To Teach for America:

This letter is in response to your request to explain why I am not interested in joining the Teach for America corps at this time.

The goal of Teach for America, to close the education gap in the U.S., can’t be criticized. However, I don’t think Teach for America is currently working toward that goal as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Both of my parents are teachers, and as such, I have a great deal of respect for the profession. Teaching is probably one of the hardest and least appreciated professions in America today. Additionally, I know that in order to become a truly great teacher, I would need not only talent and a drive to teach, but skills acquired over years of practice. I would only consider becoming a teacher if I felt it was my life’s calling, because if your heart isn’t in it, you simply can’t do something that hard every single day.

I have some suggestions for improving the program.

Increase Training

First, require more training, plus a year of teaching with the supervision of a more experienced teacher. This means the TFA time frame would probably be pushed up to three years instead of two. Many regional programs use this format, and it appears to increase the chances that these teachers would want to stay at their schools longer, or at least in the teaching profession in some capacity. And isn’t that really the goal, to increase the number of people serving our nation’s students in the teaching profession? Maybe fewer people would apply, so TFA’s acceptance rate would probably rise, but those applicants would be more committed, and therefore would stand a better chance of becoming good teachers.

Teach for America is still operating as though it is working with a crisis situation, and many of our nation’s schools are still in crisis. However, the organization now has the resources to do more than put teachers in classrooms where there were no teachers. While intelligence, education and leadership ability may contribute to teaching ability, the only way teachers are going to get better is if they practice and learn from watching someone else. Disadvantaged students in our nations most troubled neighborhoods deserve a teacher with adequate training who isn’t walking into the classroom for the first time. I might consider the program if it were formatted more like this.

Enhance Marketing to More Accurately Reflect the Program

Second, market the program only to people who are genuinely interested in teaching. Not social justice volunteers, and not high-achieving résumé boosters. Just teachers. The format of the Teach for America Web site suggests that the organization is fine with graduates using the program as a stepping stone into other professions. While it is important for educators to have allies in business, law and politics, the primary goal of Teach for America’s teachers should be teaching, not moving on to “bigger and better” things when they get out of the program. Marketing the program as a résumé booster is a disservice to the students the program tries to serve. The students should be the top priority, not the college graduates.

Furthermore, the language on the Web site distances potential teachers from the students they serve. The Web site emphasizes what the corps members will experience, not the people or communities they will serve. This does not help a typical white upper-class Northwestern graduate understand what it’s like to be poor, black and underprivileged, nor what it will be like to work with such students.

After talking to Carmen Rowan, a TFA corps alum who was once a student in a school now served by TFA, I understand that this isn’t true of all Teach for America applicants and corps members. However, the majority of the people I know who are applying for Teach for America do fit this description, and very few have adequate first-hand experience to know the difference between saying they want to “solve the education inequity” and actually working toward that goal. I feel that by bringing the actual experience to the Web site rather than focusing entirely on the lofty goals, ideals and theories of the organization, the initial applicants to Teach for America would be much stronger, and much more likely to make it through the entire application process. This would allow the organization to cut costs on recruiting, thus leaving more funds to use towards the actual program.

Stimulate Retention

When I talked to Carmen, she said that TFA’s top priority is getting teachers into classrooms. If that really is the primary goal of the organization, it would definitely be in TFA’s interest to get them to stay there. Adding progressive incentives for teachers who choose to stay longer could help the organization get out of crisis mode. Monitoring teachers in the classroom and rewarding those who prove to be truly great at teaching could also help with the turnover issue. Then, focusing more effort on lobbying states to increase wages and benefits for public school teachers could encourage those corps members to stick with teaching for the rest of their careers.

Focus Lobbying Efforts and Expand Social Justice Mandate

Carmen, a TFA recruiter, was unaware that many of the best public schools in the nation owe their success to funding collected from parcel taxes. Parcel taxes are an easy way for local government to raise money for local schools. Lobbying for increased parcel taxes, which often can be allocated entirely to funding for education is a logical place for TFA to start at the local level. Education is primarily a state-based issue, but TFA has been focusing all of its lobbying efforts on Washington. According to the Heritage Foundation, 47 percent of public education revenues come from the state level, 44 percent come from the local level and only 9 percent come from the federal level. Focusing all lobbying efforts on D.C. doesn’t seem like the most efficient use of Teach for America’s time.

Unfortunately, while Teach for America already has a huge lobbying force in action in Washington, the organization is formatted in such a way that anyone interested in lobbying for education or working in another aspect of education reform has to go through the corps first. This ignores the skills and talents of a huge segment of the college graduate population. Furthermore, many of the graduates who do join TFA for the social justice aspect of the program describe their term as a “two year jail sentence” (in my friend’s words). This is not only a disservice to the students, but a disservice to the organization itself, because these individuals’ talents could be better used elsewhere.

In the same way that many of the best teachers in the corps would not make good field organizers or lobbyists, many of the potential field organizers or lobbyists who would potentially join TFA would make terrible teachers. Given the fact that the organization is expanding to include a lobbying machine and education policy makers, it seems odd to recruit these political and administrative positions entirely from within the ranks of the corps. This also stifles creative input and openness to new ideas if all of the people involved in the policy-making process come from the same background and the same organizational culture. Carmen’s lack of knowledge about the source of funding for education in the US is a good example of this. While I understand the importance of all members of the administrative and political segments of TFA having some experience with teaching, valuable experience comes in a variety of forms and TFA could benefit from those as well.

Therefore, it could greatly improve the quality of TFA’s work to open a segment of the program that focuses on the social justice aspect of teaching (for example, lobbying government to change education policy, working with schools to organize free teaching seminars, fundraising for the organization, lobbying for more funding, sponsoring parcel tax laws, etc.). There is no reason why people who are not truly interested in teaching shouldn’t get to be a part of your program, they just should not be teaching.

I hope this is helpful for recruiting in the future. I do appreciate the mission of TFA, I just don’t think that TFA is going about achieving its goals in the most productive way.

Sincerely,

Sydney Howe, Communication senior