College loans: $10,000. LSAT Prep Class: $1,000. Gas guzzled on long drives to job interviews: $500. A program that offers two years of job security and an enriching experience: priceless.
According to some college students, that is. After a long summer of poor economic conditions and sky-high gas prices, students returned to school just in time for more bad news. The U.S. economy is on the rocks, the job market is looking bleaker and job offers made at the end of great summer internships are in question after the crash on Wall Street. Yet many students have found an appealing option that requires neither a stellar standardized test score nor a long-term relationship with monster.com — the national service program Teach for America.
TFA recruits college graduates and trains them to teach students for two years in school districts struggling under the weight of tough socioeconomic conditions.
Applications to the program are up 30 percent nationally this year, TFA Recruitment Director Nichole Curtis said. The increase in applications is directly related to an economic situation that makes TFA a more viable option for many college seniors, Curtis explained.
Applications have increased at the same rate among students at the University, George Mason and the University of Richmond, Curtis said. During the first of four application periods, 65 University students applied, 15 candidates more than in 2007-08, Curtis said. Even last year interest increased — the total number of applicants hit 191, approximately a 60-percent increase from applicants in 2006-07, Curtis said.
Kendra Nelsen, director of student services at University Career Services, said students have mentioned concern about the tough job market and have consequently looked more closely at work in the public sector, including the education field, government work and nonprofit work.
Finding qualified candidates to round out a competitive applicant pool means year-round recruitment efforts. Curtis said TFA works to target student leaders by asking current corps members and university faculty members for recommendations.
“We want to find the future leaders of our country and have them do Teach for America first,” Curtis said. “That being said, we need to find the best.”
And competition for TFA teaching positions is fierce. Nationally, the acceptance rate hovers around 20 percent, Curtis said, and is only slightly higher at the University, where 24 percent of applicants are extended job offers. TFA teachers accepted in 2008 boast an average GPA of 3.6, and 95 percent held a leadership position while in college, the TFA Web site reports.
Students may submit applications online in September, November, January or February and, if successful, complete a phone interview and a final interview, during which candidates teach a lesson plan for their target grade level and subject area and have one-on-one interviews with TFA recruiters. Corps members are notified of their acceptance soon after, told where they would be teaching and in which subject area they would specialize, and are given three weeks to mull over offers before committing to the program.
For fourth-year College student Christian West, the application process is just beginning. West, a political and social thought major, said he hopes to teach high school English or history in Washington D.C., and he is submitting his application for the Nov. 7 deadline. Though West initially thought of going to graduate school next year, he decided TFA offered an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
“The experience I would get working in an inner-city school with underprivileged students is a hands-on experience I couldn’t see myself getting in an academic environment,” West said.
A Certain Future?
While students accepted to the program know they will be teaching for the next two years, the TFA experience is somewhat defined by a degree of uncertainty, and teachers must be flexible, Curtis said.
Though potential teachers are told where they will be teaching and in what subject or grade level they will specialize before they sign on to the program, these conditions can change.
“Once you are hired by the school district, you are out of Teach for America’s hands,” Curtis said, explaining that the human element of working with different principals in different districts can shape teachers’ experiences. Because the role of teachers is at the discretion of school districts, TFA participants may be reassigned to different grade levels or subject areas — TFA offers no guarantee that the conditions teachers sign on to upon acceptance to the program will be the circumstances they face come fall.
“If it [these conditions] change so drastically that the teacher isn’t happy, TFA will step in and work with the school district,” Curtis said, noting that she has not personally seen a case in which a teacher was reassigned to a grade level or subject area wildly different from an initial assignment.
While only one or two students withdraw from the application process, some students decline offers, even at the end of the month-long interview period and waiting game. In fact, a lower yield on TFA job offers is characteristic of highly ranked colleges and universities, Curtis said. Forty-five University students were accepted to TFA last year, and 27 matriculated through the program, Curtis said.
“If you look at the Ivies and U.Va. and U.C. Berkeley, the matriculation rate isn’t nearly as high, because there are so many other options on the table [for students],” Curtis said. Nelsen echoed this sentiment, explaining that she has spoken with students who were extended job offers through TFA but simply decided to pursue other job options.
And some students who matriculate do not fulfill the two-year commitment, resulting in TFA’s 8-percent dropout rate, Curtis said.
