Teach for America: Point|Counterpoint
Is Virginia right to welcome Teach for America into public schools?
Bring home corps members eager to help here
By Morgan Saxby
Saxby, a 2005 Teach for America alumnus, teaches fifth grade at A.M. Davis Elementary, a Title 1 school in Chesterfield County. He is a member of the Virginia Education Association.
I joined Teach for America eight years ago, leaving my home in Richmond to teach fourth grade in Washington, D.C. For me, there was no clearer illustration of our country’s inequities than my ride to work. Driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, I could see the U.S. Capitol in my rearview mirror, a symbol of opportunity and hope; ahead was the housing project where most of my students lived, several boxy buildings surrounded by a heavy iron fence.
Nationally, only 8 percent of kids growing up in low-income communities graduate from college; we see this problem persisting in our home state of Virginia, as well. We now have the opportunity to partner with Teach for America to draw more of the nation’s emerging leaders toward our efforts across the commonwealth to ensure an excellent education for all students.
TFA is an organization that attracts some of our most passionate, dedicated college graduates and helps them start a career fighting alongside other committed educators for expanded educational opportunity in low-income communities.
Corps members, as they’re called, teach for at least two years and, as alumni, continue to work and advocate for educational equality. I, and others like me, have returned to Virginia to continue the mission-driven work of educational equity in our home state. Some of us work in schools; others work broadly in education or related fields; some have left education but are still impacted by their time spent teaching.
But none of us started our careers here, and hundreds of Virginians are leaving each year to join efforts in Detroit, Los Angeles, Charlotte, rural Mississippi or one of more than 40 other communities nationwide to help ensure a quality education for kids in underresourced areas.
They’re not staying in Virginia because, right now, they can’t. TFA doesn’t yet serve Virginia — making it the largest state without a TFA presence.
I’m thrilled by the prospect of TFA joining our efforts in Virginia, where every year scores of TFA teachers could work alongside other committed educators to help ensure that more kids have access to an excellent education and the life opportunities that come with it.
The commonwealth can’t afford to let so few of those living in low-income areas attain an excellent education, and Virginia stands only to benefit by creating the opportunity for school divisions to partner with Teach For America, to continue strengthening our teaching workforce and building leadership capacity in our underresourced communities.
No shortcut to excellent teachers for Virginia’s students
By Meg Gruber
Gruber is president of the Virginia Education Association.
In more than 30 years of teaching in public schools, I’ve worked with hundreds of teachers and seen many newcomers launch their careers fresh out of college.
Not one was as good a teacher his first year, or his second, as he would become later in his career. Experience matters: Ask any teacher.
That’s the biggest flaw with the Teach for America idea. It’s a shortcut that brings young people into classrooms as teachers with a bare minimum of preparation and a two-year commitment to teach. About the time they would be mastering the skills and really understanding how to work with students with different learning needs — poof! — they’d be ready to move to the next phase of their career.
Most people underestimate how complex teaching is, and few understand the important role of pre-service coursework, sustained practice teaching under a watchful eye and high-quality training and mentorship programs that beginning teachers need. There may be a few “naturals”; great teachers become so through their commitment to students and their passion for honing their craft. They have mastered the content of their subject. But they also must learn how to reach students with diverse learning styles and to make decisions on the fly in the classroom based on rapidly changing conditions so that everyone “gets it.”
This is not work for the minimally trained, and to suggest otherwise sells students short.
Ask yourself: Would you visit a doctor who had been allowed to bypass a significant amount of his medical training? Of course not.
We applaud the determination of top-flight college graduates to teach in some of Virginia’s most challenging schools. But Virginia students, especially those in the poorest communities, need our best-prepared teachers.
What is the path forward? Virginia must raise up teaching as a profession and take steps to prepare, recruit and retain the best teachers. We have to boost the attractiveness of teaching as a career (note that Virginia lags $7,000 under the national average in teacher pay). We must sustain, not weaken, our standards for becoming a teacher. We need to invest in better professional development programs once teachers are in the classroom to help them keep up with the latest research and methods.
