Is TFA really the answer to school reform?

As our reading this week past week in Class Warfare can support, Steven Brill passionately believes that reform programs, such as Teach for America or New Leaders for New Schools, is the secret to repairing the public school s system. However, upon personal reflection, I’m not sure if I’m in agreement with Brill.

I’m currently completing the final components of a Social Studies Teaching Certification at Bucknell. For those of you who don’t know, this entails completely a normal Social Science degree in the School or Arts, in my case Economics, as well as completely many education courses. These education courses vary from the development and psychology of a child to how to specifically teach Social Studies or students with learning disabilities. These education courses, however, do not directly address Social Studies’ content specifically (that’s what my Economics courses are for!). Nonetheless, I’m a firm advocate that these courses have strengthened my understanding of what children need and how to best provide this to them. Because of these courses, I’ve learned techniques to engage students, class management skills, and how to simply create a lesson plan. I feel prepared and confident to begin student teaching this coming spring.

On the contrary, TFA participants are lacking all of the above. They basically head into a classroom ‘cold turkey’. Yes, they have their Ivy League education, but lack actual teaching skills- like classroom management. As Jessica Reid recalls, “When one of the fifth graders stood up and danced around, none of the tricks she’d been taught at the TFA academy for regaining the class’s attention worked” (Bill, 2011:20). What’s even more alarming is that Brill documents Reid because she was a TFA participant that preserved. What happens to the TFA participants that don’t ever pick up on the needed skills?

Brill’s overwhelming support for TFA basically demonstrates that four years’ worth of teaching and education courses is unnecessary for teachers. I may be biased from my situation, but I can’t believe that this is true.

You may be thinking, “TFA does provide teacher training through a five-week TFA academy.” However, by Jessica Reid’s story above, one can see the training’s obvious flaws. Michele Rhee, another TFA participant, reinforces this notion through the account, “She was failing so miserably to control her class, let alone teach anything, that two officials…who came to observe her…hinted that Rhee should consider another line of work” (Brill, 2011:21). These accounts show major defects in the TFA structure.

What then is the answer to school reform? I believe that improving the curriculum for educators in a four-year college program will have more long term positive effects on student achievement (however, I know this would never completely solve the problem). If students who wanted to be teachers were given proper education (being taught things like how to track and improve student improvement), in theory, they would become better educators in the long run. I believe that being given all the tools to succeed will enable to teachers to achieve real results with their students.

That being said, improving teacher education will not solve the problem of teachers who lack motivation or teachers that don’t have the content knowledge to get the job done. In my ideal world, education reform would be achieved best by a complete change in the connotations of the teaching profession. If teachers were seen as those who educate those who will bring change in the future or as the most important person influencing future generations (and we’re paid as such), then maybe students at Ivy League schools would be motivated to go into the teaching profession from the get-go and not use fast-track programs like TFA. Does anyone else have thoughts on TFA and the answer to school reform?