The Ultimate in Tracking

Detroit is recognized nationally as a city that is nearing bottom--outlandishly high unemployment, rampant crime, and just awful public schools. Never having visited, I cant say more than that, but suffice it to say that Detroit's national reputation is nothing to brag about.

And now this, what I call in the title "The Ultimate in Tracking." Since I'm not sure I can improve on the utter idiocy encapsulated in the title, I'll just give you the link with the original title: Detroit schools offer class in how to work at Walmart.

Yes, you read that right. Four inner city public high schools in Detroit are collaborating with the retail giant to offer for-credit courses on "job-readiness training". Leaving aside the, ahem, questionable reputation Walmart enjoys nationally, the message of this kind of offering is blatantly offensive. Train inner city (almost entirely black and minority) kids to be cashiers and low-paid associates in Walmart stores as part of the school curriculum? When were maxims like 'aim high', 'follow your dreams' and 'anything's possible' replaced with the less inspiring 'take what you can get' and 'a paycheck's a paycheck' or, more damning, 'this is the best you can do'?

Also, we mustn't ignore the racialized undertones--perhaps overtones--of such a program. Do we see similar courses offered at suburban (read: white) schools? Of course not. Middle and upper class kids, first of all, don't want to work at Walmart, but more importantly, they and their parents are encouraged to imagine a better future. Detroit kids? They're being told that this is what's available, go to it. It's abominable, really.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for job training and vocational education (I know that's a dirty word now--career preparation? what's the proper term nowadays?) in schools. I think it serves an important purpose; while I was in high school, the courses I took in English, history and even drama helped prepare me for my hoped-for career as an educator or policy analyst. There's a difference, of course. My courses helped prepare me for a career while also broadening my horizons, teaching me valuable life-skills and alighting a love of learning. This is what school should be all about--not training for a menial, low-paying job that's unlikely to lead anywhere. If schools impart one thing to their students, it should be encouraging that love of learning. Walmart does the opposite.

I've bloviated about my feelings enough; take a look at the Freep article, this segment in particular. It's just...unbelievable is an understatement.

Sean Vann, principal at Douglass [one of the four participating schools], said 30 students at that school will get jobs at Walmart. He said the program will allow students an opportunity to earn money and to be exposed to people from different cultures - since all of the stores are in the suburbs.

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Thanks to @arotherham for the link (and check out his blog)

An Argument Against Teach For America

As a college senior with a liberal arts degree coming and difficult job prospects, I, like many others, was interested in Teach For America (TFA) and similar programs. I applied for and interviewed for the New York City Teaching Fellowship, but without any skills in math or science I was rejected from that program and, I don't mind admitting it, after a phone interview I was rejected from TFA as well. I hope to assure you that this post isn't revenge-based or personal in any way, I had nothing but pleasant interactions with the folks at TFA, and I have lots of friends who are planning on becoming Corps members in the fall. I wish them nothing but good luck.

I have three main arguments to make against Teach For America and imitator programs: the first is about the schools where corps members are placed and those students, the second is about teacher preparation, and the third is about effects on current teachers and schools. But first, I want to make a thematic, more broad-based argument about the fundamental beliefs espoused by TFA.

When you listen to Wendy Kopp and others in the braintrust of TFA talk about what they seek to accomplish, rarely is the word "education" mentioned. Their buzzword of choice is "leadership". Some have argued that TFA doesn't really believe in education. I wouldn't go that far, but their approach implies a fundamental disrespect for the teaching profession. The clear implication is that current teachers are inadequate, poorly-educated themselves or, to co-opt some of TFA's language, not truly leaders. As a result, TFA offers its corps members as an alternate to regularly-trained teachers.

But, the really important thing here, the really offensive bit about TFA, is that they only train corps members for about two months before thrusting them into a classroom--in a poor, high-need school, at that. Regular M.A.T. programs last at least one academic year, include practicums in classrooms and involve apprenticeships, at least in some programs. TFA only trains their corps members for a brief period, and as a result they aren't as well-prepared as they could be. Furthermore, think about the language that's used by TFA: the new teachers they employ are called "corps members" instead of teachers. Why?

Effects on Students

This follows smoothly into my first substantive argument: Teach For America corps members are poorly prepared to do the job they are assigned and, as a result, students suffer. This isn't to besmirch the fine young people who participate in TFA--in fact they are often very smart, capable, and motivated. But to effectively teach in a high-need school, experience is necessary. Talk to some older teachers, and the consensus is clear: years of experience are required before you become even an adequate educator. In the first years of being a classroom teacher, you're learning about classroom management, curriculum design, pedagogical methods, and navigating a school culture. For TFA teachers, add the element of adapting to a new city/culture and your life becomes so harried as to be nearly impossible.

TFA is designed in such a way as to make life difficult, not only for teachers but for students. Teaching is a demanding profession by its nature, and it is not for the faint of heart. Additionally, teaching is high pressure--no one is there to catch and correct your mistakes, so if you fail to teach your kids how to read, that's it. You may have permanently screwed up some kids lives. Experience as an assistant or apprentice teacher is essential to success as a first year solo teacher, but TFA has no patience for this kind of preparation.