University alumna Neela Pal, who graduated with a degree in English literature and foreign affairs in 2006, is one such student. Pal had followed TFA since her first year at the University, even working during her third year as a campus campaign manager. Yet once accepted to the program and assigned to teach middle-school English in Philadelphia, Pal shifted gears and decided against matriculating through the program.
“Despite my original excitement about the program, I had become increasingly skeptical of its methodology,” Pal stated in an e-mail. “I began to question how effectively TFA actually screened for not just qualified but competent teachers — i.e. individuals who actually had the dynamism and cultural sensitivity required for the job, and not the requisite high GPA and student leadership titles.”
Pal cited concerns about teacher preparedness and support from TFA with her decision to drop out of the program just before TFA’s summer training institute commenced.
“I remember receiving the prep materials in the mail, and realizing for the first time that I actually knew very little about the art and science of teaching,” Pal stated. “I wasn’t convinced that TFA’s training would make me sufficiently qualified to take on some of the nation’s toughest classrooms.”
Furthermore, Pal wondered how much support she would get from TFA once placed in a school district.
TFA’s “sink-or-swim approach works well for the highly-ambitious, go-getter types generally attracted to TFA, but I wasn’t willing to threaten my peace of mind and personal well-being,” Pal explained.
Varied Experiences
Like any program, TFA has its critics. Posts on collegeconfidential.com detail some TFA teachers’ experiences with unruly students and concerns about personal safety in classroom environments, while parents of TFA workers sometimes bemoan their high-achieving kids’ decision to work in school systems that they say failed to provide support.
One testimony published on multiple Web sites describes an applicant’s nightmare situation. In his article “How I Joined Teach for America — and Got Sued for $20 Million,” former D.C. corps member Joshua Kaplowitz, a graduate of the University’s Law School, describes a workplace where he was reassigned from fifth grade to second grade, faced a physical threat by a parent in the classroom and received no support from his principal.
Ultimately, Kaplowitz writes, a misunderstanding with a student resulted in charges, the loss of a job opportunity and a six-day trial. A parent allegedly saw Kaplowitz “shove” her child to another room — Kaplowitz writes that he merely “guided” the student — and sued the D.C. school district for $20 million, he wrote.
Kaplowitz, who was ultimately acquitted in a civil suit, did not return multiple requests for comment.
Curtis said such criticisms of the program, specifically concerning personal safety and reports that TFA teachers did not receive support from veteran teachers or administrators, are the exception, not the rule.
“I never felt unsafe in the school district that I taught in or in the surrounding area, nor did I teach with anyone ... who felt that way,” Curtis said of her own experience as a TFA kindergarten teacher in Phoenix, Ariz. “Overall, most people who are doing TFA aren’t having these problems. I think we hear about the situations that are one of a lot of different teachers, and only one is having a bad experience.”
While Pal cited concerns about teacher preparedness with her decision to drop out of the program, graduate Education student Michael Ripski said TFA offered consistent support and adequate training for his stint teaching science to seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students in New Orleans for three years before Hurricane Katrina hit.
“A lot of complaints about TFA [are] that teachers didn’t feel prepared, but I felt more than adequately prepared,” Ripski said. “I was helping other first-year teachers who didn’t go through TFA. I was helping them and teaching things I had learned during [summer training] because the training was so strong through TFA.”
In fact, Ripski said, TFA offered more support than the principal at his school, which experienced 30 percent teacher turnover each year.
“TFA talked to me three times during the year, came to check on my classroom,” Ripski said. “Three more times than my principal came into the classroom.”
While Ripski experienced the lack of support that gave Pal pause, he said his personal safety was never a worry.
“I never had any concerns about my safety,” Ripski said. “I more feared for my students’ safety, given the community in which they lived ... I don’t know of any other teacher personally who suffered any sort of injuries of any kind at school.”
While Kaplowitz’s work in Washington, D.C. prompted him to leave the field of education, Ripski’s experience has led him to pursue a career in higher education.
“I really enjoyed the day-to-day life of getting to know my kids, helping them academically and their curiosity about science,” Ripski said, noting that since Katrina hit, his students have continued to stay in touch with him, often crediting their decision to pursue college with his motivation and support.
Though TFA is a rewarding experience for many teachers, it is simply not a great fit for every employee, Curtis said.
“Some people slip through [the application process] that TFA wasn’t a fit for,” she said.
Curtis anticipates that application numbers will increase throughout the year.
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