Explaining Teach for America Graduates’ Lack of Activism
A study has found Teach for America graduates to be less politically active than people who were accepted into the program but didn’t complete it. Several newspapers and blogs are reporting the finding as a poor reflection on Teach for America. This is from a New York Times article titled “Gauging the Dedication of Teacher Corps Grads”:
In areas like voting, charitable giving and civic engagement, graduates of the program lag behind those who were accepted but declined and those who dropped out before completing their two years, according to Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, who conducted the study with a colleague, Cynthia Brandt.
The reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, Professor McAdam said, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America’s approach to the issue of educational inequity, among other factors.
The study isn’t online yet, but when it is, I’d like to read how McAdam concluded that burnout and disillusionment account for the graduates’ lower rates of political activity. Were those reasons self-reported by the graduates? Or are they the researchers’ conjecture?
I can think of a few other reasons that graduates might be less likely to vote or participate in campaigns. Perhaps the people who completed the program were the most dedicated to their teaching jobs, and now that they’ve graduated, they’re equally dedicated to the jobs they currently hold. Maybe they’re so busy working that they don’t have time to dabble in the political process.
Another possibility is that their teaching experience convinced graduates that the political process is not the best way to achieve their goals. Maybe graduates remain as idealistic as when they started, but they now want to pursue their ideals through means other than politics.
As for the lower rate of charitable giving, a licensing effect could be at work. Alyssa Curran explained what a licensing effect is in her post about a study that found a connection between purchase of “green” products and a decline in altruism. Researchers don’t think subjects in that study became disillusioned with the products; rather, subjects acted as though choosing a socially-valued product gave them a license to be less generous later on. Similarly, Teach for America graduates may feel that because their service was worthwhile and important, they have already done their part for society and are free to be less charitable later.
Whatever the true reasons are, it’s odd to evaluate Teach for America based on graduates’ behavior. What matters is whether participants in the program are effective teachers. It would make more sense to research students’ test scores after they’ve been taught by a Teach for America participant than to analyze their former teachers’ levels of civic engagement.
I hope residents of St. Louis and Kansas City don’t look unfavorably on Teach for America participants in their cities because of research findings that are beside the point.
I agree with your conclusion that the research findings that are beside the point. When we are evaluating programs like TFA, I think that it is more important to ask whether they are improving educational outcomes (and they do) than whether the graduates are politically active.
My boyfriend is half-way through his first year in TFA in Saint Louis. He said that he had seen the article in the New York Times already, and that he was not surprised with the findings of the study because it was conducted from 1993 to 1998 when the organization was radically different.
I do think that people in TFA become exhausted and burned out. And who wouldn’t, after working a underappreciated, thankless job for two years? I agree that they can often become disillusioned, except that I think this could have more to do with bureaucracy and the status quo than with civic involvement.
As a parenthetical note, I heard a story about TFA in New Orleans on All Things Considered on NPR when I was driving home from work earlier this week. Because New Orleans is attracting such a diverse set of teachers and types of schools, it is an opportunity for more choice in education.
Although some people join TFA with solely for the reason that it will look good on a law school application, I’d say that the majority of people in TFA is committed to the cause of improving education for under-served children.
Comment by Christine Harbin — January 7, 2010 @ 12:11 p.m.
Also from the article,
“The study compared “graduates,” who completed their two years; “dropouts,” who entered the program but left before the two years were up; and “nonmatriculants,” who were accepted but declined the offer. It included 1,538 graduates, 324 dropouts and 634 nonmatriculants. Nearly 45 percent of those sampled returned the 34-page survey.”
As I read this, I think it means that they first produced a representative sample population of ~2500 people, sent them a 34-page(!!!) survey, and tallied up the responses of the 1100 who sent them in. How did they get the 2500 names in the first place? How were those 1100 responses distributed between the groups? There might also be a self-reporting bias: the people who send in their surveys are different from people who don’t. Maybe instead of filling out a 34-page survey asking them how often they vote, some people have better things to do with their time, like complaining about things on the Internet.
