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.

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?

“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.

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.

Teach For America has nearly 500 people in the greater New Orleans area, making it one of the program’s biggest markets. Other national programs, such as The New Teacher Project, have also found New Orleans to be a great magnet for reformers who want to jump into education with both feet. That has turned New Orleans into something unusual, according to Sarah Usdin, a local activist and head of New Schools for New Orleans. “There’s a real market here for teachers. Teachers can shop around for schools they want to teach in. And school leaders are being highly selective about the type of teachers they want to build their teams with,” Usdin says.

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.