I was surprised to recently come across this item from TFA, Inc’s web site:
Eligibility Requirements
- Candidates must meet all of Teach For America’s minimum application requirements.
2.50 Minimum Cumulative GPA
You must have a cumulative undergraduate grade point average (GPA) of 2.50 on a 4.00 scale (as measured by the institution awarding your degree) at the time we receive your application, as well as at the time of graduation. The GPA requirement is mandated by the school districts and credentialing programs with which we work. Graduate school GPAs should not be used or averaged in with undergraduate GPAs. If you are accepted into Teach For America and your final GPA falls below a 2.50, you will forego your position with Teach For America. Applicants must also pass any coursework indicated on their transcript as “in progress” at the time of their interview.
That’s a C average.
Yet, here in Seattle, our school board recently approved a contract with TFA, Inc. to bring these young college grads to town to compete with fully credentialed teachers for limited jobs, under the hyperbolic claims that TFA recruits are our nation’s “best and brightest” and they are singularly capable of “closing the achievement gap.”
These are ridiculous claims anyway. Who’s to say who are our “best” young adults? Who’s to say that the “brightest” can only be found in Ivy League schools? (Actually not all TFA-ers go to such schools.) There are plenty of bright kids who can’t afford an Ivy League education.
Teach for America, Inc. celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. One might ask, if TFA recruits are so good at “closing the achievement gap,” then why, after 20 years of their efforts, does this gap still exist?
Could it be that addressing the disparity in academic achievement between poor and more affluent kids requires something more than just youthful enthusiasm and hubris? And more than a mere two-year commitment to our nation’s most struggling schoolkids?
Maybe TFA, Inc. founder Wendy Kopp will address some of these issues at her talk tonight at MOHAI.
— Sue p.
Seattle Education 
I thought this section of TFA’s website may help to clarify the GPA. You can click on any placement region–> impact and scroll down to see the corps members for that area and what their average GPA and SAT scores are.
http://www.teachforamerica.org/about-us/regions/los-angeles/
Morgan,
Again, for me, it doesn’t mater what a TFA recruit’s GPA was or SAT score. What matters is the subject that they studied in school. Did they major in education or child development for example. Did the recruit do student teaching for a year in a public school first? Are they ready to stick it out for the long haul? And by that I mean more than a couple of years.
I had an excellent GPA in grad school but that didn’t mean that I could grab a scalpel and jump into surgery.
When I hear the arguments of TFA recruits what I hear is a lack of understanding of what goes on in the classroom, a lack of experience in handling a room full of 30 students or so with varying degrees of abilities and the naivete of youth.
One other thing, Wendy Kopp has more than enough money, she accrued about $100M last year in Federal and private money, to market her brand. Therefore, there is no need to come to this blog and try and sell your wares.
We’re not interested.
Dora
I will clarify some points here, but I’ll begin by saying I have a friend who began his ongoing and dedicated teaching career in TFA, Inc, so I know that perfectly good people can be drawn to it, and it can be the start of a long teaching career.
But most TFA-ers do not stay in the profession past the required 2 years. So their short-term stint in our nation’s most struggling schools simply adds more churn to these already high-churn schools.
To Missy and others: if you Google “best and brightest” and “Teach for America” you will find these two phrases paired repeatedly by everyone from George Will to Seattle’s own School Board Director Harium Martin-Morris.
This is not snark from me; it is a claim used by TFA backers to justify education policy here in Seattle that will affect our school children and who is allowed to teach them. It is also being used politically to insult professionally trained teachers, whether you realize this or not.
This was one of the claims trotted out by the school board and TFA supporters for why they felt Seattle should open its already crowded teaching job market to a group of new grads with only 5 weeks of training, and for an extra cost of $4,000 per recruit in addition to a full teachers pay — at a time when our school district is in dire financial straits and our kids’ counselors are being let go.
We the school community were told that there was somehow something special about TFA. A number of past and present TFA alums told our school board that they were especially passionate about and good at “closing the achievement gap.” As if Seattle’s current and experienced teachers somehow were not.
For TFA, Inc. and its cheerleaders to make grandiose claims about who its recruits are and what they are capable of accomplishing is unrealistic or just plain puffery. The low GPA threshhold for admission to TFA seems to undermine that silly claim, although it does allow TFA, Inc. boosters to boast that large numbers of college grads apply to the program (with a low bar, that many more can apply), creating the illusion that only very few — the creme de la creme — get in, and that there is a high demand for TFA jobs.
I suspect this is all part of TFA’s marketing strategy.