The Best Way to Prepare for a Career in Education

If you are a college grad from a place like Tufts or, hell, even our pretentious neighbor to the south, Harvard, pursuing a career in education is admirable and, outside of Teach For America, relatively rare. 11% of Ivy League seniors applied to the program this year--over 35,000 applications were received for positions starting in Fall 2009 (source: USA Today). For everyone planning an entry into the field, teaching is something that must be learned. Even those with extensive tutoring or "leadership" experience will have an adjustment period when s/he first moves into a classroom and is left responsible for 20-35 students.

As a college senior in just this situation, I want to share my own perspective. As I said, I'm not yet a teacher and have limited direct experience in education, so take my ideas with a grain of salt, certainly. In any case: to be an effective teacher, especially without graduate school, young teachers need to learn from those around them. In the schools where TFA members are typically placed, there is a dearth of experienced teachers and, generally, a pretty lousy infrastructure. The opportunities to learn from colleagues are limited. If you, like me, want to be an effective teacher in your first year, the ideal situation is to work at a really successful school and learn how it works. Being at a suburban or independent urban school doesn't fit within the philanthropic ethos of our generation, but seeing and being part of something that works is hugely valuable for aspiring educators.

The idea that you (or I) could go into a school with few resources and inadequate funding, a place that chews teachers up and spits them up--to think that a 22-year-old kid could show up in September with no training and really thrive is ludicrous. Working in a school that works and eventually moving into higher-need schools makes more sense from every perspective. Experience is uncontroversially important in education, so the spitting in its face by TFA is particularly galling.

TFA's Effect on Teachers and Unions

TFA placed its first corps members in Boston in 2009, which led to this reaction from Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman: "We are not disturbed but furious that the department would lay off teachers with excellent credentials and bring in people with no experience and little training." He added, "They are sending a very bad message to teaching staff."

In Detroit, which also hosted corps members for the first time in 2009, teacher's union president Keith Johnson called them "educational mercenaries." Teachers, almost all better qualified than TFA corps members, are being laid off and then replaced by union-busting kids who have no intention of staying in the job for more than two years. It's wrong, it's unjust, and Stutman and Johnson have very legitimate grudges as expressed above (source: Boston Globe).


People have been making fun of TFA and Wendy Kopp, who founded the organization as part of her senior thesis, as far back as 1994. In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the phenomenal memoir written by Dave Eggers, he quotes a segment from the upstart Might Magazine, which Eggers co-founded, which pans Kopp and TFA pretty accurately and intelligently. It is a satirical profile of "Cindy Kahn," who is identified as the founder of "Streets For America."

"Streets For America, an idea born from Kahn's senior thesis at Harvard, is now a multibillion dollar nonprofit corporation. Placing recent college grads on the streets of America's most dangerous cities, the program's purpose is to reinvigorate the country's police force with fresh faces, open minds and good breeding. 'All the regular cops seemed to be so stupid and ugly,' says Kahn. 'It was time to bring some class to law enforcement. You can bet hardened criminals will sit up and take notice if the person who's cuffing them is well-dressed and, say, has a master's from Yale.'"

The idea that recent college grads with no experience can teach in high-need schools is just about as appalling as the thought that these same young people could up and become police officers. I'm proud to say I've come to the conclusion that I am not qualified or prepared to teach in an urban school yet, and I'm pursuing alternate opportunities next year.


I'll leave you with an interesting proposal from Ira David Socol , a noted critic of TFA. Not my advocacy, but something to think about:

"I say, over and over, that if TFA wants to prove itself, replace the faculties of the schools in Scarsdale, NY or Greenwich, CT, or at Groton and St. Bernard’s, with TFA corps members. And let those teachers – holding their current salaries – go to the TFA placements. If TFA improves the education in those wealthy places, it will have proved itself. If the teachers from those top schools have better impacts than TFA teachers do in the impoverished districts, we’ll know that better teacher training, better teacher pay, and redistributing resources is the way to go."

New Directions

Hi, faithful readers.

I want to make an announcement here: up until this point, this blog had been serving as a sort of repository for published pieces of mine or about me, without a lot of unique content. Moving forward, I'm changing this blog into one focused more directly on educational issues.

I want to focus on education, both domestic and international. I'll include links, opinion pieces, independent research that I conduct, and lots more. I hope you all enjoy, and stay tuned for a piece coming up.

For now, I'll include links to some of the most interesting education resources on the web and good articles I've come across recently.

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This is an ongoing debate between Debbie Meier and Diane Ravitch, both of whom are fantastic writers and speakers and who have great things to say about education reform. See their blog on Education Week.

New York Times' piece on the destruction of higher education in Haiti following the earthquake: "Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti"

Roundtable on Charters and Equality from Democracy Now.

In Schools We Trust?

