Helpful or Harmful:

1
Helpful or Harmful

• Teach for America at a Hartford Elementary School

2
Research Question

• How is a struggling Hartford elementary school
  affected by a strong reliance on Teach for
  America?

3
What is Teach for America?

• A national program that places the best and the
  brightest of recent college graduates as
  classroom teachers in high need urban and rural
  school districts
• Requires a two year commitment
• Corp members are from all academic majors
• Are certified while teaching and receive six
  weeks of summer training before teaching

4
What is Teach for America?

• Mission of eliminating educational inequality by
  enlisting our nations most promising future
  leaders in the effort (teachforamerica.org)
• Claims teachers are able to make more progress
  with students than beginning teachers and veteran
  traditionally certified teachers (Student Impact
  Study by Mathematica Policy Research 2004,
  teacherforamerica.org)
• Assumes that other than subject-matter knowledge
  and general intelligence, no serious preparation
  is needed to teach effectively (Darling-Hammond,
  1994)

5
Why is this important?

• As of 2008, there are approximately 6,200 corps
  members teaching in 29 communities nationwide.
• Since 1990 when it first began, over 20,000
  teachers have been part of the program
• Approximately 400,000 students are impacted
  annually, 3 million since TFA began
  (teachforamerica.org)

6
Previous Research

• Unprepared teachers are less effective in
  building higher order thinking skills
  (Darling-Hammond, 1994).
• Students of teachers with less than five years
  experience perform below the level of students
  whose teachers have 6-10 or 25 or more years of
  experience (Laczko-Kerr Berliner, 2002).
• Students of traditionally certified teachers do
  significantly better in subjects like math than
  students of alternatively certified teachers
  (Darling-Hammond, Berry, Thorenson, 2001).
• Students of traditionally certified teachers
  outperform students of alternatively certified
  teachers by an average of two months of learning
  (Laczko Berliner, 2002).

7
Methods

• Investigated how TFA has affected one school
  since TFA coming to Hartford in 2007-08.
• Interviewed 7 teachers at Hartford Elementary 3
  TFA, 3 Veteran, 1 Beginning traditionally
  certified.
• One veteran teacher is now a curriculum
  specialist.
• Found participants through snowball sampling.
• All participant names were kept confidential.
• Pseudonym

8
School Profile

• Experienced high staff turnover in 2007-08 school
  year where as much as 75 of staff left.
• Hired 4 new TFA teachers for a total of 6.
• TFA teachers make up almost half (42) of the new
  teachers with one in each grade 1-6.
• In second year of intervention, next year may be
  redesigned

9
Research FindingsStructural Instability

• High turnover has been a problem, yet the school
  hired TFA teachers who do not have plans to stay
  after their two year commitments.
• TFA turnover produces instability in the school.
  Staff members say stability is essential for a
  successful school.
• One TFA hired in the fall of 2008 had already
  quit by early November.
• Grant covers a large portion of the salaries of
  TFA staff. Budget issues were one reason TFA
  teachers were hired.

10
Research FindingsStructural Instability

• The schools that are successful are the schools
  that can keep their staff and they can
  continuously build the professional
  developmentThere is a lot to be said for
  stability. The downside to not having that is you
  have people who may or may not stay after two
  years, we never get to that point and that has
  really been our issue (Curriculum Specialist).

11
Research FindingsClassroom Instability

• TFA and veteran teachers say that first year is
  very challenging and difficult.
• Teachers must master pedagogy and classroom
  management, something teachers said new teachers
  struggle with.
• With little or training in classroom management,
  TFA teachers express feeling lost.
• Veteran teachers say that learning is difficult
  for students if classroom is not under control.

12
Research FindingsClassroom Instability

• I think that the teachers who really struggle I
  think the students do suffer a great deal because
  of that they lose out on their learning for
  part of the year or an entire year while that
  teacher improves enough to have decent control of
  their class, to understand the curriculum. You
  are going to get that with any first year teacher
  butif you are going through that cycle every
  couple of yearsthey are missing out on part of
  their education (Curriculum Specialist).

13
Research FindingsTeacher Instability

• Mission of TFA organization sending savior
  soldiers is demeaning to veteran teachers sends
  messages about their work and the
  deprofessionalization of teaching
• TFA teachers have doubts about TFA strategies and
  their effectiveness as teachers.

14
Research FindingsTeacher Instability

• I think that Teach for America as an organization
  does a lot of promising to the teachers and to
  the district about what their teachers can
  accomplish. It is demeaning to a lot of us as
  teachers who go through traditional programs. We
  are not uneducated individuals ourselves and so
  saying that is kind of putting us down and to
  assume that there is going to be a certain amount
  of growth from a Teach for America teacher that
  would not be equaled from a traditional teacher
  is really unfair that is an unfair promise to
  make (Curriculum Specialist)

15
Research FindingsTeacher Instability

• I felt like I was doing more harm than good last
  year. I have a lot of issues with Teach for
  America I love its mission, I love its
  philosophy of you know, that the achievement gap
  in education is our generations social justice
  issue. But I dont love their methods of
  attacking the problem. I dont think it is the
  best idea to put a bunch of idealistic college
  students in classrooms and say, good luck, make
  wonderful gains with them. (Teacher 1, TFA)

16
Conclusions

• Schools need to retain staff members in order to
  be successful, something that TFA staff members
  do not provide.
• Students with TFA teachers miss out on learning
  while teacher learns curriculum and classroom
  management.
• Mission and strategies of TFA are demeaning to
  traditionally certified teachers while TFA
  teachers are unsure they can live up to the
  promises of the organization.

17
References

• Darling-Hammond, L. (1994). Who will speak for
  the children? How Teach for America hurts
  urban schools and students. Phi Delta Kappan, 76,
  21-34.
• Darling-Hammond, L., Berry, B., Thorenson, A.
  (2001). Does teacher certification matter?
  Evaluating the evidence. Educational Evaluation
  and Policy Analysis, 23, 57-77.
• Laczko, I., Berliner, D.C. (2002). The
  effectiveness of Teach for America and other
  under-certified teachers on student academic
  achievement A case of harmful public policy.
  Education Policy Archives, 10(37).
• www.teachforamerica.org