Finally, we need to redouble our efforts to put a stop to teacher turnover that hurts students. Addressing some of the on-the-job conditions teachers face — excessive class sizes, increasing amounts of paperwork, lack of support (in some instances) from administrators — could convince more good teachers to stay in the classroom.
Instead of relying on a shortcut, we need to take the steps to raise the profession of teaching in the commonwealth. Permitting TFA in Virginia is a step in the wrong direction.
February 3, 2013 - 7:41 AM
Teach for America will be good for Virginia. Currently, Virginia has 98% of its teacher rated as Highly Qualified. Many of the new teachers quit within a couple of years now. Give Teach for Virginia a chance. If we are happy with the status of Virginia education then when should maintain course. I for one am ready to try something different.
Lastly, if your reason when lobbying for raise is that someone else makes more, then you have a weak argument.
Yeah, bring TFA and force them to stay for a couple of years! What a great idea! THAT makes an effective teacher! My first year teaching, I remember 7 teachers in my school walking out. Yep, walking out in the middle of the day and never coming back.
Lisa,
Those were not TFA teachers. So what is your point? Obviously, there would be no difference with TFA.
Hi Lisa2,
The Roanoke Times allows me and Meg a rebuttal, and in mine next week I’ll talk a little about some of the research behind teacher effectiveness. I’m sure TFA tracks teachers who leave mid-year; it’s a very low number. First-year teaching is very tough (as I’m sure you’d agree), and one of the best features of TFA’s training and professional development is the ongoing, intensive mentorship provided by other teachers.
I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by “force”. TFA teachers know the schools they’re going to teach at, and are employees of the school district that hires them.
Morgan,
So did those teachers that were hired to teach there. TFA are no more or no less qualified to teach than other teachers. The problem I have with that is that we already have an abundance of teachers (we have LOTS of colleges that graduate LOTS of teachers). The problem – 1. pay, 2. difficulty navigating all the paperwork, meetings, data books, goals, parent communication logs, report card data, testing, test score data….need I go on?
Why anyone on this earth would want to become a teacher at this stage in the game is beyond me.
As a parent of school-aged children I am very frustrated by the low pay that teachers can expect today. There are a lot of teachers who do this because they love it and they’re good at it, and my kids have had (mostly) these kinds of teachers and they are really wonderful. But I think also there are a lot of college grads who take up teaching because they majored in something without much prospect for employment, and now they need jobs with benefits, and these are not the people you want spending all day with your kids. And the good ones go to the better (say affluent if you must) school districts too, not because the pay is any higher there, which often it’s not, but because they’ll be working with families who value education and who will ensure that kids come to school with a lunch and with their homework done, and because they don’t have to worry about street gang activity going on inside their classrooms. Higher pay will elevate the level of college graduate who will want to compete for it. The concept is very simple, we just don’t have enough political courage in our state legislature to try it. I worry that TFA is a stopgap measure that will only enable legislators to drag their feet even worse.
@Name Withheld – I agree that raising the base pay of teachers would do a lot for our profession and the education system generally (though you could say I’m biased here!). For my own well-being, I try not to focus on how much more money I could be making in other professions, and focus on the wonderful aspects of being a teacher. Fortunately, there are many such aspects, and there are even times I marvel at the fact that I can get paid to do something as important and meaningful as teach.
I don’t think I agree about TFA being a stopgap measure, and I also think that TFA brings the kinds of passionate, talented people you want to see teaching.
Amen, Name Withheld, Amen. I love the kids I work with. It is difficult and stressful, but the kids are great even with all their challenges. I would leave in a hot minute if I could leave behind all the politics, paperwork and being treated like a useless piece of flesh instead of a professional.
I stay because I love my students, but it gets harder to sign that contract every year….
Why is there all the talk about loving the job and loving the students but the very next line is lamenting the low pay? So is it about the kids or the money? I could have a PhD in math, teach math at VPU&SI and still not be qualified to teach fractions to 6th graders. I blame that on the union influence and state requirements.
Again, as a professional, my argument to my boss for a raise is not because someone else in the next county, state, or country makes more money than I do.
