Why We Partner with Teach for America: Changing the Conversation

Abstract

WE HAVE been invited to respond to Megan Hopkins' article because our schools partner with Teach for America (TFA) to prepare corps members in our graduate programs. Why? Because we maintain a deep commitment to preparing and placing effective, knowledgeable, and caring teachers in every classroom. Thus we seek out viable partners who can help in our efforts to counteract the impact on students of extreme teacher shortages and diminishing confidence in the positive outcomes of teacher education programs. We partner with TFA to provide comprehensive teacher preparation programs--not mere backdoor or emergency approaches. Our programs actively support new teachers. There is an urgent need for work of this kind, which raises the question of whether it is wise to wait for our teacher preparation institutions to arrive at a more ideal approach to recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers for our schools. It is likely that there is no size fits teacher preparation program. Thus, to our minds, many of the conversations that float around TFA are distractions. We have these conversations among ourselves in the programs that prepare teachers, while we collectively ignore the larger issue: few in the public schools seem to think our solutions suffice to solve the problem of providing high-quality teachers for the nation's classrooms. Richard Ingersoll points out that in 2003-04, 14% of teachers retired, 33% were over 50 years old, and some 540,000 new teachers were hired. (1) That year, Teach for America provided 1,500 of those new teachers--significantly less than 1%--and did not address at all the talent crisis in the existing corps of teachers. Such a program has a role to play, but clearly it cannot be the primary solution to the problem of providing high-quality teachers in the numbers we need. Given the magnitude of the challenge before us, we believe the most productive strategy for dealing with problems of teacher shortages and teacher quality is to focus on improving schools of education and identifying what needs to be done to ensure that all primary and secondary school children have the kind of teachers they deserve. We must also learn to choose our battles wisely. The words of Paul Sindelar and Michael Rosenberg resonate with us: Teacher education seems to be out of synch with the needs of public schools. With multiple paths to state licensure and almost immediate employment available in our public schools, it also runs the risk of creating world-class, highly rigorous teacher preparation that no one will want. (2) The best partnerships require that both partners learn from each other. They require an openness that allows for serious reflection and discussion of practice, as well as the commitment to improve. Our partnerships with TFA meet these criteria. Each of our programs was co-constructed with TFA to meet the needs of new teachers walking into some of our country's toughest schools and to ensure that they would receive the ongoing support they need, both as teachers and as our graduate students. We learn from our partnerships, and so our teacher education programs can evolve. We accept the spirit of Megan Hopkins' piece, which addresses the need to improve the practice of teacher preparation. However, we are changing the conversation that surrounds Teach for America, which can best be described as schismatic. When it comes to programs like TFA, it seems that one is either heretical or orthodox. It is time to be ecumenical. In any dialectic, there comes a time when synthesis is required in order to evolve. The most productive conversation to have today revolves around exploring how schools of education might improve programs for all students, including the students in Teach for America. We fully recognize that it is imperative to bring resources and fresh ideas to the enterprise of teacher preparation; research conducted by Linda Darling-Hammond and other critics of Teach for America has been instrumental in informing us how to create programs that improve upon existing practices. …