Another reason Teach for America is so insidious.

I have read many times that Teach for America is used to fill hard to fill positions at mostly inner city schools. Some of you might think that is admirable, that they have seen a need and attempted to fill it. I on the other hand believe it is a crutch that exacerbates problems that are already in place.

Instead of addressing the problems why these positions are so hard to fill, mostly because of low salary, behavioral concerns, and poverty, the powers that be simply say “hey let’s get some temps in here to nurse the problem along”.

Why should communities attempt to fix the problem if they can just get some short-term workers to fill the gaps? Teacher pay poor, who cares if we can just keep hiring and replacing first year teachers.  People don’t want to work in the poorer schools, especially with the road blocks that Florida has set up like tying teacher pay to student test scores, who cares, let’s just hire some people who think, I will try  that for a couple years before going to grad school. Why address behavior concerns when after a teacher burns out in two years they can replace them with another. Teach for America gives communities an out from addressing real problems. What do you think is a better solution, dealing with our issues or kicking the can down the road?

Instead of staffing our schools, especially our hard to staff schools with temporary workers with very little training and no education and experience shouldn’t we be trying to staff our schools with professional teachers or people who will spend a life time in our schools improving with experience? Teach for America gives communities an out that our kids can’t afford.