I have a vivid memory of a discussion in my senior Advanced Placement English class about Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, two affirmative action cases facing the Supreme Court in 2002. My teacher, Mr. McClellan, wanted his students to think about how their lives had benefited from growing up in a privileged, suburban school district.
That conversation left me evaluating the good fortune that landed me in successful schools with outstanding teachers. In turn, I considered what responsibility such fortune demanded of my fellow students and me.
How could my peers and I give back to other students the opportunities that we were given? How would we go about remedying educational inequalities in the K-12 system for the next generation of students?
Rather than lowering the bar for America's youth due to any institutional disadvantages they might have suffered, we should focus on removing the disadvantages from the system in the first place.
In 1954, the Supreme Court opined in Brown v. Board of Education that the opportunity of education is "a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." While the mandate of this decision by the court eventually ended segregation in public schools, America has yet to equalize the quality of education available to students residing in different regions based on income level.
So where does that bring us in 2005? Enter Teach for America. This national program was designed to attract the best and brightest from all academic majors to a profession they might not otherwise seek out: teaching.
The National Council on Teacher Quality reported last year that teaching attracts and retains candidates from "the lower end of the distribution of academic ability" based on college entrance exam scores.
Indeed, TFA was founded by Princeton grad Wendy Kopp when she foresaw, as The Arizona Republic noted, "that more well-educated college graduates would consider teaching as a career if they were drawn to it first as a mission similar to the Peace Corps or a stint in the Marines."
This year, The New York Times reported Teach for America received applications from "12 percent of Yale's graduates, 11 percent of Dartmouth's and 8 percent of Harvard's and Princeton's." In general, TFA corps members have top academic credentials, with an average G.P.A. of 3.5, plus leadership experience, an interest in children and high expectations for their students.
The TFA vice president for recruitment and selection, Elissa Clapp, explained the high application numbers from top graduates -- 17,350 applicants this year. Echoing my own thoughts, she stated the numbers indicate that college students believe "that education disparities are our generation's civil rights issue."
TFA is accomplishing its mission of attracting the best of the best, but questions still circulate about how effective those teachers can be without the years of pedagogical training involved in traditional teacher certification.
The Arizona Republic reported, that in 2004, Mathematica Policy Research produced a comprehensive study indicating that children taught by TFA corps members "showed slightly better math scores than students of traditionally certified educators, and English results that were no worse."
Critics also doubt the ability of TFA to retain their corps members as long-term teachers.
But whether they go into law, medicine, business or continue on as teachers or educational administrators, TFA corps members will use their experience as teachers in high-need schools. They will lead the way in effecting fundamental changes needed to remove the barriers to equality that exist in our school systems today.
A program that can manage to attract a few bright academic minds to our nation's most demanding low-income classrooms is a winner in my book. Teach for America is bringing them in hordes, and the real winners are the kids who will benefit from a changed educational system.
Laura Thorson is a history and political science junior. Reach her at laura.thorson@cox.net.
