On New Teachers, Training Problems, Idealism and Money

With the nation needing 2 million new teachers over the next decade, President Clinton last week proposed a $350-million scholarship program to fully train 35,000 teachers and assign them to the country’s poorest schools. Another approach is Teach for America, the New York-based corps that places top college graduates in inner-city classrooms after only five weeks of training. Founded in 1989 by Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp, it has drawn criticism that it may merely be adding to America’s problem of poorly trained teachers. The group has produced 3,700 teachers, of whom 65% have remained in education after fulfilling their two-year commitment. About 300 still teach in the Los Angeles area. Kopp and Gregory Good, a former recruit and director of the Los Angeles office, spoke with Times education writer Elaine Woo.

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Question: Some skeptics suggest that teacher shortages aren’t real. In fact, a Teach for America recruit argued last year that the shortages are defined by money, by the demand for low-cost--and thus inexperienced--teachers. Was she right?

Kopp: There could be another side to that story. That teacher dropped out very soon after joining. [But] money is a real issue. Districts operate with fiscal constraints.

Good: There is great pressure on every school board I know of to hire as many certified people as possible. The problem is, there aren’t remotely enough of them. The shortages here are for real--and they’re stark. In Southern California, the class-size reduction initiative has pushed the need into the stratosphere. You literally have school districts not only competing with each other but raiding each other. The districts that are most challenged and have lower salary scales end up having shortages. They don’t have the resources to tap into something larger, which is what we’re trying to do.

Q: What do you think of Clinton’s proposal?

Good: I think it’s great. It’s estimated by the Department of Education that the nation’s public schools will need over 1 million new teachers over the next five years. Given that very daunting prospect, there is a tremendous amount of room for creative alternatives, with the bottom line being: Is this successful? Is this beneficial for kids? Until we begin to really attract people [to teaching], everything else ends up being hollow.

Q: The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future says new teachers need more training--as much as an extra year of college and practice--before assuming full classroom responsibility. Are your teachers adequately prepared?

Kopp: The Teach for America process begins with an extremely intensive selection mechanism. We offer a summer-long preparation program of which the five-week institute is one element. Then there’s an ongoing professional development network that extends throughout their two-year teaching commitment. I would compare what we do to what other preparation programs do very favorably. Most under-resourced schools simply don’t have [enough] qualified people in their classrooms. In that context, Teach for America is doing a great thing for some of the most underserved kids in the country.

Q: Have you changed the way you do things?

Kopp: Our institute now looks nothing like it did eight years ago. In the beginning we had corps members practice-teaching in the morning, and we had educators exposing them to the knowledge base of teaching and learning in the afternoon. Now we run a summer program for kids in Houston. So corps members assume full teaching responsibilities during the day. In the afternoon and evening they master skills and knowledge. It’s very powerful to give people full teaching responsibility. It motivates them beyond belief.

Q: What happens to those who leave after two years?

Kopp: These are people who are leaving because their passion is going in some other direction--people who are dying to be doctors or to go to law school. People who come to Teach for America make a clear two-year commitment. There is no expectation at all that they stay longer. The real concept behind Teach for America is that this experience will transform the direction of all the people who participate. Many will leave but hopefully with a commitment to work on some of the problems they saw in the classroom.

Good: A beautiful example of that is a gentleman who taught for three years in Washington Heights in New York. He was a finance major. He got a charter for the first community credit union in Washington Heights. At Stanford’s principal training school, a third are Teach for America alumni. We have alumni working in Sacramento, in the entertainment industry. Ultimately, this is going to be an army of leaders.