Education Week - March 12, 2014 - 6

Teach For America Targets Retention, Longer Preparation
Move signals shift
in group's direction
By Stephen Sawchuk
Teach For America has unveiled
plans to provide a year of upfront
training for a subset of its teacher
recruits and to promote the idea of
corps members staying in the classroom
beyond their two-year commitments.

Those pilot programs, outlined in
an address last week by Matthew
Kramer, TFA's co-chief executive officer,
mark what appears to be the biggest
shift in internal philosophy since
the teacher-training and -placement
organization's founding in 1990.
Currently, Teach For America re-
cruits go through a five-week "institute"
in which they learn basic
teaching methods, followed by two
years of on-the-job support as they
fulfill their teaching obligation.
The new pilots are estimated to cost
about $16 million over four years.
"We've come a long way. I think
there's a lot for us to be proud of," Mr.
Kramer said in the speech to about
1,000 alumni and supporters in
Nashville, Tenn. "At the same time,
there is much more to do," he said.
"We need to keep our minds open to
change and innovation as we continue
to find new and better ways to
do right by kids. ... Teaching beyond
two years cannot be a backup plan; it
has to be the main plan."
The pilots are the first major
stamp that Mr. Kramer and co-CEO
Elisa Villanueva Beard have put on
TFA since founder and former CEO
Wendy Kopp stepped down last year.
The organization recruits academically
strong college graduates
and other individuals and places
them in high-need public schools,
both traditional and charter. Despite
research showing that TFA teachers
tend to do about as well as other
novice teachers, its preparation efforts
remain controversial.
Yearlong Preparation
Critics of the program argue that
five weeks of training is insufficient
to prepare teachers for the realities
of the schools in which they work,
and that the short commitment contributes
to what are generally high
rates of teacher turnover in highpoverty
schools.
Research indicates that about 44
percent of TFA graduates remain in
their initial placements for a third
year; about 60 percent overall teach
for a third year. But within five
years, all but 15 percent have left
their original placements.
Mr. Kramer framed the pilot programs
as a natural part of the nearly
24-year-old organization's evolution,
rather than a response to criticism.
The first pilot will target 2,000
college juniors who applied for early
admission to TFA's 2015 corps. A subset
of that group will receive a year
of preparation in learning theory,
"cultural competency" work, and
practical, hands-on classroom experience.
Results from the pilot will be
analyzed after two years and could
affect future programming.
"Different paths into the classroom
are right for different people,
and we believe this approach will
meet the needs of many future corps
members," Mr. Kramer said.
As recently as 2012, TFA leaders
seemed ambivalent about the idea
of more upfront training. At that
time, Ms. Kopp cited mixed results
from a study of yearlong "residency"
programs as a reason for hesitancy.
It isn't yet clear whether the extra
training would be provided by local
colleges of education, in-house at TFA,
or through some other arrangement.
The second pilot, scheduled to
begin this summer, addresses
teacher retention. The organization
will offer support for alumni in their
third through fifth years of teaching.
About 12 of TFA's 48 regional areas
are crafting the retention strategies.
Even before the announcement, a
few regions had experimented with
a Teach Beyond Two campaign, encouraging
corps members to remain
in their schools or extending the
group's professional-development
supports to alumni.
The pilot program stops short of
requiring TFA teachers to commit to
the job for longer periods of time.
Teach For America has historically
resisted calls to formally extend the
two-year obligation, citing internal
data showing that a longer commitment
would lower the quality and
diversity of its applicant pool.
'More Than Just Support'
The announcement comes as TFA
begins to decentralize and allow for
more regional variation, a product
of a listening tour Mr. Kramer and
Ms. Villanueva Beard conducted last
year to gauge alumni and community
perceptions of the program.
They subsequently pledged to tailor
support to regions and to address
the variety of viewpoints held by
current and former corps members.
"There was a pervasive sense from
the folks we spoke to that TFA has
taken a side in education reform,
taken the side of teacher evaluation
and charters, and that their
views were more complicated," Mr.
Kramer said in an interview with
Education Week late last year. "We
need to create a space that is much
more welcoming of the diversity of
opinions."
In the new pilots, some observers
also detected a response to external
factors. Applications to TFA surged
following the economic downturn
in 2008, but have fallen off more recently;
a third of regions have fewer
corps members this year. And there
has been more resistance from professors
and student groups on the
college campuses where TFA does
most of its recruiting.
"The pushback has been somewhat
successful in having seniors take a
second look," said Heather Harding,
a former research director for TFA.
"I applaud them; I think it's per-
fectly matched with what they need
to do on the recruitment side," she
said of the training pilot. "You get
to know candidates in their junior
year, so they're going to know what
they're getting into and a flavor of
what they will be asked to do."
The new plans came as a "shock"
to Camika Royal, a former TFA program
director who has been critical
of what she views as the group's
resistance to revising some of its
policies.
"I never expected it, because I felt
like it would look like they were giving
in to criticism," she said.
Ms. Royal praised the retention ef-
forts, but said more changes may be
necessary for them to take root.
"It has to be more than just sup-
ports," said Ms. Royal, now an adjunct
professor of education at Arcadia
University in Glenside, Pa.
"Right now, TFA sort of promotes
leaving-there are deals with graduate
schools and employers, and
they feature alumni who are outside
of the classroom. They have to think
about how to promote staying."
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