Not to mention the fact that as you point out, a difference in civic participation between these populations isn’t necessarily attributable to completing Teach for America. So help me, if they come out with an Identical Twin study of TFA volunteers in an effort to prove that TFA causes lower charitable giving, I am going to find the nearest sociologist/journalist and start hitting them in the face with my copy of The Probable Error Of A Mean by Student.
Comment by David C. Miller — January 7, 2010 @ 12:44 p.m.
Teachers typically make lower salaries than people in industry, especially within their first two years of employeement. That would affect their ability to participate in charitable giving.
Many people complete teacher certification and enjoy teaching, but decide to leave education in order to provide better support their families. Is that the definition of “activism” used here?
Comment by lajones — January 7, 2010 @ 7:32 p.m.
I enjoyed this post, and I agree with your arguments. I was under the impression that the point of Teach for America was to train top college graduates to improve the education system and to provide them with resources and networks of support that will allow them to do so. If one wants to judge the success of the program based on information about its graduates rather than on their students and their students’ performance, he or she should at least start with the reason the graduate chose Teach for America to begin with.
Comment by Alyssa Curran — January 11, 2010 @ 8:10 p.m.
I’m a current TFA corps member in Kansas City. While I’m not familiar with the particulars of the study, I can certainly speak to the topic of disillusionment.
When I joined TFA, I readily accepted what we were told: the problem in inner city schools is low expectations, teachers who don’t hold their students to high standards, and so on and so forth. I was inspired by tales of others who went to inner city schools and supposedly brought their kids to extremely high levels of academic achievement.
What I found in Kansas City is still difficult to fully process. The only phrase that comes to mind is “grave administrative negligence”. School principals willingly and knowingly allow their buildings to be centers of chaos and disorder, and they blame teachers when their students are acting more like animals than human beings. They preach endlessly about “one size fits all” strategies and reduce teaching to a career with little more professionalism than that of a factory drone. My principal actually told me that I wrote up too many students, and she suggested that I use a “pull a strategy card” box to deal with misbehavior. Excuse me? That’s just stupid. Teachers receive almost no support, we’re constantly forced to attend useless “professional development” that is essentially being paid for so the school and district can check a box on some useless improvement plan. In fact, much of what the district spends money are nothing more than face saving measures undertaken so they can look professional on paper.
What bothers me more than anything – well, except for the fact that many good kids have to go to such shoddy schools – is that nobody has the guts to say “enough is enough” and demand accountability on the part of administrators. I’ve brought this up time and time again, and I’m always told the same thing: “well, it’s not good to focus on things that you can’t change. We know that you’re not going to get support, so let’s focus on what you CAN control.” I get it. I get that I do have a locus of control for which I’m responsible, but when kids are throwing chairs, threatening you, throwing your classroom supplies, vandalizing your classroom after hours, covering the school in graffiti, beating each other down, stealing your personal belongings, shouting profanities at your face, and preventing good children from learning, more needs to be done than telling teachers to focus on what they can control. How about the never-ending masses of district staff and “consultants” who descent upon my school start telling the principal to restore order to the school? It’s not rocket science: children CANNOT learn when 15% of their classmates run around and act like animals.
I have four months left of my time, and I can’t wait to leave. I’ve noticed how it’s changed me. I’m less happy, less willing to help people, and extremely cynical of any effort to help impoverished children. In my opinion, all these kids need is a school district ran EXACTLY like the suburban districts – one which doesn’t tolerate misbehavior and removes chronically disruptive students. There are about 15 kids in my school who frankly don’t belong there and should be removed immediately.
For its part, TFA really was wonderful. My interaction with the staff was always helpful and positive.
The Kansas City Missouri School District, however, is an excuse for an educational institution. The animals at the zoo could start taking field trips to see the children at those schools instead of the other way around. The only way I wish to interact with it in the future is a lawsuit for denying children their right to an education.
Comment by KCMOteacher — January 31, 2010 @ 9:57 p.m.