Dive Brief:
- Vox's Dana Goldstein looks at Teach for America, providing context for the organization's genesis, insight into its controversial training, and facts on how TFA's new leaders are responding to mounting criticism.
- Some ways TFA is acknowledging criticism: increasing corps diversity, offering a pre-service year of training for college juniors who apply to the program early, and creating incentives for corps members to teach for more than their two-year commitment.
- In the past, TFA has been criticized for its hasty five-week training, the short time teachers are required to remain in the classroom, and an overarching agenda that has been tied to a more corporate vision of education reform.
Dive Insight:
Near the end of her article, Goldstein, author of "The Teacher Wars," describes the ways in which TFA will look different, ending with the fact that beyond just logistical changes to the program, there are rhetorical shifts. "And recruits would hear, from day one, that poverty is a devastating influence on the lives of students, and that no 'superhero' teacher can solve the problem through data-driven instruction alone," writes Goldstein. This change is a huge one. The "No Excuses" education reform model is tightly associated with Teach for America.
Interestingly, response to Goldstein's article has become its own indicator of where one falls in the education debates. Teach for America advocates are hanging onto news that the corps has diversified. Skeptics, on the other hand, are more focused on the program's future training plans, watching to see if the new model will actually materialize beyond just a few test programs.
