The Differentiation Dilemma
Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham does us all a service by uncovering a May 20 memo from National Education Association Executive Director John Wilson to state affiliate officers that slams Teach for America recruits. Andy calls the memo “startling in its tendentiousness.” After debunking Wilson’s claims, he comes to the conclusion that “this little crusade is ideological, not substantive.”
Stephen Sawchuk of Teacher Beat picked up the ball and further debunks Wilson’s claims, then asks why NEA is so down on TFA.
The memo certainly is tendentious, but if Andy is actually startled by it, and if Stephen is actually unaware of NEA’s motives, then I haven’t been doing my job.
NEA is a labor union. Its power and influence derive entirely from its being a single organization purporting to speak with one voice for all of its members and, by extension, all of America’s teachers and, by extension, the entire American public education system. NEA chose its own monolithic image, and its opponents also see it as monolithic.
But NEA isn’t monolithic. No organization made up of more than 3 million individuals could possibly be. Not all of its members are teachers. They come from different social, religious, political and economic backgrounds. They are of different ages. They teach different subjects in different geographic areas and they have different needs and desires.
The union can only function as it does if those differences are subsumed. Ideally, the members accept that the organizational model provides the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Each exception or accommodation for individuals or small factions weakens the model a little bit.
Of course there are educational arguments to be made against any proposed reform you can name: merit pay, charters, tenure, alternative certification, et al. But it isn’t the educational arguments that really matter to the union; it’s that each reform requires the system to differentiate among the union’s members.
If you think I’m overstating this, watch an individual teacher ask for a pay raise and see who balks first – the superintendent or the local union president.
Merit pay (and tenure reform) means some teachers receive something that others do not, and the distinction is not made by the mathematically indisputable – years served and graduate credits received. Recruitment bonuses for math and science teachers leave out English and social studies teachers. Charters operate under different rules from traditional public schools, and the rules aren’t even the same from one charter to the next. TFA teachers don’t have the same certification process as traditional teacher recruits.
Most education observers don’t realize how much of a restraining factor this is. An excellent example is the California class size reduction program. The state provided billions in funding to reduce K-3 class sizes to a maximum of 20 students. It was the union’s dream come true – reduced workload for K-3 teachers, plus the requirement to hire tens of thousands of new teachers, virtually all of whom became union members.
Except it wasn’t all rosy. Competition for those K-3 slots became fierce. Teachers who never taught primary grades in their entire careers took those positions. Teachers who remained in intermediate grades complained loudly that they still had to operate with the same prep time despite having 60 percent more students than their K-3 colleagues.
Another example is NEA’s policy to support bonuses for nationally certified teachers. Yet there is substantial internal opposition to the policy, mainly because the money will never spread to most members. So even when the union gets what it wants, it must assuage the minority who didn’t get what it wanted.
NEA’s state and local affiliates have enough freedom to go their own way, but even if they were so inclined, they are under pressure to consider everyone else. The reasoning is: If Denver agrees to performance pay, there is nothing to stop other Colorado districts, or even other states, from pushing for it with their less willing unions. If an NEA state affiliate embraces the TFA system, it undermines opposition elsewhere. Better just to oppose it or ignore it.
Andy stumbles across the correct arithmetic without realizing it when he says of TFA, “…the 4,100 teachers they are preparing for this fall is a trivial number in relation to the overall teacher workforce…” Exactly. The 4,100 teachers are such a trivial number that there is no reason for the union to make a special distinction for them. The fortress NEA constructed to protect teachers only works if teachers remain inside the walls.
I make no judgment as to the relative merits of TFA recruits. But in the unlikely event that every study concluded that TFA recruits were educationally superior to their counterparts, NEA’s response would not be to bow to the inevitable. Its organizational imperative would be to oppose the program on whatever grounds it could generate.
June 5th, 2009 at 09:40
Once TFA recruits are employed they become part of the teacher union in the school district. It seems to me then that the NEA objection is based on principle rather than concern about membership or anything else.
The principle is simple. TFA undermines the profession by suggesting that there is no knowledge base for the teaching profession. Individuals with very little training in teaching can go into the most difficult classrooms for two years, and then go on to real and more lucrative careers outside of education.
Imagine an initiative to create “Doctors for America” wherein we recruited the best and brightest four year degree graduates, gave them five weeks of training in medicine, and then asked them to practice medicine in our inner cities for two years. After two years they could go on to law school or teacher education. Sounds absurd doesn’t it.
June 5th, 2009 at 14:18
Isn’t “Doctors for America” a straw man? How is TFA all that different from many states’ “alternate route to certification?” And that has turned out some pretty good teachers.
As to the arguement that many will leave teaching – isn’t this also another straw man? We’ve already got new teachers from all sorts of sources leaving teaching in droves. Some TFA teachers might discover they love teaching and decide to stay.
June 8th, 2009 at 08:39
Let’s get clear: Some studies have also found that some highly selected entrants — from routes such as Teach for America, who receive most of their university training while they teach in high-needs schools — do as well or better than other teachers who teach in the same schools, where those teachers are not highly selected or well-prepared themselves. Researchers have noted, however, that new TFA recruits are less effective when compared to fully prepared teachers, until they themselves gain experience and certification Furthermore, more than 80 percent of TFA recruits are gone from the classroom after their third year, just as they are becoming more effective.
Other studies have found that entrants from strong teacher education programs both stay in teaching significantly longer and achieve stronger student achievement gains that those of either alternative route entrants or weak traditional programs. Check out the teacher education effects data in Louisiana where graduates of NE Louisiana-Monroe outperform other recruits, including TFA, those from the New Teacher Project, and traditional graduates from the state’s “R1″ university – LSU. However, the researchers found (like others elsewhere) that there is more variation within different types of routes into teaching than between them. But preparation (and in the case of LA, certification in the content) matters for student achievement.
One fact is certain: Poorly prepared teachers (from whatever source) who exit the profession quickly leave their students to be taught by the next round of ill-trained novices who routinely replace them. This does not mean high quality alternative certification should not be part of a long-term strategy to recruit and retain effective teachers for high needs schools. Not at all.
It is time for some fresh thinking, including rethinking FTE and how we organize teacher leadership in schools so that less prepared TFA-types who may not stay very long in teaching, can work under the tutelage of experts who will. See my recent Ed Week commentary at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/05/20/32berry_ep.h28.html – and “end the battles over teaching.”