<p>"Teach for america does nothing to solve the problems facing inner city schools. "</p>
<p>Ok, lets solve the problem of inner city schools. Why-why-why did they start to reform all schools, including very successful ones?</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>And the lowest GRE scores for admissions in graduate programs. Of course, it is good to remember that most graduate programs in education are mediocre and serve mostly for career advancement. Even a prestigious school such as Columbia has not hesitated to transform one of its colleges into a glorified diploma mill and academic factory.</p>
<p>If inner schools and violence were our only problem …</p>
<p>Of course, we can both hate Gates’ attempts to solve our problems, and applaud the geniuses of Cupertino. One spends or wastes his money; the other exploits the cluelessness and bribing potential of our educators.</p>
<p>An iPad in every pot! Henry IV must be proud. And Hoover.</p>
<p><a href=“L.A. Unified takes back iPads as $1-billion plan hits hurdles”>L.A. Unified takes back iPads as $1-billion plan hits hurdles;
<p>Teachers of upper grade subjects generally need a degree in their content area with. In order to get that degree, they will have had the scores reported in their major area, whatever that is. They also must meet the GPA requirements for their major and for the necessary education classes (which is not a major at the upper grade level). Education majors are generally elementary or early childhood education level.</p>
<p>“If inner schools and violence were our only problem …”</p>
<p>Let’s take one problem at the time. Starting with violence. Then inner school performance. Then (and only then) reforming everyone else.</p>
<p>"An iPad in every pot!’</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it’s not a joke.</p>
<p>Houston ISD is going to start handing out laptops to students starting in January.</p>
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<p>I suspect that college professors were not satisfied by the “top” student’s performance either.</p>
<p>That may well be true, Limewine, but the Common Core isn’t going to change that, since most of the students at high-performing schools already follow academic programs that meet or exceed the CC minimums. </p>
<p>My father was a high school English teacher at one of the top schools in our state for many years. I’m not sure how many of the changes that have come down since he retired a couple of years ago are state and how many are federal mandates, but the upshot is that loads of teachers who already had records of success now have to spend copious amounts of time doing busywork like filling out detailed daily lesson plans. Teachers are not allowed to deviate from their submitted lesson plans, so if it turns out that the students were having a great discussion about Huck Finn and the teacher would like to let it go on for another day, they are now out of luck. As far as I can see, in places like that, regulation has been nothing but a net negative for education.</p>
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<p>Interestingly these minimally trained Teach for America tots do a better job than the trained experienced teachers. </p>
<p>"TFA teachers do better than both traditionally trained teachers and those from alternative programs, addressing one of the skeptics’ arguments against previous evidence of the program’s success. They outperformed experienced teachers, too (defined by this study as those with more than three years of experience) by the same margin they beat the overall competition. "</p>
<p>[Yes</a>, Teach for America Works | National Review Online](<a href=“http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/358291/yes-teach-america-works-patrick-brennan]Yes”>http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/358291/yes-teach-america-works-patrick-brennan)</p>
<p>How many TFA teachers do end up staying in classroom five years later? </p>
<p>We take young, eager, badly trained freshly minted undergrads and throw them in the classroom in underperforming school expecting miracles.</p>
<p>Sometimes it works. </p>
<p>I ask, how many of these young people thrown in the trenches, stay in the profession, long-term?</p>
<p>and the TFA teachers aren’t doing better in teaching ELA, which is just as important.</p>
<p>This has been my own experience with TFA graduates. </p>
<p>“TFA’s real mission is not to reform education through the classrooms,” Abigail tells Business Insider. “The mission is to reform education by fixing the structural problems through policies and regulations.” And the best way to do that, she says, is not by recruiting high performers who will stay teachers, but by recruiting those who will later move into careers where they’re able to take quicker steps toward fixing structural problems deeply embedded in the education system.</p>
<p>Takirra Winfield, a spokesperson for TFA, tells us that TFA believes in “cultivating long-time teachers and leaders inside and outside the field of education who can drive systemic change.”</p>
<p>“Though we ask for two years, many of our corps members choose to stay engaged in education,” says Winfield. “In fact, nearly two-thirds of our over 32,000 alumni work full-time in education today, and one-third of all alumni are teachers.”</p>
<p>Read more: [The</a> Real Mission Behind Teaching For America - Business Insider](<a href=“The Real Mission Behind Teaching for America”>The Real Mission Behind Teaching for America)</p>
<p>Ask any first year teacher, in any school, K-12 how they are doing. Most of them will say they are unbelievably stressed, and that this isn’t what they thought it would be. </p>
<p>In California, beyond the student teaching and then landing a job if they are lucky, they will have to complete BTSA requirements. </p>
<p>From the BTSA website: </p>
<p>Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) Induction</p>
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<p>There is a great deal of work that goes into this program, beyond requirements of daily classroom and administrative work </p>
<p>Most new teachers dread the program. It is usually filled with busywork and detracts from job at hand in most stressful years of learning how to be a teacher. </p>
<p>Most new teachers will tell you that the busy work is mind numbing and not helpful to what they are doing. </p>
<p>Contrast this with the TFA teachers and their training. </p>
<p>The teachers who I have seen that are most effective had good master teachers that helped them learn what works and what doesn’t. </p>
<p>Same would apply in TFA, I would venture to guess.</p>
<p>Would it not be a shame that untrained, inexperienced amateurs would perform better than the established and tenured? And you have to wonder about how well the TFAers are accepted and respected by their peers.</p>
<p>The TFA represents a small contribution to positive changes, but it cannot be a deep solution. Here are some appraisals:</p>
<p>[Research</a> | Teach For America](<a href=“http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-organization/research]Research”>http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-organization/research)</p>
<p>If throwing inexperienced and willing amateurs in the classroom works, then that is fantastic. </p>
<p>What about the ones that quit or are not as effective?</p>
<p>I guess my question boils down to the kids and their achievement. I am not talking about testing, but in comprehension and practical application of material learned. If you are a third or fourth grader and not getting certain types of instruction, particularly in math - it sets the stage for problems down the road. If you miss out on effectively understanding pre-algebra concepts, you are going to struggle later on. </p>
<p>I have seen ineffective teachers keep their jobs due to tenure system. One in the local high school, right now. There has been a substitute in that class since nearly beginning of school year. Teacher out on extended leave last year. Honest to goodness, a TFA teacher or a long term sub untrained in that discipline would do a better job than this fully trained and credentialed, but absent and ineffective teacher. </p>
<p>I do not think you can fix the K-12 educational system without truly taking stock of the tenure system in this country.</p>
<p>xiggi, some of those studies show that TFAers have an advantage in student test scores over comparable peers. But it generally seems to be around 0.07 standard deviations or less. Which is not very much.</p>