Does Teach for America help California kids? Lawmaker wants data from schools

A former math teacher in the California State Assembly launched a new effort to restrict Teach for America, the national nonprofit organization that helps staff public schools with entry-level educators on short-term contracts.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, on Monday released a new bill that would require school districts to detail how many hours of training and coaching intern-credentialed teachers receive. It’s an attempt to quantify the preparedness of young teachers sent to schools all over California.

Garcia developed the proposal after her previous two attempts to ban Teach for America from low-income schools failed in the Assembly. Garcia said her colleagues asked for more information about the program before advancing a bill that could limit staffing options for schools.

Garcia still wants to rein in the group, she said, but revised her strategy to begin with Assembly Bill 2906. She said the data called for in the bill would help inform new policies.

“We decided we would think of this as a multi-year project and start with the data,” Garcia said. “I’m prepared to work on this for my tenure in the Legislature. I hope it doesn’t take me that long, but I’m prepared for it if it does.”

Teach for America is an alternative teacher recruitment organization that places aspiring educators in districts throughout the country.

The “corps members” pledge two years to the program. They’re required to have a bachelor’s degree, but often enter the classroom without full teaching credentials. They’re instead trained through a weeks-long summer boot camp called “institute” to prepare them for grade level and subject matter assignments.

By contrast, most California teachers are credentialed through student teaching programs at higher education institutions.

Garcia, who taught math for 13 years in low-income schools, said Teach for America and other third-party groups operate under a “false illusion” of service that harms black and brown students in poorer districts.

“It’s ending what I think are poverty tours coming into schools for a couple of years with altruistic goals. And I acknowledge that. But altruism is not enough,” Garcia said.

She added that the data will expose districts with a high concentration of under-credentialed teachers.

“I do plan to use the data to shame them,” Garcia said. “To shine a spotlight on how we treat low-income students of color.”

Collecting the data should be an easy task, said Jon Snyder, executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. The bigger challenge, he said, is ensuring that the state’s most vulnerable students have access to experienced, well-trained teachers.

“I think the real issue here is that from the classroom to Congress, nobody at any level of the system does enough to ensure that our kids have really well-prepared teachers stay in the classroom,” Snyder explained.

It’s “basic common sense,” Snyder added, that instruction improves when teachers commit more years to the profession.

Under Garcia’s bill, school districts would also have to disclose whether their novice teachers are on a path to obtaining full credentials. Student performance and educator race, gender and ethnicity would have to be reported. Third-party organizations would have to foot the associated costs.

Intern educators, which include Teach for America corps members, are allowed to teach in a classroom for one to three years while finishing their coursework through higher education institutions, school districts or county offices of education.

About 4,000 of the 16,518 new teaching credentials issued in the 2017-2018 school year were under intern status, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

“Teach For America believes that the state of California should have a robust data collection system,” said organization spokeswoman Lindsay Kelly. “We are still reviewing this bill, along with all of the education bills that were filed last month, and have met with Assembly member Garcia on this issue.”

This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 2:39 PM.