I recently wrote two review articles for the New York Review of Books about the teaching profession. The first was a review of Pasi Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons, about the exceptional school system of Finland, which owes much to the high professionalism of its teachers.
The second of the two articles was a review of Wendy Kopp's A Chance to Make History, and it focused on her organization, Teach for America.
I expressed my admiration for the young people who agree to teach for two years, with only five weeks of training. But I worried that TFA was now seen -- and promoting itself -- as the answer to the serious problems of American education. Even by naming her book A Chance to Make History, Wendy Kopp reinforced the idea that TFA was the very mechanism that American society could rely upon to lift up the children of poverty and close the achievement gaps between different racial and ethnic groups.
Wendy Kopp responded to my review of her book with a blog called "In Defense of Optimism." She wrote that:
... over the last twenty years we in the United States have discovered that we don't have to wait to fix poverty to dramatically improve educational outcomes for underprivileged students. In fact, there's strong evidence that one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty is to expand the mission of public schools in low-income communities and put enormous energy into providing children with the extra time and support they need to reach their potential.
Now I certainly agree with Kopp that schools are enormously important, and that it's vital to have talented educators working in them. We both want to see the day when every child has access to an excellent education. She believes that the teachers and the leaders produced by TFA have figured this out. I disagree. I think that the lesson of Finland and other high-performing nations is that we must improve the teaching profession, so that career educators receive the respect and working conditions they need to succeed, and we must also reduce poverty.
If it were true that we now know how to break the cycle of poverty, poverty would be declining. But poverty is growing in the United States; child poverty is more than 20 percent and rising. Among the world's advanced nations, we are number one in child poverty. It's facile to blame schools and teachers, but more realistic to recognize that poverty is a reflection of economic conditions. Schools cannot create jobs, provide homes for the homeless, or change the economy.
Kopp is right that TFA has become a training ground for leaders. Some of its alumni have moved into high-level positions, like Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the public schools of the District of Columbia, who now works closely with the nation's most conservative governors to strip teachers of due process rights and to promote charter schools, vouchers, and for-profit education corporations. Another TFA alum, John White, Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, advances the same hard-right agenda for Governor Bobby Jindal.
In my reviews, I contrasted the five-year preparation of teachers in Finland with the American hodge-podge approach to the recruitment and training of teachers. In the U.S., states offer many ways to become a teacher, and our non-system has produced low standards for entry and a revolving door, with 40-50 percent leaving in their first five years of teaching. Finnish teachers are highly respected and seldom leave their profession.
Kopp dismisses Finland as a model because less than 4 percent of its children are poor. But that's part of the story of their success and should not be waved aside as unimportant. Teacher professionalism is also part of Finnish success. In this country, our public school teachers are constantly criticized and disrespected, and few are recognized for their dedication and hard work despite budget cuts, growing class sizes, and a hostile media. So long as the attacks on teachers continue, so long as the politicians continue defunding the schools, and so long as our society continues to tolerate high levels of child poverty and intense racial segregation, we will continue to have low-performing students and "failing" schools.
We will have to learn to hold two ideas in our heads at the same time: We must both reduce poverty and improve our schools. We cannot fix our schools without strengthening the teaching profession and addressing the social conditions that shape their outcomes.
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Then, looking impartially at what America wrings out of the wash . . . some spots are ground in dirt . . . some spots are merely soiled . . . some spots are okay . . . some spots are as clean as you can possibly make them . . . and some spots are spotless.
Contraception and aborting fetuses work in ways those suffering diminished capacity could never imagine.
To compare Finland to the U.S. is not a good comparison. They have better longevity, and less expensive health care, and people of NW Europe developed wooden tools later than in Asia, Asia minor and the Med area. They had to be more hardy to survive, and their offspring had to have more survival traits than those living in milder climates. Not to say they are superior all around. My guess is they have superior traits where education impacts a population.
Appearances can be deceiving, especially those sorts of solutions that seem to be "no-brainers."
I simply can't imagine a good educational environment being one in which all the teachers are described as bad teachers and all the students, lazy. If that's what it looks like, then maybe we all need some new glasses?
Especially the ones who think there has never been a problem a tax cut for millionaires can't fix.
