Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/396235
who were guest speakers at TFA's 20th anniversary included Rhee, Harlem Children's Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada (a charter booster featured promi- nently in the movie Waiting for Superman), and administrators from non-union KIPP charter schools. R aising the most eyebrows on the political spectrum is TFA's spinoff nonprofit, Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), which TFA claims is nonpartisan. LEE has a reported $3.9 million annual budget and a goal of helping TFA alums get elected to public office, including school boards, judge- ships, state legislatures and city councils — as well as placement in school leadership positions. By 2015, it hopes to have 250 members in elected office, 300 in policy or advocacy leadership roles, and 1,000 in "active" pipelines for public leadership. "LEE puts campaign muscle behind members who decide to seek elected office," reports Education Week. Among those who have benefited from such "muscle" are Bill Ferguson, a Maryland state senator who sponsored "parent trig- ger" legislation allowing parents to turn schools over to for-profit charter operations, and Michael Johnston of Mississippi, who wrote a victorious bill that weakened teacher tenure and increased the role of student test scores in teacher evaluations to 50 percent. Spielberg, however, asserts LEE demonstrated its nonpartisanship by supporting his work as an SJTA board member and even asked him to host an event for corps members and alums called "Unions Matter." However, TFA's goal isn't just producing long-term, highly-skilled teachers; it's also to produce policymak- ers and leaders who can use their inner-city teaching experience as a stepping stone to political office, with candidates presenting themselves as "education experts" when they are not, says Caputo-Pearl. "TFA people in leadership positions are predisposed to quick-fix measures because they haven't spent enough time in schools to understand that real school improvement plans take five or more years. Basically, LEE promotes people who think things would be fine if we only had more charter schools or if all teachers were evaluated on their test scores." Spielberg also has concerns about TFA's political bent. "The organization produces a large number of influential alumni who sup- port the expansion of charter schools, changes to teacher employment law, and making student standardized test scores increasingly more important in teacher and school evaluations. And there is very little evidence these reforms help poor students." The big question: Is the organization's goal to strengthen troubled schools? Or is it to feed a perception that public education is in ruins, and only "reform- ers" can save the children? Spielberg believes the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. "In the end, most people within Teach For America — and most other people working in education — have very similar goals. To use the words of the San Jose Teachers Association, most of us want to 'educate, inspire and change lives' through public education. The biggest shame about the TFA debate is that people who care about kids are arguing with each other about teacher and school quality instead of working together to address the root causes of inequity in society." S T U D I E S S H O W there are better outcomes for TFA teachers in high school — espe- cially in math — and less successful outcomes when compared with fully credentialed teachers in elementary grades, especially with English learners. A study by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences found TFA alums just as effective — and sometimes more effective — than other high school math teachers. "Research indicates that if you could get a TFA teacher to commit to more than two years of teaching, they would be excellent," says Su Jin Gatlin Jez, an assistant professor of public policy and administration, California Faculty Association, CSU Sacramento. "But the problem is that usually during your first two years of teaching, you may be at your worst." Jez and Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas (soon to be the new director of CSU Sacramen- to's education doctorate program) co-authored the education brief "Teach For America: A Return to the Evidence" published by the National Education Policy Center, which is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. They concluded that TFA is "less effective than other well-studied reforms" and should not be considered a "panacea" or a major factor in improving teacher quality in hard-to-staff schools. "If it were so good, you'd see wealthy districts clamoring for TFA teachers," says Jez. "But these districts don't want new teachers with little training in their schools for just two years." Policymakers and stakeholders should consider TFA alums for what they are — a slightly better alternative if the hiring pool is comprised primarily of uncertified and emergency-permit teachers, she concludes. Education expert Linda Darling-Hammond says there are things to admire about TFA, especially its recruitment of students from prestigious universities to become teachers, and the fact that TFA allows people to enter the profession without taking out loans and going into debt. She notes that unlike oth- er developed countries, there is no effective "national policy" in the U.S. to recruit, train and distribute well-prepared teachers. "Creating systems that address these needs, as the federal government has done in medicine, is the key to our children's future," she says in an Education Week article. "We should be building on what works for TFA and marrying it to what works for dozens of strong preparation programs to produce the highly qualified, effective teachers we need for the 21st century." P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y S C O T T B U S C H M A N HOW EFFECTIVE IS TFA? RESEARCH IS MIXED ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACH FOR AMERICA'S TEACHERS. Su Jin Gatlin Jez 21 V O L U M E 1 9 I S S U E 3