From the perspective of a professor at a selective liberal arts college I have heard nothing from our best students (some of whom gave up slots at the best law schools and graduate schools in the country to join TFA), of what can only be called a lunatic asylum in Houston's five week "boot camp." The term “boot camp” is used by TFA graduates who supposedly prepare new inductees to become teachers (in five weeks, mind you) for the hardest possible teaching environment: namely, the rural and urban “at risk” school systems. Given the feedback I have received (all the students have been successful in TFA by the by: not one is teacher, however). I no longer suggest TFA as a move for our students in general. Some of the reasons I outline below:

1). It is true that TFA can place students in the private sector— and that is tempting given our current national economic status, and not a bad thing either—but for me at least, there is something fundamentally unethical (immoral perhaps is a better term) about taking very good students and letting them "practice” [let’s be frank in five weeks that is all they are doing] on "at risk students” in “at risk school systems.” Although some critics of TFA frame the endeavor as race issue, even racist, I reject this line of argument/criticism for it is too simplistic and misses the larger point. The program darn well is and should be framed as a **class issue,** one that is underpinned by hubris and a somewhat sickening “social darwinistic” philosophy; to wit, it’s okay to take truly wonderful, but mostly privileged recent undergraduates and allow them to literally “practice” teaching on poor rural and urban students. Put otherwise and in the form of question, imagine the reverse: What if TFA students were placed first in fine, high achieving, suburban school systems? One could only imagine the parental and political chorus of disapproval (however, this is exactly what should be done because it is a better way to train teachers: see point two).

2). TFA has it backwards (theoretically and organizationally): the best teachers even, dare I say it, the best college professors [e.g., sabbaticals for example: or two year buy-outs] *with proven excellent teaching skills* (trust me, not all college professors are good teachers, either) should be used/recruited to teach “at risk students” for this is the absolutely the hardest kind of teaching—I have done it and I know this to be true. So what of TFA? Well on this view that TFA has it backwards, I think the program would be much sounder if it were a four year program: two years in the best schools, first, where students learn to teach and, most important, are mentored by the best teachers as well. In this way they will not be subjected to the endless TFA processes of “quantitative outcome assessment” and the “rote lesson planning” (one of the more absurd obsessions of the TFA training programs) all on the backs of the poor by the way, as is done at the so-called “Houston boot camp." After completion of this first two years in the finer school systems (even fine private schools and charter schools if necessary), then and only then, should TFA teachers be placed in at “risk school districts” to complete their four year commitment. They will be much better prepared as teachers and, perhaps more important more mature and better able to make a crucial judgment: do they want to be teachers?

3). TFA actively dissuades TFA grads from continued teaching; but instead, it does move to offer incentives for TFA graduates to move into academic administrative positions—heck, just what we need in education today, more administrators with limited teaching experience, making princely salaries too boot? I think not.

4). Why do so many students leave teaching after TFA after the two year stint is up? I suspect one reason is the above mentioned private sector contacts TFA has (and there a lot) and, two, the move to graduate school is easier (I happen to think this is justified)---but mainly the tenure system in the public school systems are, in general, at odds with the TFA program and its organizational structure. How so? Well, for the most part, public schools grant tenure in the fourth year: so if two years are spent engaging in "on the job training" on human beings (i.e., “at risk students”) that leaves only one more year before getting tenure. Most of the TFA graduates are not trained well enough to get tenure, hence, they are out at year three. In addition there is an economic disincentive for a public school to keep a TFA graduate---the TFA subsidy ends at year three.

5). In short, TFA is business with a business agenda: to wit, the pressing of a qusi-corporate model as the preeminent way to frame a national public school system. The debate on this issue remains open and in play because it is an important, legitimate, public policy debate we (as a nation) must have; however, ironically, TFA is a dreadful example of this potential model for our public schools. Why? Basically the TFA program cynically and instrumentally *uses* the poor and disadvantaged as nothing more than a lab experiment for well meaning young adults (some of the very, very, best undergraduates I might add that join the TFA) as they try and learn how to teach. In the end, unfortunately, this experiment is not successful for the objects of the TFA program –those “at risk” students it supposedly cares so much about—are left behind, as the TFA graduates move on to their long-term careers: mostly, outside of education. In the end, when the fundamental philosophy that underpins the TFA program is applied to TFA as an organization, its raison d'être is decimated by the premises on which it depends for its own existence: that is, an atypical approach to deliver a fine public education and teacher certification for the disadvantaged in the United States.

Instead of running what, in essence, is a private sector business trying to pass as a mediating public policy institution (an institution that works between the between private and public spheres), perhaps its CEO, Ms. Wendy Kopp should become a teacher, make 35K per year, and be subjected to a systematic tenure review or, better yet, take a public school teaching job and do so without tenure (ever). Clearly her Princeton University degree may serve her well as she tries to teach Aeschylus to students in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, NYC – I did. She can. Until she does, she has no legitimacy and that should (although I am afraid it does not) reflect less positively on TFA as organization that seeks to reform the way that all citizens receive public education in the United States.

[For the record: not in teachers union, in favor of alternate approaches to teacher certification, etc. I am a professor that will not recommend TFA to anymore of my students, however)

ADG