The Teach for America Helps the Education Reform - Case Study Example

Jingyi Chen Dr. Alesha Gayle English 0812 27/04 The Teach for America Helps the Education Reform An efficient and effective educational system is cited as one with the capacity to produce members of the society with the ability to develop solutions to existing problems. The effectiveness of such an educational system largely depends on economic growth of the society and the level of techonological development. As Bill Gates talked about in the movie Waiting for superman, nowadays the society needs highly skilled employees to achieve the set economic target. Therefore, education become really important to produce such employees (Waiting for superman). Teach For America (TFA) is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1989 by Wendy Kopp. The organization operates on the motto: “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education” and is driven by its mission: “To eliminate educational inequality by enlisting high-achieving recent college graduates and professionals to teach for two years in low-income communities throughout the United States.” (Savage 18). The Teach for America really helps with the education reform. It does this through a number of ways. First, it decreases the academic gap. Secondly, it forces tenures to improve their teaching performances. Lastly, it improves the academic performences of students by connecting them better and having young teachers with less generation gap with the students. In its first year of operation, TFA recruited and placed 500 teachers in various schools across the nation. The number has risen by over 50% over the decades. As suggested in its mission; the TFA recruits college graduates and professionals to become corps members to teach in schools wherever needed throughout the US for two consecutive years. For these corps members,they can major in any field and not necessarily in education (Savage 20). The TFA teachers are cheap. This forces the tenures to improve their teaching performance. One of the problems in the education reform is the tenure teachers. Some of them are not as responsible as in the movie. some can just sit in class and read newspaper because they know they will not lose their jobs. This definitely affects the academic performance of the students. Every school always has a bad teacher. The school cannot just fire the teacher. They implement the “ The Lemon Dance” plan where every year schools give one of their bad teachers to another school while they take a bad teacher from another school. This is usually in the hope that they can get a bad teacher that is “better ” than what they used to have. This may sound like a solution, but in fact it is not even close to a solution. This has no impact on the tenure teachers because they know that they are irreplaceable. But with Teach for America providing schools with their corps member, the tenures know that they need to improve the academic performance or else they will be replaced. TFA corps members are paid less than the most experienced teachers and the fee to train a corp member is less than training a profession teacher. This means that most schools will prefer to hire TFA corps members as compared to teachers who have been trained in other training institutions. Research indicates that most tenure teachers have actually lost their jobs to TFA corps members. The availability of the TFA corps members after every summer also makes it more likely that they will be hired (Savage 20).This has acted as a motivation to the tenure teachers. For fear of losing their jobs to an inexperienced and young person, they have had to work extra hard. This means putting in more effort to ensure that their students are performing well in all subjects. The pressure exerted on the teachers by the fear of losing their jobs is enough for them to put in more teaching hours and pay more attention to the weak students. At such moments, the teachers are bound to follow their designated syllabus as required by the school. Therefore, it would be right to conclude that the low cost of hiring a TFA corps member acts as a motivational factor to the tenure teachers to improve the schools’ performance. The fact that the corps member is a young graduand ensures that they will have the passion to work with the students. Since they are all fresh young college graudands, they connect better with the students than elder teachers. One would agree that students will relate better to a young teacher than they will to a fourty year old teacher. In addition, students will be more comfortable approaching a young teacher on their weaknesses or problems. Take the TFA teacher in the video Kady as an example. She is young graduate and she uses her knowledge of sports to interact with the sport team better. When there is a student whoa has failed many times in her class have she does not give up on them. The corps members of the TFA organization are young people who are eager to make a change in the educational sector. They have a lot of fresh ideas which would help to change the educational system for the better. This is because they have been through the educational system more recently and they are in a better position to pin point its weaknesses. If their ideas are taken seriously, the American educational system will improve with no time and less effort will be required for the same. When it comes to class matters, they are in a better position to understand their students and to help them overcome their academic weaknesses. They are able to address issues reasonably with the students without leaving the students out. The corps members are also trained to be committed to their responsibilities. This means that they will not abandon their weak students and every single of the corps members are really passionate about their work. The organization was founded in 1989. Over the years, it has recruited over 30,000 graduates to become corps members. The organization places more than 5000 corps across over 40 regions in the US. The TFA is not discriminatory in its enrollment as it takes graduates from many colleges in the US. This is proven by statistics which indicate that 10% of the corps are Hispanics, 13% are African American while 38% are white people. All the TFA corps members are aware of the organizations goals and mission (Savage 9). There are many recorded stories of students who have benefited from the teaching offered by the TFA corps members. Many say that their academic performance improved because the corps members paid more attention to them. In “The Real World of Teach for America” there is a teacher named Kady. She was sent to a really bad neighborhood public school with bad atendences. She tried to gain students respect and built the connection with the students by learning from them and helping them individually. She also used her knowledge of sports to become closer to the students. And in the end she was really successful. Her class did a good job and one girl finally graduated with her help. This just like in the video where Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin talked about how they learnt from each to use rap to teach students. Furthermore, with all the corps members being young recent college graduates, it gives them the opprotunity to bring fresh ideas into the education reform. Take Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin as an example. They were working for the TFA when they got the idea to start KIPP, which is really helping the reform (Savage 10). In “Waiting for the Superman”, the KIPP LA is a big success since the school result decreased the achievement gap between students from poor families and those from rich families. Before, there is a huge gap between them and people started to believe the gap needed to close. But the success of KIPP LA proves that students from poor families are not stupid. They just need the correct teaching method.This helps the education reform by proving that the achievement gap can be reduced. On the counterargument about the Teach For America, the corps members of TFA undergo 5 week training and are immediately placed in a school. This is not even a quarter of the time that other teachers undergo their training program before they start their teaching practice. In the 5 weeks, the corps members are mostly trained on commitment to the TFA mission. They do not acquire enough experience to stand in front of a class and pass on knowledge. The corps members are also denied the right of choosing the subjects they want to teach as they have to comply with the TFA guidelines. Although the TFA wants to make the best reforms for the American educational system, critics argue that the short duration training is not enough for the corps members. This has brought the debate as to whether or not the TFA is indeed making a positive change in the society or if it is making matters worse by giving students inexperienced teachers to guide them. Critics argue that all that the Teach for America is doing is sending inexperienced and unqualified teachers to classrooms. This is attributed to the five week training program that the institution offers. The critics forget that in the midst of the fresh graduates that enroll for the program, there are other qualified teachers who want to participate in the good course that the organization has set out to achieve. In response to the critics, the TFA board of governors is set to enroll a new training program that will run for more than five weeks (Savage 4). In defense of the organization, Wendy Kopp, the founder of the organization TFA, claims that it is more of a leadership development organization and not a teaching organization. To TFA, education is not merely based on academic achievement but also on ensuring that the students emerge as people ready to face life and solve the many problems they encounter. Society needs people like this. In conclusion, the organization, Teach for America, helps the education by giving pressure to the tenure teachers and forcing them to improve their teaching performances which is a big step in education reform. Moreover, with all the corps members being recent graduates, they are passionate. They really want to make changes to the society. This is besides the fact that they are quick learners and therefore come up with fresh ideas not only in the way they teach, but also to help the school reform. Coupled with their own desire to impact positively on the society, they are able to work towards achieving the goals set by the organization. Just like what Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin did with KIPP, they prove that what people think as impossible is possible and give hope to the education reform. In the midst of challenges, one can rightfully say that the Teach for America has indeed played a major role in improving the educational system in the US. Works Cited Savage, John. The Real World of Teach for America Kady Amundson - "The Mentor". New York: Learning Matters, 2010. Read More