We do not hear that most students are successful and that most public schools are doing a good job, even in this current economic malaise or budget cuts, teacher layoffs and school closings. We hear a lot about the few cherry picked successes of schools that fit the new Reform Agenda, but we don't hear anythng about the majority of public schools that are doing very well.
We hear nothing in the media about the public school teachers that are highly efficacious, but we do hear daily about the rare terachers who are clearly bad, making it seem like all teachers are bad.
If we continue to focus on failure and ignore the majority of everything being done right, then we will only continue to head in that direction. We will further impose those failures on good performing schools and cause them to fail too.
If we focus on what public education is doing well and learn to apply those successes elsewhere, we will head in that direction. Unfortunately it is not political desirable both on the left and the right to do so and it doesn't sell newspapers.
Contrary to popular belief, a clear majority of TFA corps members – 61% - stay in the teaching profession beyond their two-year commitment. Many TFA alumni who do not stay in the classroom go onto pursue policy. Some would argue this to be a fault but I would argue that having passionate, education reform mined individuals in the policy and law fields will inevitably yield positive results for our nation's education system. "More founders and leaders of education organizations participate in Teach For America than in any other organization or program." In other words, those who leave the classroom are still having a positive impact on education reform.
I would also like to point out that 22% of corps members are the first in their family to attend college, 31% received Pell Grants while there and 28% are males, two percent more than the average for teachers. All of these point to TFA's ability to provide role models for our most in-need students. Having young role models to look-up will be essential in transforming the lives of our nation's most in-need students.
Beyond that, lets find a way to have the TFA and career teachers team-up. We are all on the same team, so lets start playing like it. http://solutions-for-schools.com/
It is true that our kids need role models but they also need teachers. For me the danger with TFA is that it will become policy instead of the stopgap it was intended to be. I think we are already seeing this. There is no way that can be good for education on the whole.
On to Michelle Rhee (I think we will respectfully disagree on her positive impact): she had excellent results in her classroom and then founded TNTP (teaches people who to best teach our nation's most in-need students) and now Student's First. Whether you agree with all of her positions (accountability, firing bad teachers, charter school expansion) or not, her voice is an important one in education reform. She brings new ideas to the table and stirs debate around a subject that needs to be talked about more.
I am always confused when people point to her lack of teaching experience, when they neglect to point out that Randi Weingarten - President of the AFT who has a huge voice in policy - only taught about a year more.
Hope the article helps: http://solutions-for-schools.com/
These are things eduction cannot fix in the short run unless it is part of a comprehensive community preservation plan. One such plan is the Harlem Childrens' Zone. While this model has raised a great deal of controversy, it appears to be working fairly well on the small scale on which it was implemented. More such experiments which are getting positive outcomes should be funded.
Without a complete change in certain behaviors neither poverty or education will improve. You can pay teachers the same as CEOs and it won't alter a thing if students don't want to be in school and are belligerent, defiant and disruptive. This is a family-deep problem well beyond a teacher's scope, and why intensive community improvement plans are an absolute requirement if we want a well educated population.
And with these really cheap computers and free e-books...
ASUS Eee Pad Memo Hands On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3MCzPHMLs
A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells (not sci-fi but an SF writer's perspective)
http://www.bartleby.com/86/
There Will Be School Tomorrow, by V. E. Thiessen
www.feedbooks.com/userbook/11643.pdf
All Day September by Roger Kuykendall
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2295/all-day-september
Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton
http://www.mysterious-strange-weird.com/index-sensational-mysteries.html
http://www.onread.com/book/Eight-Keys-to-Eden-6514/
Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper
http://librivox.org/omnilingual-by-h-beam-piper/
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual
Badge of Infamy by Lester del Rey
http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/book/badge-of-infamy-by-lester-del-rey
The Fourth R by George O. Smith
http://www.onread.com/book/The-Fourth-R-17950/
The Year When Stardust Fell by Raymond F. Jones
http://www.amazon.com/Year-When-Stardust-Fell/dp/1935774409
http://www.readcentral.com/book/Raymond-F-Jones/Read-The-Year-When-Stardust-Fell-Online
Pandemic by Bone, Jesse F.
http://www.digilibraries.com/ebook/112122/Pandemic/