I would argue that in this dismal economy with few job prospects, of course a new college grad with a C average would jump on the chance to get a full teacher’s salary after only 5 weeks of training and then a job at Goldman Sachs two years down the road. When or if the economy ever improves, I predict that the interest in TFA will go down.
Kimberly — How do you know that I am not “making a difference”? What do you know of my efforts in advocating for our public schools, kids and teachers, nationally, and working within my children’s own schools, locally? You don’t. So don’t assume.
TFA ALUM — Do you think the national efforts to privatize public education is merely a “conspiracy theory” invented by me and Dora? You take issue with me for referring to TFA by its full name TFA, Inc., as if it was nothing more than a simple little do-gooder mom and pop operation, and then claim I haven’t done my research.
First of all, have you read anything about Race to the Top? It is all about expanding charters throughout the nation’s school districts and increasing private control of our schools. I wish it were only a conspiracy theory, but it isn’t: It is the official, national education policy of President Obama, Sec. Duncan and the Gates and Broad Foundations who write it.
TFA, Inc. is part of that that plan, whether you realize it or not.
It is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, funded by major political and corporate interests and works hand in hand with the charter school “movement” – no surprise there, the CEO of TFA (Wendy Kopp) is literally in bed with the CEO of KIPP (Richard Barth): They’re married.
TFAers fill charter schools; they are the employee stock of choice of the ed reformers who loathe paying full price for experienced teachers with opinions and rights.
If you TFAers who responded to me do not know all this, then you are the ones who are ignorant. There’s an author named Kipling you need to read and ponder, as well the history of the real civil rights movement, in which people risked and lost their lives for the cause. Those activists did not merely teach for two years in an inner city school full of poor black kids and then skip off to Goldman Sachs and expect to find their name in Wikipedia alongside Rosa Parks and MLK, Jr.
–Sue p.
Whoa! TFA is in the house! Y’all have been posting about TFA for months with very little feedback from the CMs (that’s corps members, to the uninitiated). Kopp comes to Seattle and they are suddenly all a-dither. The CMs may be lovely, kind-hearted, well-meaning, idealistic folks, BUT, if high-hopes, enthusiasm, energy, and perseverance were all that it would take to move the under-achievers and resistant learners to success, then, damn–some of my coleagues and I would be one heck of bloc of effective and top-notch teachers.
Teaching is my PROFESSION. I value the professional status of my job. I am looking for thoroughly trained, certified, qualified, and experienced–as in spent weeks or months of time in the past 2-3 years in our public schools kind of trained professionals to join me as a teacher. I loathe the idea that anyone can teach. Anyone may be able to assign work, run through a scripted program, review, and practice for the test, but there are not many CMs or even novice teachers who would imagine and know how to help a group of 140 6th graders ( special ed. to gifted) learn to understand and appreciate the meaning of and calculation of speed in a unit on forces and motion. That’s the kind of thing that professional teachers can do.
yes… funny how when Wendy comes to town, all the TFA supporters find time to comment on posts here…
But all the previous time TFA stories have been posted here, inlcuding the ones that refer to the REAL RESEARCH, such as that quoted by Demian above, we heard nothing….
As a marketing and PR consultant, this strategy is one straight out of the playbook…
Timing and presence/visibility is everything…
Just like all those TFA alums turning up for Board meetings, when MGJ was selling the scheme (that’s right, a scheme – as in a money-making, milking the public purse scam scheme) to SPS….
If you want to shill for TFA, find another website.
Dora
Sam (and other TFA defenders) – this post was obviously not meant to be a definitive critique of TFA. It was merely pointing out that it’s somewhat hypocritical of the TFA marketing claims about recruiting the “best and brightest”. If there are lots of other factors to being the “best and brightest” (which it sounds like we all agree there are), then how can TFA claim their candidates are any better. They can’t. It’s just marketing BS.
This blog has a number of entries on TFA, with a particular focus on how they’re inappropriate for Seattle. These entries also link to other research on TFA that offer more general critiques.
The real peer-reviewed research (not TFA’s promotional material or think tank studies) shows that TFA candidates are less effective than similarly experienced certified teachers and have higher turnover (refer to http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Heilig_TeachForAmerica.pdf). If TFA worked more like AmeriCorp where recruits supplement full time teachers, I could take them a lot more seriously. As is, TFA is not any kind of answer for America’s educational system.
It’s interesting to me how all of a sudden, as Wendy Kopp is in town, there is such an interest in what we are saying about TFA, Inc. And it is an incorporated “non-profit”.
