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There are 13 comments on Teach for America Founder Wants Educational Equity

    1. Although I am a School of Education faculty member who normally attends graduation, I will not be attending this year. Although I appreciate the free flow of ideas, I would not want my attendance to be construed as support for TFA.
      For many years, I have tried to counter TFA’s harmful effects, which are: 1) The selling of a TFA position as a resume-builder results in few corps members staying in teaching longer than 2 years (although the retention numbers are improving). 2) Most of the TFAers are teaching out of field. They are filling science, mathematics, special education, ESL, and elementary education positions without sufficient education in the subjects they teach. 3) TFA ignores educational research and makes up their own. For example, peer-reviewed studies show that, on average, teachers are much more likely to be successful if they have more than four years of teaching and are teaching subjects in which they majored in college (see #1 and #2). 4) Ms. Kopp promotes a dangerously flawed image of teaching as merely a form of leadership. This sells well on Wall Street, but is very far from what we know about good teaching. 5) Educators tolerated TFA as long as the corps members were filling jobs no one else wanted. Now, they are taking the places of much better qualified teachers, including those prepared at SED. 6) The TFA model fits in well with reforms that emphasize free enterprise solutions to our problems of poor schooling. Research in this country and comparisons to systems in other societies suggest that this is exactly the wrong approach. Instead of trying Peace Corps-like experiments where children in our own country are treated like foreigners, we should be working to provide good health care and family supports for all children and to professionalize teaching.

      1. I applaud your post, Phil. As I stated below, Wendy Kopp herself has said that TFA is directed towards developing corporate leaders, not classroom teachers. It is not right to utilize children of all ages as pawns to further corporate career ambitions.

        I will say this, however- those TFA teachers I have worked with here in New Orleans who decided to stay in the profession are awesome. They are dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of their students and are very accomplished in their craft. Unfortunately, most of the TFAs book it to the corporate world after two years.

  1. This story demonstrates how a single naive person with a nobel vision can accomplish more than the Department of Education. We need more NGOs like this run by determine young people like Kopp and less big government group think micromanaging our schools and inner cities. The solution to many of our nation’s educational and social problem lie in the “deranged” dreams of optimistic young people willing to stop waiting for the big government nanny state to fix everything for them and who instead chose to take the bull by the horns and get up do something to make the world a better place for themselves and others. Go for it!

  2. She was quoted in the educational administrative journal “Educational Leadership” that TFA was never meant to develop teachers; it was meant to develop leaders in the corporate world. The classroom was simply an opportunity to give them practice to do that. The set-up of TFA supports that- teach in a school of desperate need for two years then say “adios”. Strange to me, then, that she should be so worked up about educational inequity.

  3. One does not simply announce that Morgan Freeman is going to have a supporting role in a graduation ceremony, without expecting the analogous reactions from the graduating class.

    Just saying

    1. dude no. did you even read about her? morgan freeman probably doesn’t even have a speech ready, you can’t just make him speak like that. think before you write. respect.

  4. While the goal of TFA is very noble and admirable, it is too idealistic and hurts teaching as a profession. Teacher-training candidates spend four years training to do what the organization thinks they can train people to do in 3-5 weeks. Especially in such low-performing schools that need and deserve the best teachers, it is an injustice to the students to provide them with teachers with little to no educational experience. Just like with any other career, teachers only get better with experience. A two-year requirement is not enough time for beginning teachers to perform at their best. Rather than recruiting people who are using TFA as a stepping stone towards their own career vision, TFA should focus on recruiting the best-performing teachers into schools that need their help.

    Think about it this way. Would you want to go to a clinic with “Doctors for America” or have your house designed by “Architects for America?”

  5. ’tis times like these i ponder. . . what would morgan freeman do?
    i hear lots of controversy over TFA. it is warranted. i do not know how i yet feel.
    perhaps morgan freeman knows. there should be a Q and A with Mrs. Kopp after.

  6. See a problem, come up with a solution. There’ll be a problem with your solution of course, than we’ll have a solution to that problem, and that solution will have a problem that will need a solution and on and on and on. It works for those who needs it and receives it. Do the best with what you got going on and find a way to add it to what TFA is doing. Keep building, add your intellectual brick to it. God Bless America 1

  7. I encourage you to read this article http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/. While it is satirical, it nonetheless has much truth to it. Students deserve educators who are in it to TEACH, not to add to their resume for the corporate world. My son and daughter have a calling and passion to teach and have pursued that passion exclusively during their college years. They are in it for the long haul, not for a two year resume bump. BU does a disservice to ALL the exemplary educators on their campus by this choice of commencement speaker. And they certainly devalue their own School of Education students, who came to BU because of its reputation for having an intensive four year program that turns out prepared and dedicated educators. We should be looking for long term solutions, and we should be looking for a different commencement speaker!

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