Teach For America is NOT for Huntsville

By Terri Rector Michal Teach for America is a program that places college graduates in teaching positions in urban schools with high poverty rates. (Until recently their website stated the school had to have a poverty rate of 70% or higher but now it simply says high poverty.) Their website states that 90% of the students they reach are African American and Latino. These college graduates have a four year degree, but usually not in education. They sign a two year contract with TFA and then take a five week course that trains them to be a teacher. In 2010 the definition of a highly qualified teacher was changed to accommodate the TFA program. Now ALL, including those TFAs with an alternative certificate, are deemed Highly Qualified as long as they show they are working towards professional certification. However the alternative program is three years long and most TFAs leave after two so they really dont need to worry about their certification at all. These graduates receive the same income and benefits a first year teacher would receive. They also receive up to $11,100 ($5,550 each year of their contract) from TFA to go towards outstanding student loans or to further their education. They also receive loan forbearance. TFAs are not required to begin paying on student loans until their contract is upand TFA pays all interest incurred in the deferral process. Huntsville has signed a 4 year, $2 million contract with TFA. So far we have 58 TFA teachers in 12 schools. We must pay $5,000 per TFA employee per year (that does not include salary). Thats nearly $300,000 that we are spending this year alone. Students with a four year education degree cost nothing. When you go to the TFA website you will see a lot of talk about poverty not being a childs destiny. Theres a huge amount of feel good rhetoric that causes a person to feel like this program is truly helping our poor and urban communities. Upon closer examination of the program however you begin to see that their emphasis is on teachers..not poverty itself. They feel that ANY child can succeed given a great teacher. Think about itdoes a teacher alone carry so much influence and power that they can overcome the fact a child may be homelessthat they may have not eaten since lunch the day before.that they have no adult at home to help with homework because their parent(s) work multiple jobs? The most important question to ask yourself is HOW in the world is a young college graduate with no education degree and only an alternative certificate a BETTER teacher than someone who has completed a four year program that has ALREADY earned their professional certificate? Basically they are cutting their teeth on our most vulnerable children! We have to start injecting some common sense when hearing about these innovative reform programs. They are NOT innovativethey are manipulative. They manipulate our emotion with empty rhetoric like you will see on the TFA website.and they manipulate data. Yes,

when reading the reports that tout how well these TFA teachers perform you must keep in mind the old adage, numbers dont lie, but people do. What they DONT tell you is that in many cases the TFA teacher may have a corporation backing them. This corporation not only donates resources to this one teacher but they offer things like lunch time tutoring which will increase their students test scores. The TFA will then get credit for being a better teacher than they really are. They also like to cherry pick their data for these reports, like only offering up the very best STAR test scores to show how well these TFA teachers are doing, the scores for the rest of the TFA Corp seems to be lost. Here is the current breakdown of TFAs in the Huntsville School System. These numbers are based on what was reported at the Smartparty fundraiser for TFA endorsed by our own Mayor Battle. They raised over $15,000 for the TFA teachers while our other teachers beg for soap and paper on the HCS website. Wardynski, himself, donated over $1,000. It is unclear as to whether this money will go directly to the TFAs or if it simply went towards paying a TFA salary. Number of TFA: Butler Lee Jo Johnson Columbia Westlawn Chapman Davis Hills Ed White Williams McDonnell MLK Rolling Hills Dawson 8 2 6 0 9 3 3 0 3 1 4 4 9 Percentage: 16% 4% 13% 0% 15% N/A 10% 0% 7.5% 2% 19% 13% 40% 15.5% 10%

University Place 5 Overall: 57

Yes10% of the teachers in our poorest schools are TFAs that do not carry professional certification. You must ask yourself WHY? Why would we hire these TFAs that are without a professional certificate? I believe you will find the answer when you see the hire date of our

first TFA. The Nonstop Advocate states: TFA came to Alabama for the 2010-2011 school year with 30 corps members in six districts in Alabamas Black Belt. In November of 2011 Superintendent Wardynski signed the nearly $2 million contract with TFA. Yes, Wardynski, the Broad trained superintendent brought them here. The Broad Academy training is not too unlike the TFA trainingour superintendent had no expertise in the field of education, he took a very brief (6 session) course with an unaccredited company and all of a sudden he is superintendent material. (In order to get his professional certificate here in Alabama he had to take the Praxis, twice. He failed it the first time.) Part of the Broad concept taught is to implement programs such as TFA. Why? The picture becomes much clearer when you learn that Eli Broad, the founder of the Broad Academy, regularly donates to TFA. In 2011 alone he donated $25 MILLION and the founder of TFA, Wendy Kopp, sits on the board of the Broad Foundation. So in essence what we have is the good ole boy system within these corporations. In a report put out in 2010 from the Education and the Public Interest Center along with the Education Policy Research Unit, the TFA program was cited for its shortcomings. The evidence suggests that districts may benefit from using TFA personnel to fill teacher shortages when the available labor pool consists of temporary or substitute teachers or other novice alternatively and provisionally certified teachers likely to leave in a few years. Nevertheless, if educational leaders plan to use TFA teachers as a solution to the problem of shortages, they should be prepared for constant attrition and the associated costs of ongoing recruitment and training. A district whose primary goal is to improve achievement should explore and fund other educational reform that may have more promise such as universal preschool, mentoring programs pairing novice and expert teachers, elimination of tracking, and reduction in early grade class size. http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/PB-TeachAmerica-Heilig.pdf Superintendent Wardynski has stated that over 19,000 people applied for the 200 positions that were open this year. We do NOT have a teacher shortage. We must read between the lines when it comes to organizations such as TFA. Look past the rhetoric and look much deeper into the facts, evidence and reports. They have their bottom line at stake (Kopp makes about $375,000 a year) but we have the future of our children.