Teach for America

After reading an op-ed piece in the NY Times today, I considered another field that is ripe for action research. The effectiveness of alternative teacher certification programs in training highly-qualified teachers. It would be a professional learning community made up of new teacher mentors and administrators at various campuses throughout a school district or even educational service center. The goal would be to look at teacher retention rates of alternatively certified teachers compared to new teachers with a degree in education. The focus would be on what challenges the two groups face through the first two years, and how well their expectations of the profession were met. The study would look at four metrics in a new teacher survey to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of each of the first two years. Those metrics would be efficacy, access to professional development, job satisfaction, and sense of support from colleagues and administrators. The results of the study would help frame new teacher mentor programs and facilitate the best practices to improve teacher retention among alternately certified teachers. Included below is my comment to the above article written for the NY Times.

The author's opinion is that Teach for America is doing the nation a disservice by producing short-term teachers that exploit the experience and pedigree of the program, but had no interest in making a career out of teaching.

--I definitely see your point, and I do believe it takes several years to master all of the duties that are required of today's teachers. However, you are making an over-generalization about T.F.A. and possibly all alternative certification programs. I am starting my 6th year of teaching and am finishing my master's in educational administration, but I came from the business world via the Texas Teaching Fellows alt. cert. program. I didn't see teaching as my long term goal, but education has become a passion of mine because of great mentors, a supportive school district, and access to the best professional development. I think that the burden of retaining the best candidates in the poorest schools is on the administrators of those schools and the school district. Entering into any kind of social service is only going to appeal to those who have altruistic leanings to begin with. Whether you see yourself as a lifelong public servant or just want something more out of your job than a paycheck, the choice to stay in education is going to be made over issues of buy-in to the campus and district vision and feelings of efficacy. Teach for America, and programs like it, grew out of necessity, namely a dramatic shortage of highly-qualified teachers in math, science, and special education that were willing to teach in underprivileged schools. These will always be difficult positions to fill because the qualifications for such a job are the same as careers that pay twice and three times as much. With shrinking school budgets, and the increasing diversity we see in our nation's schools, there is a need to train more teachers inexpensively for the increasing rigor and demand to prepare our students for 21st century jobs.