Now that applications for Teach for America are down....

April 13, 2016 7:01 PM

TFA chief executive is taking a fresh look at how to turn things around. Applications are down 35% over 3 years. The executive team is taking a "fresh look" at how to make things work, with the goal of doing things differently.

TFA received 37,000 applications in 2016, down from 57,000 in 2013 — a 35 percent dive in three years. It’s a sharp reversal for an organization that grew quickly during much of its 25-year history, becoming a stalwart in education reform circles and a favorite among philanthropists.
...
The declining interest means that TFA is providing fewer corps members to school districts each year: The organization generally accepts about 10 percent of its applicant pool, and it refuses to lower its bar for admission, Villanueva Beard wrote. This year’s corps is likely to be several hundred smaller than last year’s.
...
She blamed the decline on a number of factors that are driving enrollment drops in many teacher-preparation programs, including the improving economy, which offers young college graduates more options than they had during the recession. In addition, she wrote, the public debate about education is polarized and “toxic,” driving away talented people from a profession that needs them.
...
Everyone’s just taking a fresh look at how to do this work from a local perspective, both in training and supporting our teachers, which is quite different from how we did this previously,” she said. The goal is to make sure current corps members are happy and feel like they have the help they need to be successful at what is a very difficult job.

Previously on Metafilter
2003: Former Inner-City Teacher Speaks Out
2013: Why I Stopped Writing Recommendation Letters for Teach for America
The TFA insurgency and its uses

posted by Salamandrous (26 comments total)

Liberal college kids are finally getting tired of being used as shock troops to break teacher's unions?

Good.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:40 PM on April 13, 2016 [104 favorites]

I've shared my thoughts about TFA before, so I'll just say that some of their wounds are self-inflicted.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:44 PM on April 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's regrettable that their go-to argument is that "the public debate about education is polarized and 'toxic'"--if anything, it's TFA and Rheeists who have been toxic toward teachers' unions and teaching as a skilled profession--but at least there's a tacit admission that the real motivation behind many applicants' interest was simply desperation at not being able to find a job post-college graduation.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:49 PM on April 13, 2016 [31 favorites]

I'll just say that some of their wounds are self-inflicted.

From what I understand, this is true (while also acknowledging the larger shifts mentioned). If a significant percent of the applicants were hoping to burnish their resumes before returning to the corporate world, any damage to the TFA brand is going to be deadly.

But for the individual people I know who did TFA, it was an amazing and transformative experience, and based on what they have said there is value in TFA even if the shortcomings and excessive promises need to be corrected.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:50 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

. for the individual people I know who did TFA, it was an amazing and transformative experience,

Volunteering at an orphanage in Vietnam is also an amazing and transformative experience, as I've read, but these days people are realizing that it might also be bad for the people being 'helped' in the long term.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 8:04 PM on April 13, 2016 [33 favorites]

There's not any value in TFA if you believe in public education or public employees. It's always been a front for wide scale privatization of the education system off the backs of idealistic 22 year olds who don't realize the true aims of the organization. Any money spent on TFA could be better spent hiring actual teachers into the actual education system, not rebuilding it as a for-profit model. Plenty of young, publicly employed, teachers have also had a transformation experience their first couple years as a teacher, and lots of them went on to be lifelong public educators rather than consultants for TFA.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:11 PM on April 13, 2016 [79 favorites]

I went through a full credential program and "student teaching" apprenticeship (translation: unpaid skilled labor), and I didn't feel all that prepared when I was done. I've taught for over twelve years, much of that including "high risk" populations, and I still feel like I'm catching up. And I've worked with a lot of people doing concurrent credentials & Masters of Ed. programs as "student teachers" themselves, and guess what? Not seeing enough preparation there, either.

But sure, let's cram people through a short "boot camp" and then send them where we have the highest need for the best teachers and hope that works, right? Sure sounds like putting the kids first to me!
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:15 PM on April 13, 2016 [22 favorites]

See, I'm just waiting for when the for-profit prisons, and the for-profit schools get in line and close the loop. (I was gonna post this in the Pearson thread, but I forgot.) Anyway, I'd buy stock in that company, because I believe their profits will go to the Moooooooooooooooon!!!!*

* with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
posted by valkane at 8:23 PM on April 13, 2016 [6 favorites]

Damn, so many people here woke as fuck, I love it
posted by clockzero at 8:30 PM on April 13, 2016 [21 favorites]

I think The Onion covered this a few years back.
posted by echo target at 8:35 PM on April 13, 2016 [18 favorites]

Ha, now I see that was like the first comment in a previous thread. Got thinkin' I was clever or something.
posted by echo target at 8:36 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

My district's issue with TFA was that we had no need or use for 2-year newbie teachers. We had no problem attracting applicants, except in certain highly-specialized areas that TFA didn't supply (special Ed, AP science certified, etc.). There are MORE than enough teachers in my state; teachers are going begging for jobs. Jobs aren't hurting for teachers.

Our problems were turnover and retention -- making a two-year commitment exactly what we were trying to avoid -- and financial. TFA actively undermines the first and doesn't help with the second. They really wanted to come to our failing urban district, but they didn't have a very good answer as to what value-add they could bring us. Mostly "hope and idealism," which we could get homegrown.

We had a great program called "Grow Your Own," though, where employees who had been with us a few years could go to college and earn a teaching certificate while working for us and we paid for classes, and then they promised to teach for us for a certain number of years after. We had cafeteria workers and bus drivers with GEDs working their way through college and becoming para pros and then teachers. Takes about seven years. Imagine how powerful and profoundly inspirational it was for kids in very impoverished neighborhoods see an adult they know, working a minimum wage job, work their way through college and become a teacher in their own school. THAT is the kind of inspiration we could have done with more of, and TFA could have actually helped with that kind of program! Run some summer intensives, provide stipends, get our folks through in five years instead of seven!

