Counterpoint: Why I oppose Teach for America

On June 24, the Star Tribune reported that Teach for America will expand into the metropolitan area this fall. Like Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, I am deeply disappointed by this news, for the sake of Minnesota's schoolchildren. They deserve better. As an educator who strongly believes that teaching is both art and science, I strenuously disagree with the notion that underprepared teachers can teach effectively in our state's most challenging schools.

Implicit in Teach for America's approach is the insidious assumption that anyone who knows a subject and is willing to be with kids can teach -- with little training. Teachers, it is believed, can learn on the job. While classroom experience is the most important component of teacher training, many educators find the structure of Teach for America's training ludicrous. What would lawyers or doctors think about proposals to train young and eager would-be professionals for a summer, give them a guaranteed job for two years, then teach them law or medicine as they practiced it?

And they need to stay more than two years. Research on teaching tells us that most teachers don't even reach a high level of effectiveness until they have gained three to five years of experience in the field.

Those who have subjected the practices of TFA to research and rigorous analysis have raised troubling questions concerning claims about student gains on standardized tests -- a dubious measure, to be sure, but one that TFA uses in its promotional material. In fact, recent large-scale studies on TFA not only refute TFA's claims but actually demonstrate that students of TFA teachers perform below the students of certified teachers.

Researchers have also raised questions about the effectiveness of TFA in building a durable and dedicated teaching corps for our nation's children. I concede that there are many corps members who have stayed in education: in teaching, administration and public policy. A few have even started their own schools. Yet, after experiences that are as frequently demoralizing and harrowing as they are inspiring, thousands of TFA corps members have also left teaching -- for good.

Cultural critics such as Cameron McCarthy have opposed Teach for America on other grounds. He laments a structure that encourages young people of privilege to tour the lives of children of poverty without making a lasting commitment to them. The story of TFA becomes a kind of master narrative, a story of heroic and altruistic young people that focuses much more squarely on them than it does on the lives of the children they are committed to serve. There is an elitist overtone to the structure of TFA, a belief that the best and the brightest can make a difference in the lives of children who are less fortunate, even when they are not professionally prepared to do so.

While it may be the case that teacher licensure requirements are somewhat bureaucratic, the alternative is worse. In the same way that we don't allow unlicensed people to practice medicine, regardless of their educational or practical backgrounds, no more should we allow unlicensed teachers to experiment on our children. Might the bureaucracy be streamlined? Of course. Should it be eliminated? No more than medical licensure should.

We need talented people to become teachers. Perhaps, too, we need alternative pathways to teacher certification. However, we need new teachers to understand the complexity of Minnesota classrooms and to enter those classrooms with the confidence, competence and commitment to stay there long enough to make a difference in the lives of children.

Deborah Appleman is the Hollis L. Caswell professor of educational studies at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.