Teach for America and Teacher Ed: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

Abstract

Teach for America (TFA) is a marvel at marketing, offering elite college students a win-win option: by becoming corps members, they can do good and do well at the same time. Teacher education (TE) programs are in a hopeless position in trying to compete with TFA for prospective students. They cannot provide students with the opportunity to do well, because they can offer none of the exclusiveness and cachet that comes from being accepted as a TFA corps member. TE has always offered students the chance to do good, but this prospect is less entrancing when they realize that TFA’s escape clause allows graduates to do good without major personal sacrifice. More than that, it promises to be a great career booster that will pay off handsomely in future income and prestige. In short, the competition between TFA and TE is a case of “heads they win, tails we lose.”

Alternative routes to teacher professional identity: Exploring the conflated sub-identities of Teach For America corps members

“…These options relieve the pressure to definitively identity as a teacher, and further allow them to play around with the idea of being a teacher without a sustained commitment to the profession (Nesje, Canrinus, & Strype, 2018). If they leave teaching, they have completed their two-year commitment to TFA (and society) and can move on to what they were initially trained to do: it is, in essence, a 'win-win' situation for the CMs (Labaree, 2010). Lori notes that this conflates professional identity, wherein CMs have "that identity, too, of what they're gonna do afterwards…for some people because they always had this goal that they're working towards like going into medical school or whatever, like they also have that identity, too.…”

“…The organization has long articulated a two-pronged approach for the program: remain a teacher, or move on to advocate for educational equity through other work (e.g., lawyer, doctor, policymaker; Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016;Scott, Trujillo, & Rivera, 2016). As Labaree (2010) rightly assessed, for CMs this presents a no-lose situation. For TFA it presents an answer to the challenge from critics that CMs do not stay in the teaching profession.…”

Outcomes of Community-Based Infant/ Toddler Teacher Preparation: Tiered Supports for Pre-service early Childhood Education Teachers in Early Head Start

“…Teacher educators are charged with preparing candidates for the complexity of teaching, balancing theory and classroom practice through authentic experiences in diverse classroom settings [34] The extant literature concurs that providing teacher candidates with experiences in diverse classrooms and communities better prepares them to serve diverse children and families when entering the field [3,36,37,49]. The needs of children and families must also be balanced with increasing expectations related to accountability [42].…”

“…The focus of the preparation they provide has expanded beyond placement and retention of teachers in schools [19]; to a goal of engagement in communities and impact through more authentic preparation practices in those communities throughout preparation [14]. Policies increasingly emphasize that teacher educators must rely upon extended field experiences to develop preservice teachers' understanding of educational theory and employing practices supported by evidence [34]; as well as supporting them through the challenges faced in complex, increasingly diverse classroom and community contexts [48]. One persistent limitation of traditional university-focused early childhood teacher education is a failure to provide these rich, timeintensive field experiences where candidates address children's educational needs within the context of family and community.…”

National Affiliation or Local Representation: When TFA Alumni Run for School Board

“…TFA is frequently charged with providing inexperienced and unprepared teachers to the most needy students (e.g Darling-Hammond, 1994;Labaree, 2010) and the impact of TFA teachers on student learning has been hotly debated (Heilig & Jez, 2010). While a thorough review of the research on the effectiveness of TFA teachers is outside the scope of this paper, findings are generally mixed with some positive results.…”