Well-Schooled

Twenty years ago, when corporate America was knocking on the doors of Ivy League schools, 1989 Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp signed on with Morgan Stanley. But not for long. Teaching was her passion, not finance, but instead of getting the traditional education degree and certification, she decided to start her own organization.

Today, Teach for America (TFA), originally the topic of Kopp’s senior thesis, has become a $180 million project that has already made positive strides to improve the quality of public education, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Kopp says that TFA’s current 46,000 applicant pool “includes 12% of all Ivy League seniors.” In fact, 25 percent of black Ivy League seniors and 20 percent of Hispanic seniors have applied for the 2010 program.

“I’m told by some recent grads that this is one of the coolest things you can do after college,” noted Kopp.

The Teach for America program has shown that results-oriented instruction can reverse academic failure, and to prove it, high-profile TFA educators like Michelle Rhee have taken on Herculean tasks. As Chancellor of the D.C. public school system, Rhee heads up a controversial effort to turn the system around, and has achieved some success, particularly among high school students.

Those accepted into TFA’s ranks immediately start a two-year stint at “one of the lowest performing schools in the country.” A 2008 Urban Institute study showed that average high school students with TFA teachers did nearly three times better in core subject areas than they had with other more experienced teachers.

Freed of the layers of bureaucracy involved in teacher certification, it appears that the key to TFA success is primarily teachers’ reliance on “student-achievement based” objectives that are “measurable and rigorous.” Teachers are encouraged to develop specific goals for students like being able to “order fractions of different denominations,” rather than simply having the teacher present this material to the class.

Funding has recently grown by about 30% a year, thanks to private sector commitments, says Wendy Kopp, adding that the public sector has been more reluctant to increase support levels. The major obstacle to the program predictably comes from powerful teachers’ unions that view TFA as a threat to their existence.

Kopp notes that “it is clear what the union interests are,” and if “TFA corps members can do a better job in two years than many longtime veterans,” it removes the need for tenure. “And if they can do it without education school courses, why do we need those institutions?”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.