Teachers welcome
TEACH FOR AMERICA is a high-minded program that recruits recent college graduates to take jobs in urban and rural classrooms where the local teaching talent pool - especially in math, science, and special education - is shallow. Until Boston can fill such hard-to-staff areas with traditional teachers or homegrown talent, Teach for America can be a vital supplement.
Boston School Superintendent Carol Johnson liked what she saw from Teach for America when she headed the Memphis schools. She convinced the Boston School Committee to bring 20 candidates here next fall. But the Boston Teachers Union fears the newcomers could take the jobs of laid-off union members.
Union President Richard Stutman calls it especially "outrageous" that some of the Teach for America arrivals are slated for classrooms in elementary education, history, English, and other subjects where current teachers face uncertain job futures. In blunt terms, the union has told Teach for America to stay out of town.
Boston has 213 openings for math, science, special education, and bilingual specialists. Even with just five weeks of summer training, high-achieving Teach for America candidates across the country have shown they can excel in these areas. It is in the best interest of the city's students that Teach for America be welcomed to Boston, and will remain so until every classroom in the city can be staffed by an experienced teacher with subject expertise.
Still, no one should be lulled into thinking that Teach for America represents the best long-term solution to the city's teacher recruitment problem. The program's retention rates are not impressive. A recent Harvard University study found fewer than 15 percent of the Teach for America squad on the job after four years. That could change with the worsening employment climate for young people. But the wayfarer culture of Teach for America still argues for the school department to limit its involvement to the hard-to-staff subjects.
The union believes that many of its members could be retrained for existing openings. It's a fine goal. But the best hope likely rests with the growth of carefully-crafted programs like Boston Teacher Residency, which has placed more than 300 teachers in hard-to-fill positions in Boston schools since 2004. Candidates, including mid-career professionals, spend much of the year in a city classroom under mentor teachers, while taking education classes on weekends and in the summer. Retention is strong, with 76 percent of the graduates from the first two classes still working after more than three years. And graduates of the program now make up 10 percent of the city's math and science teachers.
Teach for Boston would be more like it. 