On Sept. 19, the Tufts Daily ran a laudatory article about Tufts' place as a "top Teach for America (TFA) college," trumpeting the school's consistent role as a TFA corps contributor. As a Tufts alum (LA '11), the celebratory article gave me pause. Tufts continues to stoke the heroic one-dimensional narrative of TFA as the cure-all to the problems of urban public education in the United States. TFA is not a solution and Tufts should exercise caution when boasting about its relationship to a program that has had such mediocre results.
Certainly, some TFA corps members have a transformative experience. For these lucky few, TFA is revolutionary - both personally and for the young learners under their care. TFA's mission is to lure energetic and passionate graduates of top-notch colleges and universities into public education; the organization claims that putting these graduates into under-resourced classrooms is vital to urban schools. On the surface, the program appears to offer an antidote to the nation's educational crisis, but in reality the program's model, structure and impact leave much to be desired.
TFA places brand-new teachers in some of the most poorly performing districts in the country. I have nothing against this practice but rather condemn TFA for allowing these young teachers to flounder without proper professional development or support. Wendy Kopp's organization pledges that its teachers are well-prepared and ready for the stark realities that they face. On the contrary, TFA's institute is a crash course in lesson planning, behavioral management and pedagogy. It is a foolhardy assumption to believe that anyone can become a competent teacher with only five weeks of training in the summer prior to beginning his or her placement.
It is commonplace for TFA corps members to cycle out of teaching after their two-year commitment is up. This rotating door continues to feed the achievement gap. Just at the moment when TFA teachers are beginning to get their sea legs as educators, the vast majority leaves to begin other "real" careers, exhausted and burnt out by the difficult task of learning on the job. TFA must replace their now-amateur teachers with a slew of rookies.
Over the last few months a number of TFA veterans have published harsh diatribes against their former employer. These accounts condemn the organization for its lack of professional development and support, the antipathy it has fueled between corps members and established teachers and the basic claim that TFA hurts young students by placing rookie teachers in environments that require experts. TFA is a powerful corporation, but slowly voices are piercing through the silence to question the organization's practices and philosophies.
It is a testament to Tufts that a program as competitive as TFA hires so many graduates of this institution. With that said, Tufts would be well-served to take a vocal stand against TFA's organizational practices. Tufts has the opportunity to be a leader amongst its peer schools in a progressive educational reform movement - to continue to push its undergraduates into teaching careers but into alternative programs that provide them with legitimate training and support (teacher residency, Masters in Education, etc.). I urge Tufts to see beyond the glitz and glamor of TFA statistics and instead craft a community-wide culture that continues to respect and highlight the teaching profession while pushing beyond the TFA paradigm.
