The school board is slated to vote on Hinojosa’s proposal this evening.
The Teach For America program hires recent college graduates with degrees in a variety of subjects — but not teaching — and then rushes them through a brief “boot camp” to give them a patina of teaching skills before sending them straight into the classroom in low-income areas. If the school board goes along with Hinojosa, it would cost $8,000 for each of those teachers to attend the five-week camp, money which Hinojosa said would come from a private entity. He has not disclosed its identity, but has said that the Cobb Chamber is involved in raising the necessary $400,000. That money would be in addition to their starting salaries and benefits as teachers on the county payroll.
“It has a tremendous record of success all over the country,” said Hinojosa, who implemented the program while superintendent of the Dallas, Texas system. “I think it would be a strategy that would help us.”
When questioned by the MDJ, Hinojosa said the district had yet to determine how to measure the effectiveness of the Teach For America teachers should they be hired.
The super has the support of board member David Morgan of southwest Cobb, who says the teachers would help close the achievement gap between his schools and others in the county.
“There’s a canyon (in achievement) that sits between where my post is and the rest of the district, and when it comes to reform efforts, pretty much the people who are against it want us to keep doing what we’re doing,” Morgan said. “If a person keeps saying ‘Let’s keep doing what we’re doing’ and it’s yielded the canyon of achievement gap, then what they are truly saying is ‘We’re OK with what’s going on.’ I don’t follow the logic.”
Yet Hinojosa is finding the program a much tougher sell to a number of other board members.
Board Chairman Alison Bartlett notes that the district already has a partnership with one of the state’s best education schools, Kennesaw State University, and that it lets its students do their student teaching in Cobb.
“KSU is giving us highly qualified teachers,” she said. “Why would we hire someone without experience?”
Board member Kathy Angelucci noted that a disturbing 43 percent of the Teach For America teachers in Dallas departed after completing their two-year commitment.
“I’m very concerned about the attrition issue with Teach For America,” she said. “The other thing is the message it sends to our Cobb teachers. It bothers me because I think the message is, ‘You’re not good enough, so we’re having to bring someone else in.’”
And board member Lynnda Eagle said the timing is not right for the program in Cobb.
“With the budget and teachers looking at increased class size, teachers are a little bit nervous, and I don’t know that morale is as good as I would like for it to be,” she said.
Eagle, a retired teacher, also rightly noted that Cobb should find out what type of teaching strategies Teach For America is using in low-performing schools and then copy them. That would surely be cheaper and simpler and probably more effective. Our teachers could use the new strategies year after year after year, rather than the county having to import a new batch of rookie teachers every two years. The county’s in-service teacher training programs should turn their focus on imbuing such skills, rather than just on generic teaching.
Cobb is hardly begging for teacher applications as it is, having received roughly 20,000 during the past two years. Does it really make sense to hire recent graduates with degrees in other subjects and then hastily try to “retrofit” them as teachers at great cost when there are so many applicants who have already paid their own way to earn their teaching degrees, and are eager to work for the county system? Considering how many under-achieving schools we have in south Cobb, hiring a mere 50 teachers for a system of 106,000 students would be like trying to light the Georgia Dome at night with a single match. And considering Cobb’s downwardly mobile economic demographic profile, the number of such schools, and the need for such teachers, is bound to increase in coming years.
The proposal also leaves the appearance that Cobb is about to discard hundreds of experienced teachers while simultaneously hiring 50 others at entry-level salaries, which would be disastrous for teacher morale. And with no goals announced for measuring the program, it smacks of the “pancake plan of education” — just layering new program on top of new program.
It also is highly unusual for a public board to approve funding for a new program without knowing where that funding is coming from. And if the hinted funding falls through, the county is in no position to fund it itself.
Teach For America might be a great program, but in light of its cost and in light of the Cobb School District’s dire budgetary forecast, the wiser course would be to forego it for now.
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Here's an idea: why not beef up current vocational and technical programs at these schools for the unmotivated students who comprise the discipline problems? Let them learn a trade so they can support themselves after they get out of school.
Then, the students who are interested in college-track programs would be able to learn, and flourish doing it. That's the real problem at these schools, not the lack of competent teachers.
"the hood" in which:
-Single teenage parent, multi-child (different father) families are widespread and studying for school is "too white" to be cool.
-The epidemic of young black men slaughtering other young black men (on a daily basis ---I wonder how many killed or maimed each other at the parties last night?) takes a vary far back seat to the outrage over a local (Gwinnett Co)teacher who would dare make reference to "slavery" in a math question posed to elementary school kids ("How dare dey be so insensitive to us descendents of slavery - you know, the slavery that ended in dis' country over 150 years ago? Outrage! Dey holding us down, brothers. Now go out and pop a few 9mm rounds into another brother to show you gots what it takes to have "cred" in da' hood!).
-Being and NBA or Rap star is the only acceptable vocation for folks in the hood.
Sorry, but the problem is in the Hood. Not the the teachers that service the hood.
Of course, you can ignore anything said above. It is , after all, "very raaaaacist", right? Remember, denial ain't a river in North Africa (if you had studied you would have known that).
professional pay and treatment for teachers
(Yeah, like that's going to happen). The
Middle Class in the U. S. is stuck with a
Democratic Party that wants to steal from
them and give it to the Poor, and a Republican
Party who wants to steal from them and give
it to the Rich. The funding of public schools
(and the people laboring in education)now has the
lowest priority in national, state and local
politics that it's had in over 60 years. Let us
pray.
being an advocate for classroom teachers? Did he
have a "road to Damascus" experience? Just asking?
These strange times are making for some strange bed
fellows.
S. Cobb presents a whole list of issues, not the least of which is parent involvement. While Teach for America could have some great results, there are other things we could do to make a difference.
My challenge to Dr. Hinojosa is to mobilize the community instead of throwing money at the problem.
Better solution: Some think that our higher performing schools are higher performing due to administration and teachers. When the system loses the "400" positions this year due to attrition, let's play 50 card pick up and transfer South Cobb and East Cobb admins and teachers. Let's give those teachers the donated bonuses and see what happens!
It is my opinion that the teachers/administrators in South Cobb are just as professional as any in the county, and that test scores in both areas would increase slightly, but then plateau.
Dare to try that hypothesis Dr H and CCSB?