Lead editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News (page 14A):
Retaining Teachers
DISD should redouble efforts to support Teach for America recruits
In 2009, the Dallas Independent School District welcomed 80 Teach for America teachers to its campuses. These newly minted teachers were part of a competitive program that sends top college graduates to work in urban and rural public schools.
Two years later, only 45 teachers from that inaugural class remain in the district.
Where did the others go? DISD can’t say for sure.
Teach for America teachers make a two-year commitment. So, after fulfilling that obligation, they’re free to pursue other teaching opportunities, graduate school or entirely different careers.
Losing 43 percent of the first TFA class is somewhat troubling — particularly because that’s higher than the program’s national attrition rate in high-poverty schools. But that fact alone doesn’t mean that DISD and Teach for America aren’t a good fit.
One number doesn’t tell the whole story, and DISD would benefit from additional data as subsequent TFA classes complete their two-year stints. It would be useful for the district and Teach for America to know more about why these teachers are leaving and whether they are seeking out teaching jobs in other districts.
Still, the attrition rate raises important questions about what more DISD can do to support these young teachers — and encourage them to stay.
TFA is supplying the Dallas school district with teachers who were high achievers and leaders on their college campuses. And while they’re new to teaching, many are distinguishing themselves quickly. In 2010, DISD reported that the district’s TFA teachers were outperforming their peers in educating students in reading and math.
Even Teach for America’s critics, who often complain that TFA corps members don’t stay long enough to make a difference, would agree that these teachers will become even more effective with additional years of experience.
With all this in mind, DISD should refocus its efforts to ensure that TFA teachers who spend two years at a Dallas public school consider extending their stay. While this is still a relatively new program in DISD, the early numbers suggest that the district has not been a particularly welcoming place.
DISD should bolster its mentoring efforts and consider what other strategies could be employed to help TFA teachers succeed — and feel motivated to continue teaching.
There’s no doubt that some TFA corps members enter the program planning to teach only two years before embarking on another career. But Teach for America’s hope is that some will be inspired to continue in education.
Other districts with similar challenges have had more success retaining TFA corps members.
DISD should seize this opportunity to mentor and develop a unique group of teachers — instead of simply watching them walk out the door.
I work alongside several Teach for America people — to a person, great colleagues. Some of them faced the same barriers to entry I did — Dallas was unhappy with my recommendations, for example, and held out my hiring for a few weeks because they didn’t want to take the recommendation of the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee which deals with education policy, for whom I worked for a decade, but instead insisted I get a teacher or someone from a local education establishment to write the letter (I got a person who assigned substitutes in a local district to comment — we knew each other on the phone). Why they wouldn’t take the word of someone who knows me over someone in education, I don’t know — but there is a moral in that morass, somewhere.
Dallas ISD is generally not a teacher-friendly place these days. After two rounds of layoffs, we have all been informed clearly that we are all on the maybe-needs-firing line. TFA teachers can stay above that only partly — the poisonous atmosphere infects all faculty meetings and department tete-a-tetes.
There is a big difference between TFA teachers and others: TFA is tough (sometimes stupidly too tough), but they let every one of their people know that each one is valuable, and expected to do great things.
Dallas ISD tried to do that once. We had a kid give a great motivational speech at the fall welcome-back-teachers ball.
Then the district announced it had goofed, and a few hundred teachers would have to go. Then word got out that the mother of the kid who gave the speech — a teacher — was on the chopping block. Then word got out that the whole program the kid was in, was on the chopping block. Yeah, we believe in you, kid — we just don’t believe in education any more.
Is TFA the answer to Dallas’s woes? What’s your view? I’m still thinking about an appropriate, and informative response.
Also see this at the Dallas Morning News site:
Sidebar:
What is Teach for America?
Teach for America is an organization that works to recruit high-achieving college graduates for two-year teaching stints in urban and rural public schools. The hope is that many will continue to work in the field of education or an area that impacts student achievement.
The selection process is competitive — only 11 percent of this year’s 48,000 applicants were accepted.
The chart shows the number of Teach for America teachers in DISD, broken down by the school year they arrived. Many of those who started in 2009-10, the inaugural year in DISD, left after serving their two-year commitment.