We as parents do not want recruits with five weeks of training and no commitment to our community to come in and “teach” our children. We have three colleges of education in Seattle and are in no need of emergency recruits to fill open positions. In fact, there is a surplus of qualified teachers ready to step in to teach and commit themselves to our communities and neighborhoods for the long haul.
That’s more than can be said about TFA recruits.
I personally don’t care what the GPA is of your recruits. It doesn’t matter. Did they receive their degree in education or in some other field? Did they always want to be teachers or are they just biding their time until the economy gets better? Did they decide to join TFA. Inc. because their loans would be forgiven or because they love teaching and want to do it the rest of their lives?
Hmmm…let me guess.
And we haven’t even gotten to what money goes in and how much money is spent by TFA. There seems to be an inordinate amount of money that is poured into the organization but little is shown in terms of spending besides the 5 week training period and I suppose a lot of marketing. We in Seattle have to PAY for your recruits to be here, $4,000 per head, on top of their salaries, sight unseen. That is not worth it. Find another place to shill your wares.
There is a lot more to this organization than meets the eye and we intend on finding out all there is to know about it.
We did that with Goodloe-Johnson, with the MAP test and now with TFA.
I don’t think that I can put it more plainly than to say that our community does not want you here. Period, end of story.
Dora
TFA exists for the purpose of aiding in closing the achievement gap. One of the tenants of any civil rights movement, is that it is just that, a movement. In no way has TFA claimed to the only arbiter in this widening chasm of disparity between those born in wealthy neighborhoods and the rest of us. It is simply an organization, like many other, that exists to attempt to make a difference.
Schools like Princeton and Stanford do not have a minimum GPA requirement for a student to be admitted. Does that mean they are not selective? It is interesting that you would select such a minor piece of their admissions information to focus on. 18% of Harvard’s 2009 Senior class applied to TFA, as did 32% of Spellman’s graduating class.
While there is deferment of federal loans only (many students would receive this anyway as participation in graduate programs are compulsory in about 65% of the regions TFA is currently apart of), loan forgiveness is an option for all educators working in Title I schools for a period of five years and had nothing to do with TFA. The only monetary benefit of being a TFA corps member is the $6,000 a year “education award” which is given to participants of ANY AmeriCorps program (Playworks, City Years, etc).
Instead of complaining, how about you go out and make a difference yourself. I implore you to research the average qualifications of American teachers, especially in comparison to teachers in far more successful countries, and reconsider making such a slighted and unfounded claims.
Kimberly,
The achievement gap that you refer to is actually an opportunity gap and “teachers” who have five weeks of training and will come and go in the matter of a couple of years will do nothing, at least in Seattle, to help in that regard.
Seattle is not the deep south where teachers are needed or a devastated urban community where it is hard to recruit and retain teachers, we are in Seattle and what we really need now is to revive our programs from the ravishing that our previous superintendent, and your champion, did and fund our schools so that we can have more trained and qualified teachers who are dedicated to our communities over the long haul.
We don’t need churn in our schools, that’s the last thing that our students need right now. A two year commitment is not enough of a commitment to our children and our communities.
As I stated in another comment, we have three schools of education in Seattle, great schools with great candidates who are qualified to teach in our schools and are ready and willing to make a commitment to our children over a much longer period of time and perhaps for their entire careers.
That is what we have now so we don’t need you. Thanks but no thanks.
Dora
In response to Missy, I’d like to see the GPA data of all the TFAers, then. If it is as you say, that the expectations are set low enough to get a pool of applicants, then we should be able to see that TFA are weeding out those at the lower rungs, right?
Doesn’t it seem that everyone would be interested, with such a brass ring to win, in the form of student loan forgiveness?
Maybe they have to set the expectations so low because no one in their right mind would try to teach in the hostile work environment that is a post-NCLB school district.
This is an extremely ignorant post. Yes a 2.5 GPA is the minimum requirement. Your statement ignores what TFA is really trying to do with such a low requirement: see everyone who is interested in their organization. This year TFA received almost 46,000 and there will be 4,500 incoming corps. This is a very selective program, and TFA wants to be able to see any and all who are interested this does by no means that TFA has a bunch of C students pretending to be the “best and the brightest.”
Also…your Ivy league comment…the school with the largest percent of incoming corps members is the university of Michigan…which is not an Ivy league school.
And for your final comment about why do we still have an achievement gap? Maybe that’s because change is not an on/off switch. The Women’s Rights and Civil Rights Movement are far from being over despite the fact that these movements have been around for more than 20 years…however it seems like you must have a far superior plan for how to solve the Achievement Gap…I recommend next time you condemn those who are trying to make an effort and “failing”, you at least propose an alternative proposal or being doing something more than writing a blog about the people who are.