By Jessica Reynolds

Teach for America is great in theory. Recent graduates from elite universities teach for two years in underserved school systems, move on to successful careers in business, politics, healthcare, etc, and act as lifelong advocates for public schooling.

But when these young adults, most of whom have only five weeks of training when they step into the classroom on day one, occupy spots in school districts that start to trim teaching jobs (i.e. Chicago Public Schools), is it time to refocus the group’s efforts elsewhere?

TFA expects more than 500 corps members to work in the Chicago area next school year. About 200 of those will work in public schools, with the rest in charters or early childcare centers, said Becky O’Neill, TFA spokesperson.

Of the 110 corps members working in CPS at the end of last school year (now considered second-year corps members), seven were laid off in the latest round of cuts, O’Neill said. TFA doesn’t yet know how many first-year corps members will be hired for the next school year, but O’Neill said she expects the number to be the same as usual, which is a little more than 100.

TFA critics, some of whose complaints are catalogued on Twitter with #GoAwayTFA, allege the organization is stealing jobs from traditional teachers and shortchanging students who need experienced teachers most.

Michelle Gunderson, a CPS elementary school teacher, said that while she agrees with the organization’s foundational premise, the need doesn’t exist in CPS at the current time. There is no teacher shortage. Instead, the opposite — many qualified teachers with years of experience are vying for positions in the remaining schools.

CPS did have a teacher shortage about a decade ago, but that's no longer the case, although some school principals have noted a shortage specifically in special education and substitute teachers.

Katie Osgood recently wrote an open letter to new TFA recruits asking them all… to quit.

Osgood is a special education teacher at a Chicago hospital and frequently works with CPS students, ages 4-17. She said TFA commits an “injustice” by “putting someone so untrained with kids with such high needs,” given the inescapable violence and poverty that plague many of these students’ lives and the trauma they encounter on a daily basis.

Some critics argue that because most TFA corps members come from completely different worlds than their students, they’re unable to make a connection.

Stephanie Medina, a TFA alumna and school director at a Chicago charter school, disagrees.

Medina insists “that whole perception of Teach for America as a pool of white kids that come from rich families” isn’t true. After graduating from Loyola Chicago in 2006 with medical school in sight down the road, she entered the corps and taught at Jose de Diego in Humboldt Park. When her two years with TFA were up, she decided to stick around and was hired on as a regular teacher.

She acknowledges that her cultural background (Hispanic) helped her better relate to some of her students, but she rejects the notion that teachers — TFA or not — need to mirror their students’ racial or socio-economic identities in order to succeed.

When I asked about the effectiveness of the five-week training program, Medina said, “Your first year of teaching is your first year of teaching, and it’s a hard year no matter if you’re TFA or not.”

The Teach for America resistance movement is not meant to vilify the individual corps members, but rather the corporate office.

“I do believe they are idealistic young people," Gunderson said, adding, "And I think TFA exploits that."

Osgood said the problem lies with the organization’s model of tossing young adults into classrooms when they’re grossly unprepared. She recommended TFA reform its program and instead have corps members serve as assistant teachers to struggling schools.

A few other TFA opponents who have weighed in on the debate:

Mark Naison, professor at Fordham University, “Why Teach for America is Seductive to Mayors and Legislators and Destructive to Everyone Else”:

Teach for America offers states and municipalities the opportunity to subcontract their teaching to non-union workers, saving large expenses in pensions and health care. ….

1. It destroys the mentoring and relationship building that lifetime teachers provide.

2. It creates a revolving door teaching force that undermines the

role of schools as community institutions.

3. It reduces instruction to test prep since the 5 week training TFAers get makes raising test scores the highest priority and includes cookie cutter, “teacher proof” advice on class management that leaves little room for the creativity that great teachers employ.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, an associate professor at the University of Texas-Austin, calls TFA a “Glorified Temp Agency”:

It is telling that the intellectual elites that expound the virtues of Teach for America do not accept them in the communities that serve their own children. Recruits with five weeks of training are good enough for poor whites and students of color, but they are glaringly absent from affluent schools in places like Scarsdale, N.Y., or Westlake, Texas, districts seeking well-qualified career teachers for advantaged children.

TFA looks so attractive to the layman's eye, I suspect most people with no dog in the fight never stop to question whether putting novices in charge of needy classrooms might actually cause more harm than good — I certainly never did before now. I can see how TFA could be immensely beneficial in certain school districts, like those in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta region where there is a proven teacher shortage, but it’s hard to justify the need for it in CPS.