with experience and further training, in some cases posting better student scores than those in traditional teacher classrooms.
In general, TFA teachers are less successful in lower grades — especially teaching reading, but they are better at math and science instruction, at least after gaining classroom experience, studies show. The program offers corps members training and mentoring throughout their two-year teaching commitment.
TFA instructors typically are paid the same wages as entry-level traditional teachers but cost the government more because they get federal grants through the AmeriCorps program for training. Those grants often are $10,000 per teacher per year.
In Indianapolis, the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, charter school where Hylton teaches is home to a number of TFA teachers and the leadership was recently taken over by program alumni after test scores lagged. Only half the students were working at grade level by 2010, but the school had made some of the largest gains in the charter’s network of schools to get there.
There is a lot to take away from the myriad of data and studies about TFA, but Kevin Kelly, dean of the University of Dayton school of teaching and allied professions, believes one theme stands out.
“Teaching is hard work and it is an acquired discipline,” Kelly said. “I think we need to be skeptical of this idea there are these singularly gifted people who can come in and give a system-wide solution.”
Yet Kelly said UD would welcome an opportunity to work with TFA. “They’re people who are well intentioned, they want to be part of the solution,” he said. “We must have things to learn from TFA.”
The program is no panacea, however. As Kelly points out, the program’s members make up only 0.2 percent of a teaching work force of more than 3 million. “In broad strokes I am in favor of anything that brings talented people into the profession of teaching,” he said. “But that doesn’t seem to be a scalable solution.”
Teachers and administrators who work directly with TFA members often reach a different conclusion. Indiana’s Bennett said the state’s shake up of the licensure requirements will attract good teachers to the profession who would otherwise have never thought of teaching because they didn’t have the credentials.
DeFreese, of the Indianapolis New Tech magnet school, said TFA recruits work tirelessly to improve their craft and prove some people are “born teachers.”
“They are very bright, very dedicated and bring an almost missionary-like zeal to the profession,” said DeFreese, who hand-picks the teaching staff for his college-prep academy.
DeFreese doesn’t buy the argument that teacher training is more important than content knowledge and motivation. “That’s crap,” he said. “This is a ‘you have it or you don’t’ field. I don’t think you can teach excellence. My number one prerequisite for hiring a teacher here is how smart they are. I’d just as soon give an IQ test as part of their interview for this job.”
Skeptical locals
Local school and teachers union leaders are more skeptical, saying the biggest hurdle districts now face is funding, not finding teachers.
“I think it cheapens the teacher certification process,” said David Romick, head of the Dayton Public Schools teachers union. “Anyone teaching now has gone through at least a two-year program. A five-week summer course is almost insulting to professionally licensed teachers.”
In fact, Ohio is in the process of making the expectations of its teacher training colleges more rigorous. In December, the Ohio Board of Regents launched a program that will rate the schools and the classroom effectiveness of the teachers they produce.
“There is more to teaching than content knowledge, Romick said. “Any school staff likes to recruit young blood, but we want those to be trained and professionally licensed.”
Dayton is no stranger to education reforms or experiments, but Nancy Nerny, president of the Dayton school board, said it is unlikely the district will be hiring new teachers anytime soon because of budget cuts from the state.
“We have plenty of good teachers in Dayton that we are not sure we can keep on,” said Nerny. “We are still waiting to see how the budget shakes out.” There are currently 155 positions across the district that have no funding support because of the loss of stimulus money.
“I’m not sure of (Kasich’s) motivation,” Nerny added. “I think this is just about money and he is not helping us with the quality of education.”
Lori Ward, Dayton superintendent, said she hasn’t formed an opinion of TFA, but is interested. “I would say I admire that young people still want to go into teaching ....We have a need for highly qualified, effective people that want to teach urban children.”
Nichols, Kasich’s spokesman, said state lawmakers and the governor have given districts “tools” like the Senate Bill 5 collective bargaining legislation that he said allows administrators to do more within tight budgets and gives them flexibility to remove ineffective older teachers and hire young motivated ones.
But that attitude worries Romick because he said it could lead to loss of experience and higher teacher turnover. “We don’t see anything wrong with attracting the best and the brightest. To discount seniority, which I know is a bad word out there right now, but what it means is discounting experience,” he said. “If you start getting a high rate of turnover, then you are talking about instruction and achievement suffering and no one wants that.”
Ohioans play a part
TFA hasn’t come to Ohio yet, but plenty of Ohioans have signed on to be corps members. Rebecca Neale, national spokeswoman for the program, said 300 graduates of Ohio schools are teaching across the U.S. More than 1,800 applied to the program this school year, including 350 from Ohio State University.
Courter Shimeall, now a law student at OSU, helped to recruit Ohio graduates on campus in Columbus and at Miami University the past two years after teaching for two years in Watts, a southern Los Angeles neighborhood.
“I have recruited hundreds of kids who have left the state,” Shimeall said. “It is one of the barriers for Ohio students.”
With Ohio open to TFA staff, Shimeall hopes more students will sign up for the program. “We need as many smart talented people in the program,” he said. “I’m excited about it.”
More than 300 alumni have also returned to teach in Ohio after finishing their TFA commitment, Neale said. Anisa Hassan, of Wintersville, Ohio, on the West Virginia border, could be one of them after she finishes her two-year commitment at the David Ellis Academy West in Detroit. She plans some type of a career in education.
“I like to say I’m a proud Buckeye in the state up north,” said the OSU graduate. “I’m excited about the possibility of Teach for America expanding there.”
Hassan comes from a small town and joined TFA because she wanted “to find herself.” She now spends her days teaching 21 third-graders in a struggling district.
“Everyday I am not on my game I should be ashamed because I am disadvantaging 21 eight-year-olds,” she said.
Enthusiasm like Hassan’s is prevalent throughout the TFA program, but ask corps members and alumni how that drive can be replicated and sustained across the profession and they admit there is no easy answer.
Charlie Schlegel, principal at the Indianapolis Challenge Foundation Academy charter school, was a TFA member when it began and rubbed shoulders with now famous TFA members like Michelle Rhee, the former head of the Washington, D.C., schools. His wife Mindy is a top education policy expert for the state.
Schlegel knows it takes a certain type of person who can reach kids day in and day out, especially those students who come from challenging backgrounds.
“Idealism can weather overtime, especially under harsh circumstances,” Schlegel said. “It is exhausting the kinds of work (teachers) are doing. We’ve got to find a way to make this profession more doable.
I think about these things all the time. There is no easy solution.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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