FYI on pay…if the teacher contract is 200 days and the salary is $40,000. That is equivalent to a yearly rate of $52,000. Looks professional. Other “professionals” must work 260 days. And how about the “at-will employee” status I am under? You want that? How about working weekends, holidays, and overtime for free? You want that? There is more to professional treatment that just the pay.
Hi Al,
I don’t really want to steer the conversation away from TFA, but I will throw in a quick two cents. I believe @Name Withheld’s general point and a point in Ms. Gruber’s piece, with which I agree (and I suspect you might too), is that significantly raising teacher pay will help attract and retain the kinds of teachers we want. For better or for worse, that’s not even on the table. This is an issue independent of TFA coming to VA, though.
Al, I would like to be paid what I’m worth – I barely make the “average” and I’ve been working as a teacher for almost 20 years! With all the extra work that has been dumped on my as the years have gone by, I deserve more pay. I work weekends, I stay late, come in early, use MY OWN MONEY FOR SUPPLIES. Think about that Al. In what other “profession” do you have to supply your own pens, pencils, paper, items for experiments, special projects, etc? Not only do you have to supply them for yourself, you have to buy them for your students!
“I blame that on the union influence…”
Virginia doesn’t have a teachers’ “union.”
“Again, as a professional, my argument to my boss for a raise is not because someone else in the next county, state, or country makes more money than I do.”
Really, Al? You’ve never used the possibility of a better-paying position as a salary bargaining chip? Well, even f you haven’t, let me assure you it’s done in private business every single day.
“How about working weekends, holidays, and overtime for free? You want that?”
Uhh, Al, many teachers already do that.
Getting rid of the bad teachers would make good teachers in more demand thus increasing the pay for good teachers.
School supplies should be the responsibility of the student and/or parent, not the teacher.
Getting the federal government out of education and eliminating all the non education related requirements is the solution. Too much of the education dollar goes for meeting federal requirements that have nothing to do with education.
Big government is the problem, not the solution.
@John R, “School supplies should be the responsibility of the student and/or parent, not the teacher.” Maybe that’s a perfectly swell idea for the leafy, affluent suburb where you perhaps live, but according to data provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 40% (two in five) of the children in Virginia’s public schools can’t even afford LUNCH.[1]
It’s interesting to hear people say that non-education-related requirements should be eliminated. Then they want teachers to carry guns.
Also great idea to get rid of the “bad teachers.” Perhaps you’d like to help us get started on that by providing an infallible method of identifying them. While you’re at it, maybe an estimate of the percentage of teachers that you think are “bad” would help us calculate the potential impact of those measures. Make sure you explain how you arrived at your estimate.
Don’t forget that the Supreme Court of Virginia has declared education to be a fundamental right of all its citizens. Information about that can be found at a web site created by the Education Law Center.[2]
[1] http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/bystate/Rankings.aspx?state=VA&ind=3239
[2] http://www.educationjustice.org/states/virginia.html
John, there is something you need to read that I think will help you think about these issues more clearly.
http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/christmas-carol/1951-xmas-ignorance-want.html
#9 “How about working weekends, holidays, and overtime for free? You want that?”
Al, have you no idea what K-12 teachers actually do?? When do you think they prepare lesson plans and grade assignments? Over lunch??
“So is it about the kids or the money?” Al, can it be both, or is that too “nuanced” for you? Everyone gets to care about what they make. The $52,000 figure you quoted is completely bogus because it assumes that a teacher can make the same wage working a temp job over the summer, but in reality it’s hard to find a summer-only job that will even cover the cost of day care for one’s kids.
Maybe you could volunteer at your local elementary school to gain more perspective on what goes on there.
Al, also, how did you get that yearly pay figure? If I make 40,000 for 10 months, how would I make 52,000? I get paid 10 months of the year. The other 2, I don’t get a paycheck. People that whine and complain about how teachers make so much money, how they only work 7 hours a day, and how they have summers off do not know a teacher. By the way, that 7 hours a day is with NO break. Sometimes I don’t get to go to the bathroom until I get home. It is now almost 7 at night. I just got home.
lisa2…you deserve the average of what? Local, state, national? Statistics show that 1/2 are always below the average.
