‘i felt very fortunate in the educational opportunities I got,” says Matthew Lenaghan, the son of two college professors. Graduating from Yale, he wanted to do something “meaningful” — so he joined Teach for America and went to teach ninth-grade social studies in a poor Houston neighborhood.
He stayed for three years (TFA only requires a two-year commitment), then left for law school at NYU. Today, he’s the deputy director of Advocates for Children of New York, which helps ensure that at-risk kids get the education that they deserve.
Thinking back on his experience at TFA, he tells me, “It’s not necessarily that I saw a world I didn’t imagine” — one filled with poverty, bad schools, homelessness and violence. “But when you’re in it and working with people every day who are dealing with these problems,” he notes, “it’s different.”
Chad Rachman/N.Y.Post
Boosting reform in NYC: TFA alum Jeremy Kaplan working with GED students at The Door; he’s now founded the Broome St. Academy charter school.
To hear the teachers unions tell it, people like Lenaghan are part of the problem. Yes, TFAers are smart, motivated young people who want to effect serious social change. “But teaching as a profession and students require teachers who will make a long-term commitment,” claims Segun Eubanks, director of teacher quality at the National Education Association.
Eubanks tells me, “As a stop-gap measure, to improve dire situations, Teach for America has its place,” but when it comes to improving education systematically, Eubanks says, “Teach for America is not the answer.”
Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at the University of Texas, recently described TFA as “a glorified temp agency” because its alums leave the profession after only a few years. These TFA folks, they use the program to build their résumés and then run off to law school or an investment bank. No less an authority than Bill Ayers recently called them “education tourists”
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell begs to differ. Last week, he announced the program’s expansion into his state. Paul Shanks, his deputy press secretary, told me that the governor “has admired [TFA’s] innovative approach to the biggest challenges in K-12 education.” And now he is going to “bring the best and the brightest to Virginia.”
“Best and the brightest” is a fair description of the 5,800 admitted to the corps this year, with heavy representation from such schools as Harvard, UCLA, Berkeley, Wellesley, Northwestern, Georgetown and Penn.
After attending Teach for America’s summer institute, these graduates head right into the nation’s most impoverished classrooms, from the South Bronx to Appalachia.
Year after year, studies have shown TFAers to be among the most effective educators in the country. A recent study of teacher-training programs in Tennessee, for example, found Teach for America-Memphis and TFA-Nashville “tend to produce teachers with higher student achievement gains . . . than veteran teachers.” Studies in North Carolina and Louisiana showed similar results.
Yes, the unions and other defenders of the education establishment complain that TFA people just aren’t in it for the long haul. In fact, their real gripe is surely one they don’t dare air publicly — that they don’t want eager Ivy grads showing up what a poor job many union members do. Oh, and that they want to preserve the onerous-but-largely-useless education-school requirements that keep smart, energetic folks out of public-school classrooms.
Anyway, the numbers don’t bear out the union complaint. Of the group’s 28,000 alumni, about two-thirds are now working full-time in education (a third as teachers, a third as things like superintendents, principals, instructional coaches, etc). Before entering the corps, only 15 percent had considered a career in education.
As a pre-med at the University of Florida, Jeremy Kaplan never thought he’d go into teaching. But he decided to try TFA after college — and was assigned to teach eighth-grade earth science and math in The Bronx. “The school was falling apart, kids were swinging from the chandeliers, it was sweltering,” he recalls.
Looking back, Kaplan says now, “my placement at TFA enraged me.” Today, he runs the Broome Street Academy, a charter school for New York kids who’ve been in the child-welfare system.
He’s also in touch with many ex-TFAers who didn’t stay in education — but, he says, have remained “active and involved in conversations about education reform in their communities.” How could they not? “You see how horrible and pathetic this situation is for kids.”
Matthew Lenaghan agrees: “The state of education being what it is, if everyone who was an investment banker had taken a few years to teach in a needy school first, we'd be a lot better off.” Whatever you do for the rest of your life, he says, “you take that understanding with you.”
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