Below is a reprint of the op-ed I co-wrote about education reform. It was published on Feb. 5 in the Tufts Daily. Link.

In schools we trust?
By Will Ehrenfeld and Shana Hurley

Published: Friday, February 5, 2010

Below the radar, using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are making radical changes to public education. They have established a grant called the "Race to the Top Fund" that offers competitive grants to "encourage and reward states that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform." The Fund is a $4.35 billion investment incentive for significant reforms in education policy. Among the improvements sought after, Obama and Duncan are planning on removing the state charter school caps and mandating the inclusion of students' test scores in teacher evaluations.

During last week's State of the Union Address to Congress, Obama heightened his pitch for education reform and reinforced his commitment to fundamentally changing the way schools function. "The idea here is simple," the President said. "Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform." The administration is proposing an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, such as changing school financing to reward schools based on academic progress rather than the number of students within the district.

Even before Congress had considered the changes to No Child Left Behind, the impacts of Obama's education plans are already experienced in Massachusetts. In January, lawmakers passed a bill that expands charter school access in Massachusetts. Governor Deval Patrick affirmed that the education bill is "the beginning of the end of the achievement gap." There was, however, disagreement among Democrat legislators who were unsatisfied by the authorization of changes in teacher contracts outside of collective bargaining, the lack of funding provisions in the bill and the weight given to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam as a factor in determining which schools are to be considered underperforming. Lawmakers were also frustrated by the timeline of the bill. The bill was passed quickly to accommodate Massachusetts's Race to the Top Fund application deadlines. Because of this, important stakeholders felt they were left out of the process.

Though the increased attention for education reform is certainly laudable, there are also matters worth considering. Rushing to accommodate the top-down pressure for policy change is not without risk. There is no consensus over what educational success really looks like. There is only a broad agreement over the need for reform. However, exactly in what form that change should manifest -- and how should that change be measured -- is extremely controversial.

Scholars of education, parents and school professionals consistently debate the goals of schooling in America. To assume that all well-educated students can also perform well on a standardized test is not a widely accepted assertion; however, the White House plans on using to supposition as high performance will now correlate to an increase in funding.

Although a benchmark of the new policy is to remove the charter school cap, it is unclear that the expansion of charter schools will increase student achievement even if defining achievement through test scores. Charter schools have existed in the United States for a mere 20 years and in the more than 3,400 charters currently operating around the country, the report card is mixed. Extensive research of charter schools has not found that they provide significantly better educational outcomes than traditional public schools. So why is the White House pushing to expand charter schools? What about the needs of traditional schools?

Reforming public education is a project that has been taken on by nearly every president and Congress in recent history. From desegregation in the 1950s and '60s to No Child Left Behind up to the present Race to the Top contest, many approaches have been proposed, some have been implemented, and yet there is still a fervent desire for change. While no consensus exists on the path forward for public education reform, now is one of the most exciting moments in the history of American education. With a wide array of innovation occurring, options are expansive and few are without controversy.

The Tufts Democrats will host the fifth annual Issues of the Future Symposium: Education Reform on Saturday, Feb. 6 at 12 p.m. in the Alumnae Lounge. Deborah Meier, the founder of multiple schools, the award-winning author and the recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Grant, will provide the keynote speech, followed by two panels featuring leaders of public education in Boston and nationally.

The first panel, examining different educational models and best practices in public schooling, will feature three education professionals with fantastic, varied experience and backgrounds. Among these speakers are Kevin Brill, Larry Myatt and Alan Safran. Brill is the current Associate Head of School at Fenway High School, an innovative public school located across the street from Fenway Park. He has experience teaching in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and will be presenting with Myatt, the founder of Fenway High School. Myatt co-founded Boston's Center for Collaborative Education and serves as a Convener for The Forum for Education and Democracy. Safran, Executive Director of Media and Technology Charter High (MATCH) Charter Public High School in Boston. MATCH is nationally known as a leader in no-excuses schooling, with rigid discipline and extensive one-on-one and small-group tutoring helping them to achieve exceptionally high MCAS scores and plaudits from politicians and educators alike. Each of these men will provide their unique perspectives on education reform through a discussion of what works and what doesn't as well as the way forward for reform.

The second panel will consider some of the challenges, political and practical, of school reform. It will feature Josh Biber, Teach for America (TFA) Boston's Executive Director and Richard Stutman, President of the Boston Teachers Union. The two have fought publicly over contract issues and TFA's expansion into the Boston area, but share a common desire to improve public education. Joining them will be Dr. Tony Pierantozzi, Superintendent of Somerville Public Schools, who will provide insight about the diverse community in our backyard. With only one charter school at present, Somerville provides an interesting case study on which to consider the opportunities and challenges posed by the introduction of new school models into a community. Finally, Tufts' very own faculty member, Professor of Education Steve Cohen, will fill out this panel as a moderator, contributing his wealth of experience and knowledge to what we know will be a very lively discussion.

To consider these issues and others related to school reform, the Tufts Democrats are inviting the community to the Issues of the Future Symposium.