But they didn't go to Harvard so it wasn't really interesting to TFA.

I have a number of friends who went through TFA or ACE (Alliance for Catholic Education, same idea) and became career educators and I don't have the skepticism about the general program that many do ... Especially since a lot of top-tier schools you graduate unable to get a teaching certificate because there's no education program, making TFA or ACE the smart choice for quick entry to the classroom without spending two more years on a masters right away. A lot of teachers literally use it that way, to begin teaching after college without doing an extra 30 credits (of mostly nonsense in my state, where they discourage "career changers" as a business protection issue). 20 years ago they were providing staff to fill shortages; today we just don't have that problem, so it's not totally clear how they're helping schools in a way that's particularly efficient.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:56 PM on April 13, 2016 [74 favorites]

echo target, hought for sure you were referencing this Onion article.
posted by paulcole at 9:57 PM on April 13, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'd like to think that this is partially due to my refusal to write letters of recommendation for TFA (and I tell my students why.)
posted by k8t at 10:52 PM on April 13, 2016 [7 favorites]

Applications are down 35% over 3 years

I wonder what the trend for grad school applications is? Maybe this is some kind of leading indicator that the snake people think they can get a job job now.
posted by thelonius at 12:44 AM on April 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I participated in TFA's very first year: 1990, and taught for two years in New York City. I have a lot to say about the experience and the program, but not enough time and energy at the moment to turn it into a longer, coherent post.

The short story is: I think inner city education would be better off without it. I have a less developed opinion about some of the rural areas it serves.
posted by Walleye at 5:02 AM on April 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

But for the individual people I know who did TFA, it was an amazing and transformative experience, and based on what they have said there is value in TFA even if the shortcomings and excessive promises need to be corrected.

It's expressed better in the Onion article, but a lot of the criticism of TFA is that, regardless of the experience it gives its teachers, the children are being short-changed.

Eyebrows McGee: the "Grow Your Own" program sounds brilliant. It's good for the employees, and it's great for the teachers. I grew up in a poor, majority-visible minority community and seeing people like you, people from your neighbourhood, in educated professions is transformative. It really changes how you think about your own potential for the future. (I was only in my late teens when I seriously considered going to university, because I had teachers encouraging me. My own family had little experience with post-secondary education. Even in university, I didn't have a good sense of what jobs it could lead to - everyone I knew, other than profs, worked as an administrative assistant or in a warehouse, etc.)
posted by jb at 5:32 AM on April 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

Somebody needs to let that writer know that you don't have to repeat the full name of the person you're quoting every time you quote them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:53 AM on April 14, 2016

Somebody needs to let that writer know that you don't have to repeat the full name of the person you're quoting every time you quote them.

Villanueva Beard is the last name of the chief executive of TFA. Her first name is Elisa.
posted by cnanderson at 6:04 AM on April 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Villanueva Beard is the last name of the chief executive of TFA. Her first name is Elisa.

D'oh! I guess it helps to pay attention.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:53 AM on April 14, 2016

I have a family member who did TFA nearer its inception in a very, very poor urban district. He (and I) also had what I think is the unusual experience for white TFA members of having been educated mostly in a similarly poor city's public schools. He was very committed to the work while he was there and continues to believe passionately that the system we came from, and the system he went into, were in such a catastrophic state that even the undertrained TFA teachers were a net benefit and that it was a good way to get a number of people who didn't remain teachers involved in education policy for life who might otherwise have gone elsewhere. I have a hard time getting him to consider the possible results of having invested that money in the schools in other ways. But I understand where he's coming from because I remember the pool of often incompetent, indifferent, and/or simply overwhelmed-to-the-point-of-giving-up teachers he and I had. Not all of them, but more than enough to drag the system down. (He is also not as far left as I am on unions, etc., which obviously affects our differing views.) It's caused some tension between us.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on April 14, 2016

I have a friend who did TFA. She quit after getting punched in the face by a student. She no longer works in education.
posted by mmmbacon at 9:36 AM on April 14, 2016

One thing that interested me about this article is that all of a sudden TFA has to compete on a quality of life gauge. This reminded me of the cliched generation gap stories being frustrated with the younger generation for wanting to both like their job and have a life outside of their job. The fact that making "sure current corps members are happy and feel like they have the help they need to be successful at what is a very difficult job" would be a cast as a new idea is kind of horrifying. It's almost blatantly saying that they exploited young people's financial vulnerability while being content to cast 'drop-outs' as being morally and otherwise weak losers.
posted by Salamandrous at 2:28 PM on April 14, 2016

And in further good news, a California appeals court has reversed the Vergara ruling. In the decision, the court pointed out that the plaintiffs were unable to demonstrate that the statutes were actually disproportionately affecting student demographics.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:15 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had an amazing transformative experience getting my MEd at an amazing grad school of education. I teach ELL kids at a charter school in DC now, and though we don't get TFA, we get CTR and UTC and all kinds of other analogous participants. And I don't see the benefit. They are inspired, sure. But I wonder about their exposure to cognitive science theories, various methods and models of teaching, and curricular theory.
posted by Snowishberlin at 1:22 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

If You Try to Ruin Schools for Profit, You Will Eventually Get Caught. Sweet justice in California.
posted by homunculus at 4:33 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]