As I left school after my first day of teaching in August 2011, I said to myself, “When Teach For America talked about the achievement gap, I didn’t realize it was this bad.” My mind began racing through my students’ faces, but one stuck out from that blur of a day.
His name was Malik Billings – a student who only knows Jacksonville, Fla. as the decrepit four-block radius in which he lived and nothing more. He scored a 50 percent on a diagnostic test meant for students finishing eight grade. He was in my 10th grade geometry class.
This injustice shocked me. At GW, I had access to a first-class college education, while just a few miles away, kids in Southeast D.C. were falling further and further behind. I knew I wanted to find a way to help expand educational opportunity for the 16 million American children growing up in poverty. That’s why I joined Teach For America and became a teacher at Ed White High School.
Billings’ story is all too common among students growing up in low-income communities. When kids growing up in poverty enter kindergarten, they are already academically behind their wealthier peers. By fourth grade, they are three grade levels behind. Half won’t graduate from high school, and only one in 10 will graduate from college.
While Teach For America corps members only start by making a two-year commitment, the experience has a lasting impact. As members of our school community, my fellow corps members and I are working with other teachers, parents, administrators and community members toward the pursuit of excellence for our students. I can see the difference I am making in the lives of my students, and I know the transformational impact the program has had on me.
Billings is now one of my top performing students, and I will be there in six years when he graduates from college. He will forever change how I view the role education can have in a person’s life.
For too long, one’s zip code has defined his or her destiny. But with an all-hands-on-deck approach, educational inequity is a solvable problem.
Now that I know we can work to close the achievement gap, I simply can’t walk away from this job. As you think about the role you will play in the broader world upon graduation, I hope you will consider joining me in these efforts in ending education inequality in our country.
The final Teach For America application deadline is Friday, Feb. 10.
Chris Diaz, a 2009 Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and 2011 Graduate School of Education and Human Development graduate, is a secondary math teacher at Teach For America.
Yay, TFA is going to save all the poor children while drastically opening the eyes of yuppies. Things like this make me sick of TFA. Two years of teaching is just a stop gap measure that isn’t really going to make effective change in the system. TFA has existed for over two decades but the communities that it functions in are still dysfunctional. All that TFA seems to have done is created a bunch of self righteous yuppies who think that they’re the second coming of Christ.
Hi 4 realz,
Thanks for the comment. Like every large organization, TFA has many reputations. Given the thousands of corp members who have joined I can’t speak for all of them individually. No, I don’t believe or think I am the savior of students like Malik or any other of my 150 students. I don’t believe TFA is the end all be all answer to educational inequity. I can’t even relate to my students socio economic background and I don’t pretend to either. However, I do believe every child does deserve access to a high quality education and I think TFA has a role to play in that mission. We are constantly re-thinking our strategies to improve. I hope you can divert the energy you’ve shown in your comment to making some difference in our education system. Thanks for taking the time to read a very brief synopsis of what I know will be a lifetime job for me. TFA has me for 2 years. My students have me for life.
And will you be there at his arraignment if he fails out of school?
You alone are not going to fix the problem without also addressing the community and family issues that make success in school difficult.
It all starts with strong foundations Harry. As a result of the work that Chris and the other 33,000 TFA alumni across the nation (of which 97% are still involved in education for the record even if it is not as a classroom teacher) are doing students will have the tools to create their own futures.
You can try to blame poverty all you want for the crisis facing communities across the nation but the reality is that education is the key to ending poverty and I am proud to live in a country where people like Chris stand up every day alongside of the millions of veteran educators across the nation to make the American dream a possibility for every child.
My own decision to join was to support the mission of TFA and the efforts of other teachers across the nation. While education is certainly joined by family and community issues, it is also clearly a major component of equal opportunity.
A chance at equal education and better schooling is a chance at an equal and better future. Poverty plays a role, but education provides an opportune solution.
Until his “boyz” convince him that school isn’t cool. Or that he can make more money selling drugs, or at an off the books cash business. I am virtually certain that most of these students don’t live in stable, two parent homes and even if there is one parental figure, school is probably not seen as a priority by them.
There are serious things to overcome, no matter how good your intentions are. Good luck.
As a teacher in Baltimore City, I’ve seen students completely turn their lives around and I know it happens. I’m rather insulted that you believe students won’t change their priorities and start investing in their education and future instead of choosing another path. Sometimes it takes high school students longer than others, but I’ve seen it happen — regardless of the number of parents home or friends’ influences.
It is easy for outsiders to be critical, as all solutions have challenging aspects and will not be 100% effective at the beginning. However, Teach For America is a sweeping movement for change in the right direction. As part of the movement in Miami-Dade, I would be happy to offer empirical evidence of our corps members closing the achievement gap on a multitude of grade levels. Those little achievements lead to our schools being reclassified as successful, students passing nationwide AP tests, offering college success programs, earning scholarships, and literally changing the potential life pathways for hundreds of thousands of students. If a two-year commitment leads to two years of a child having a transformational change in their educational goals or abilities, then it’s worth it, period. Yes, many of us aren’t lifelong teachers, but research shows that we don’t have to be. A new study that is about to be released on the efficacy of TFA teachers compared to others will strengthen my previous statement (I will attach to this page once it is released).
