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Re: [xmca] Teach for America
Yes,
Thanks a lot for your reflections and references.
It was/is very helpful. I am now and then helping a municipality here
in Sweden - a "low status" district which has had very bad school
results. (2004 they were in the very bottom with regard to student´s/
pupil´s grades. They then started a process they called "synvända" (a
new perspective) - using the well known picture from Wittgenstien -
Is it a rabbit or a duck? They/we said that we could not find the
roots of these problems inside the heads of the children but in the
school context, the learning environments. the interactions,
etcetera. The new head is inspired by Vygotskiij (it takes two to
learn). And now five-six years later they have improved a lot...
they are no longer in the bottom! but somewhere in the middle of the
"National Ranking List". But still, there are children "left behind",
so we are looking for inspiration. And we saw TFA... and liked their
ambition to work where "teachers are totally needed" (as you write
Wayne)... and I absolutely agree with your thoughts (both Tony and
Wayne) that children/students need TEACHERS not ex-presidents playing
with dolls. Children/students need TEACHERS who enrich their
experineces in a ZPD, a joint activity of mutuality, respect and a
desire to peform a head taller, becoming smarter.
So once more
Thanks (XMCA is a great network)
Leif
Sweden
21 feb 2010 kl. 01.51 skrev Au, Wayne:
Hi Leif,
There is a whole lot to say about Teach for America (TFA) and from
my perspective, almost all of it bad. To start with the good: I
think it draws a lot of young, smart, and energetic college
graduates into teaching. So my critiques of TFA should be separated
from my views of the actual young people joining their ranks. Also,
I think the original impetus of TFA was seen as good by many folks
because there are some places in the U.S. where public education is
horrible and teachers are totally needed.
However, TFA has also been comically dubbed, "Teach for A While"
because the vast majority of their recruits/graduates leave
teaching after their initial two-year stint. So in a most basic
way, TFA takes college graduates, gives them 5-6 weeks of training,
puts them in the highest need, most vulnerable classrooms possible,
and then they leave as soon as they can - thus putting the least
experienced, least qualified teachers with some of the neediest
students and contributing to the overall instability of school
communities already wracked by instability.
Indeed, many of TFA recruits see it mainly as resume building in
preparation for getting their "real" jobs later. This is not to say
that all TFA graduates leave the classroom. I have a good friend
who started teaching via TFA and then completed a real credential
and is still teaching high school in Oakland, CA, some 10 years
later. But the majority do leave.
But there's more:
TFA is built on the model that anyone can teach without any
substantial training/education or preparation. It is built on the
commonsense (at least commonsense in the U.S.) that because we have
all been students, then we pretty much automatically know how to
teach. This is the kind of line you get from TFA's founder, as well
as from within the business community.
TFA thus is also regularly used to attack both teacher prep
programs and teacher unions. In New Orleans, for instance, after
Hurricane Katrina, the school district forcefully broke the
teachers' union, and lo and behold, who did they bring in to fill
the majority of new vacancies? TFA recruits. My friends who do work
down there tell me it has been an absolute travesty.
So, even though TFA vocally says they do not side on any political
issue, if you look at their founder and their funders, there is
actually a pretty clear anti-union and anti-teacher preparation
agenda lurking. In reality it is an extension of neo-liberal
education reforms in the U.S. (I do, however, have my critiques of
the teachers' unions here, but I'll take our bad unions over no
unions at all.)
As such, it is in fact being pushed by folks in the Obama
administration - it certainly falls into line with other "reforms"
like mayoral control, attacks on teachers' union contracts,
charters, merit pay, national standards, and high-stakes testing/
accountability that Duncan has been advancing. I don't remember
seeing it officially mentioned in the Race to the Top initiative,
but they have been pushing it as an example of "good" reform.
Does it work? Depends on what you mean. As far as I know there's no
credible evidence that it does work to raise educational
achievement by any measure, and there is certainly nothing to show
it improves the quality of education for kids.
But that is my wholly biased opinion on TFA, and I'm sure others
will have other takes on it. I will direct you to the Spring 2010
issue of Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org). It hasn't
come out yet, but there will be a cluster of articles on TFA in
there - including some really good in-depth research and analysis.
There is a small fee to get a subscription or purchase an
individual issue (Rethinking Schools is a non-profit, U.S.-based
social justice education magazine), but the pieces on TFA for this
forthcoming issue are really strong. There will also be a dynamite
analysis of the upcoming ESEA reauthorization in that issue too.
There are also a couple of books worth checking out. One that comes
to mind is "Taught By America" - a reflective narrative of someone
who went through the program.
Sorry for the long-winded answer, but there's a lot (more?) to be
said about TFA.
Sincerely,
Wayne
--
Wayne Au
Assistant Professor
Department of Secondary Education
CSU Fullerton
P.O. Box 6868
Fullerton, CA 92834
Office: 657.278.5481
Editorial Board Member: Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org)
http://ed.fullerton.edu/SecEd/Faculty/Full_Time_Faculty/Au.html
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