Allow me to explain the $52,000. I called it “equivalent to a yearly rate”.
Lets say lisa2 and I each make $1,000 per week. Our qualifications are almost identical. We each work 40 weeks and make $40,000. Then lisa2 goes on summer break and does not work. But I continue to work 12 more weeks and make $12,000 more for a total of $52,000. If lisa2 kept working she too would have made $52,000. She was on track to make the same as I did but the situation changed. Now, is it reasonable to pay lisa2 $52,000 when I worked 12 extra weeks?
lisa2…I agree that teachers should not spend their own $$ for supplies and that your paperwork has gotten out of control.
gdad…Virginia has the Virginia Education Association and your locality probably has a branch. The VEA is affiliated with the National Education Association, a teachers union.
I agree with John R…big government and the Dept of Education are the problems.
lisa2…if you desire a big raise, you can go to where the money is. Recruiting and competition for teachers is nationwide. We hate to loose good teachers, but its your decision.
no name…The estimate for “bad” teachers comes from math, the normal distribution curve. For every outstanding, walk on water teacher, there is a “bad” teacher. Therefore if 5% are superior, 5% are “bad”. The remaining 90% fall in between.
After reading this stuff, I may give my child’s teachers some cash in a Thank you card to show my appreciation.
My point is there is more to being a professional than the pay.
Al, it is sad that so many star teachers are leaving the city. Pay is a big reason. I do need to correct you about the teacher union. Virginia is not allowed to have a “union”. We are connected to NEA, but VEA, REA has no power at all. It is merely a teacher association. Let me repeat that – there is NO teacher union of any kind in Virginia.
Also, I do not have an opportunity to work 12 extra weeks. Summer school is very limited and getting more limited every year. And yes, I should make 52000 a year for 10 months. I went to college for 6 years to get my license, I work hard, I pay for classes I need to take to keep my license. Why shouldn’t I make a decent living?
Yeah that doggone “union influence” that has uppity people thinking they should be paid commensurate with their education and expertise is a real bummer. Why can’t people in this nation just “know their place” and learn to like it?
I think teaching is a vocation, not a job or career even. It requires much more than just an education and just a desire for a paycheck or tenure to do it effectively. There is extra effort, extra time, extra emotion, extra extensions of self that make it a unique and rewarding but wearing undertaking.
TFA is a very worthwhile program and I think it can benefit any place they come into, but not if they are simply used to supplant the teachers available but unwilling to work for the pay/benefits offered. No one should feel de-valued in their employment simply because they accept or refuse lower pay. A two-year commitment is barely touching the surface in a grade-level let alone in a school or community. I see TFA’s greatest potential in places that are under-served in teaching and I am not sure Virginia is that place.
Sandi the only problem with the word “vocation” is the connotation of the priesthood — and their poverty vows. Teaching is definitely a career, but the administrative hierarchy is very flat which means that upward mobility is fairly limited.
I take your point Name Withheld, I am not sure what word to use, but from my experience and the best teachers I have seen, it seems like more of a “calling” than a job or career per se, specifically for the reasons you mention. I consider a good, effective teacher to be gifted. I think that many are “drawn” to it as opposed to falling into it. And the ones who do fall into it or fall back on it, are often not the best at it. That is purely anecdotal and my opinion of course.
18 – I would LOVE to be able to take two months off in the summer and not suffer a drop in pay. Everyone would.
Just be happy, Lisa, you don’t work for a private school. Private school teachers get paid less than their public school counterparts, on average.
“In 2007-08, the average annual base salary of regular full-time public school teachers ($49,600) was higher than the average annual base salary of regular fulltime private school teachers ($36,300)…”
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009324/findings.asp
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences. (from the website)
Sandi…don’t take it personal. No one said anything about “uppity” no one said people should “know their place”. You just want to see that in the discussion.
You know that not all bachelor’s degrees are the same. And activity does not equate to results.
We can agree on some things but will probably never agree on other stuff. But it is good to have the discussion.
I will visit your web site from time to time.