Furthermore, our movement has lead to sweeping changes in educational systems across our country (look to New Orleans for an inspiring example of what types of changes are truly possible), and now with Teach For All, our movement is spreading to the rest of the world. There is a reason behind that spread and the rapid increase of communities requesting our presence. We are effective.
This conversation reminds me of a saying from the Holocaust and the Talmud that I was raised hearing quite often, “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” Teachers may not be the entire solution, but they are a huge part. Furthermore, as a Teach For America teacher that has been to a student’s arraignment, has been called after arrests, has attended funerals, and has become a real part of my community, some of the criticism on this page is completely unfounded.
Thank you Sasha! Tikun Olam.
It’s comments like these that make me wish the Hatchet had a “like” button.
Yeah, I guess you could call New Orleans being demolished by a hurricane “sweeping change” and then rebuilding from scratch.
There are also studies that show that high teacher turnover in schools leads to less effective schools. By leaving after two years, wouldn’t TFA feed into this problem?
Honestly, I don’t get why everyone is insisting on looking at TFA so negatively. The whole point is getting involved to try to address our current education problem, which is reinforcing and growing the cycle of poverty in our country. As for New Orleans, I was referring to the exponential increases in the city’s high school graduation rates, and the ranking of their education system on the National Scale. When I said they were an example of sweeping change, I was specifically referring to the fact that instead of adhering to the traditional pyramid-style education structure, which promotes complacency and failure in inner city schools, they have revolutionized and de-centralized their public education system. They now follow a charter-like model in their failing public schools, which gives principals the autonomy to act and make executive decisions to benefit student achievement. Anyone who has taught in public education knows how important institutional change is, in order to create a renewable lasting impact.
For all of those reasons New Orleans is an example of positive sweeping change. While the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina was a horrible impetus, Teach For America was able to play a huge role in that re-structuring, which will fuel student achievement for the foreseeable future. I could have also pointed to Detroit, Michigan, which has followed New Orleans’ example and is decentralizing their schools. They are hoping to mirror the complete turn around New Orleans has experienced with education in the past five years.
As for the second part of your question, yes high teacher turnover can lead to less effective schools. However because teaching is such a challenging job, the typical (non-TFA) first year teacher drop out rate is higher than that of a Teach For America teacher. I have also seen studies where the typical first 5 year drop out rate of normal teachers is higher than Teach For America, despite that fact that most don’t initially plan to stay in public education. Further more, the failing rural and inner city schools where Teach For America places its Corps Members are environments where teacher retention is historically low. Most people in a stable career prefer not to work in academic situations that are subject to state interventions and other stressors from working in socioeconomically disadvantaged environments. While Teach For America is often made out to appear like a huge crusading force, we are quite often called in to fill positions normal teachers will not. New Orleans after Katrina was a perfect example, when the majority of the teachers returning to the post-disaster environment were TFA Corps members, because no one else would come back to teach.
There are two sides to every coin, however in my time as a teacher I have seen more veteran and beginning teachers choose to leave our schools because of the difficulty, than Teach For America teachers who leave after two years. For example, last year over 2/3’s of my school’s staff left after the conclusion of the school year. Most went for legitimate reasons: better jobs, better pay, better schools, less classroom management problems, more experienced administrators, less stress, etc. This year a third of our staff is TFA. Not because we’re necessarily better, but because our administration can depend on us for two years. Which in our communities is often a longer commitment than the norm. Not to mention the lasting involvement the vast majority of Corps Members have in education, whether as principals, coaches, department heads, or advocates.
No problem. Sorry for the typos, I responded in a flurry because I am very passionate about this topic. Aspects of this conversation are difficult to have, but it is impossible to say that teach For America is not doing amazing things in classrooms around the country every day. Furthermore, there is a growing number of Corps Members that are products of TFA classrooms. To speak plainly, underprivileged children are entering our classrooms, graduating, getting into good schools, becoming competitive leaders, and then returning to serve similar communities (as a product of the 20 years we have spent in the classroom). Just to represent some of my peers, who I’m sure would be taken aback at our entire 5,000+ person Corps being referred to as “yuppies.”
Nothing like a shameless ad for TFA disguised as a Opinion piece
If not mistaken, I think TFA’s mission is to help close the achievement gap by sending teachers into troubled school districts. I always thought this was tough to swallow for a few reasons.
1. How is a newly graduated 20-something (and yes I know some corps members are older) supposed to affect change in the classroom with 5 weeks of summer training and occasional workshops better than the current staff at a school?
2. If TFA operates on the premise that these school districts need help and TFA can provide a step towards greater educationl excellence, what proof is there that its affects aren’t washed away after the child returns to same crappy system? Basically, unless TFA guarantees that a child will have one of its teachers throughout his/her educational expierence, what effect can actually hold longevity?
Also, I haven’t seen metrics claiming that there is indeed a benefit to putting uncertified underqualified teachers in the classroom.
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/316
2002 study showing TFA is harmful to classroom progress
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=effectiveness%20of%20tfa&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEQQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.educationminnesota.org%2F~%2Fmedia%2F3F49830E5AC941969C0038377E2B3A7A.ashx&ei=8iA0T9jAH-uE0QGSr93EAg&usg=AFQjCNEbq5lfhiqLVr5KIWecs7qdSKTfLA
Similar report from stanford
As someone who argued against the joining of TFA, I can attest to the fact that it is a passionately felt opinion piece and not a shameless advertisement at all. And Nice, being a hater will just perpetuate society’s problems.