School year TFA members received In DISD as of Sept. 26 2009-10 80 45 2010-11 107 102 2011-12 45 45 Total 232 192 SOURCES: Dallas ISD; Dallas Morning News research
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Ed, Ellie…
Please accept my apologies. I had totally forgotten about Senator Paul’s intestinal difficulties. This surely explains a great deal. If only he had started looking for a toilet sooner, like before the 1964 Civil Rights Law — which he originally said was an affront to the Constitution — was passed. There were lots more restrooms then, weren’t there? Of course, he could only use half of them.
But remember you two, there is also Papa Paul. (Of tinfoil hat fame, not of Vatican Two fame.) Papa Paul ought to be able to find the ideal toilet. He likes gold, doesn’t he? Isn’t there a televangelist conservative with a golden commode somewhere deep in the heart of Texas?
Instead of American Standard, we could have Gold Standard. Amazing how everything dovetails so beautifully on Planet Rand.
Jim
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Jim, at the time my Mom first started teaching, not everyone had a refrigerator, but that’s only because some families still had iceboxes. It was before Pat Nixon got her Respectable Republican Cloth Coat.
I was going to mention Rand Paul’s toilet trouble, but Ed beat me to it.
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Jim, I don’t think Rand Paul has the time to sign books — he’s been looking for a toilet for 20 years or more.
Not sure it would be safe to be around him while he’s signing a book, if he’s been without a toilet for so long.
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Hello there, Ellie!
You say, “many school districts would hire new teachers for a few years, and when their pay scale got a little higher, they’d be let go for a new batch at lower pay.”
Say, did those laid off teachers have refrigerators? Flush toilets? I’ll bet they did.
Who needs the Libertards with me around to ask the hard questions?
On a serious note, my Father in law was not laid off but was “strongly encouraged” to take early retirement for austerity’s sake. Evidently, Bob Taft had some rare coins to invest the taxpayers’ money in. That turned out beautifully, didn’t it, Ohio?
Now, Teavangelical Governor John Kasick is trying to take away what little pension and health benefits remain for retired teachers. My father in law is, thankfully, on the liver transplant list — he needs one desperately. He is too sick to work. Too weak to even go to church most Sundays or volunteer in the community as he was famous for when he was well.
But he not only has a refrigerator, a flush toilet and a wheelchair he bought with some money from the family’s savings…he also has…(are you sure you’re ready for this?)…a car. Sometimes, it even runs. Of course, he can’t drive. Too sick. But maybe he’s faking it. Maybe he’s just lazy and hoping to suckle a bit longer on the teat of big gub’mint.
I am giving him a copy of Atlas Farted for Christmas. I am sure it will inspire him to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
Since Ayn Rand is busy pushing up daisies of late, do you think I could convince Ron and Rand Paul to sign it for him? I mean, when they’re not too busy campaigning against the 1964 Civil Rights Act or wringing their hands over Bilderberg and Illuminati conspiracies?
Jim
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Back in the Dark Ages, when my Mom started teaching, many school districts would hire new teachers for a few years, and when their pay scale got a little higher, they’d be let go for a new batch at lower pay. Didn’t happen to her because her district was not known for doing it and she was extremely good. But, she used to tell me stories and say, “I’m glad it’s not like that anymore.” Guess she was wrong. Too bad.
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Disclosure: My ex-wife was/is a teacher.
I can’t express enough contempt for the Teach for America program. It’s despicable. You cannot replace trained, experienced, supported teachers with human kleenex. That, is what TFA is designed to do; eliminate long-term school employment contracts and turn teaching into a fast-food product dependent upon a never-ending supply of naive young people who are set up to be overworked for two years and disposed of.
Teachers are people. They deserve to have some sort of life other than teaching all day and then grading papers and lesson planning until they fall asleep late into the night. If the average teacher cannot reasonably expect to complete their job functions in 40-45 hours (laughable, I know) then the job is wrong NOT the teacher.
Some idiot is going to come back with “these are dedicated, trained, eager, volunteers, blah, blahbity, blah.” It’s bullshit. They are people who’ve done exactly what they’ve been told to do for sixteen years and now they’re being told to work themselves at a killing pace. And they do. When they fail they are told that they, as individuals, are the failure and not a system that discards half the human capital that is fed into it.
Any system that discards half the people fed into it with no viable alternative employment is abusive. I don’t have time to go into the garbage these programs foist upon the poor students who get TFA teachers. The program is poison.
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