District Administration - July 2010 - (Page 29)

Conversations Elisa Villanueva Beard Teaching For America Elisa Villanueva Beard is the chief operating officer for Teach For America, a non-profit organization which addresses teacher shortages by sending graduates from elite colleges, most of whom do not have a background in education, to teach in low-income rural and urban schools. The organization’s influence is expanding as a player in education and politics as the Obama administration calls for education reform, but TFA is not without controversy, as some have questioned its methods and effectiveness. Beard: In 1998, as a new college graduate, I was accepted to and joined Teach For America’s teacher corps. My group of 600 recent graduates set out to teach in rural and urban public schools in low-income communities across the country. I was placed in Phoenix. My experience teaching for two years affirmed what my life experiences had led me to believe so early on in my professional career, which was not only how big this problem of educational inequity really is, but how solvable it is as well. After fulfilling my two-year commitment to Teach For America, it was not a hard decision for me to stay and teach for an additional year. After my third year of teaching, Teach For America asked me to head up its Rio Grande Valley region in South Texas, which is where I grew up and now live. For four years, I served as the region’s executive director, and during that time, I worked to maximize our impact by doubling the number of new teachers we brought to the area. In 2005, Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach For America, asked me to head up www.DistrictAdministration.com Q: Can you describe how you came to the organization and became Chief Operating Officer of Teach for America? Ken Velasquez our regional operations team, which basically means leading and managing the executive directors who run all of our regions across the country. Teach For America’s 2010 incoming corps is the largest and most selective to date, with a record 46,000 applicants. How are you able to sort out the people who are truly committed to education? Beard: Our acceptance rate was at about 12 percent this year, and we attribute much of this growth to our belief that many young people believe educational inequity is really our country’s greatest civil rights issue and that they see Teach For America as a high-impact way to help tackle this pressing problem. We have a rigorous selection model that we’ve studied over the past 20 years, and we’ve really been able to sort out the characteristics such as leadership, achievement and perseverance, that we’re looking for as we think about who we’re accepting to the corps. Based on rigorous research showing that July/August 2010 29 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - July 2010

District Administration - July 2010
Contents
Advertiser Index
Letters
From the Editor
News Update
Sustainability Update
Technology Update
Curriculum Update
Administrator Profile
District Profile
The Golden State Loses Its Luster
Seeking Justice in San Francisco
The Push for Public Preschool
Gearing up for the New Assessment
Books
Products
Online Edge
Supervisor’s Insights
Crisis Response
Supervisor’s Opinion
Tech Disruptions
Professional Opinion
Professional Opinion

District Administration - July 2010