Last updated on 2013.03.19
A blog post from Louisiana gets me thinking about Teach for America and its success in winning funds from the stingy South Dakota Legislature.
As it did last year, the South Dakota Legislature appropriated $250,000 (via HB 1137) to help Teach for America bring low-wage rookie teachers to South Dakota. I seek to cast no aspersions on those who dedicate two years of their lives to serving students in South Dakota school districts that have a hard time recruiting teachers. But Teach for America is one more way our Legislature manages to get by on the cheap instead of paying full value for education.
I am surprised to learn, however, that Teach for America has pretty substantial financial assets. Its 2010 IRS Form 990 (the most recent one I can snag online) reports $373 million in assets. $39 million of that is buildings, equipment, and other property; much of the rest is cash, investments, and pledges and grants receivable. Take away $22 million in liabilities, and you get $312 million in chits Teach for America could call out of reserves pretty quickly for a rainy day.
Teach for America's total expenses in 2010 were $219 million. That $312 million of reasonably available reserves is 142% of annual expenses.
Our Legislatures and Governors have grumbled hard about local school districts maintaining what their Republican sensibilities deem excessive reserves... and by excessive, they used to mean more than the 25% of annual expenditures that they forced schools by law to spend their reserves down to by 2012. Apparently, there's a bit of wiggle room: according to the state Department of Education, at the end of 2012, South Dakota's K-12 school districts held collective general fund reserves of $210 million, a touch over 26% of their $805 million in general fund expenditures.
The Legislature cudgels K-12 budgets for years over reserves that wouldn't get most districts through a school year. But it continues to hand money to Teach for America, which has enough assets stockpiled to get it through a full school year and to the Christmas Party after that unassisted.
I'm sure there's a logical explanation. Historians, accountants, legislators, straighten me out.
I happened to sit in on the budget committee meeting where Teach for America asked for their appropriation. Since then it has struck me that the legislature (through its funding of Teach for America) has helped to create a system in our state where if a teacher chooses to go to a reservation and teach as an act of charity (through TFA), they will be paid more than a teacher who decides to teach in that same position at that same school if they choose to do that as a profession.
What are we incentivizing?
I don't say TFA is wrong, or that what they are able to accomplish his anything less than amazing for the students and communities they work for, but I do think our state has it wrong when it does not get that same job accomplished.
Hey Steve and Cory. I've got a little bit different take on TFA in South Dakota. My daughter is in her second year as a TFA teacher on Rosebud. Most people don't understand that TFA recruits teachers and then gives them a lot of boot-camp training and career support for two years while they are getting properly credentialed. They never actually work for TFA. Like every other TFA teacher on Rosebud, my daughter works for the Todd County School District, and she gets paid the same as any other teacher in the district. (Which ain't much, by the way!) She doesn't get paid more for being TFA. She would bristle at the suggestion that she is doing "charity" work anymore than a teacher at Spearfish High School. She's a South Dakotan who went away to college and came home to help build her state and make a career out of teaching. She's a big advocate of public education, and a loyal member of the SDEA. You'd be surprised how many TFA teachers have stayed and continued their professional careers on Rosebud and Pine Ridge. My daughter is in her second year as a middle school reading and social studies teacher. Her colleague, who teaches science and math, went through TFA and has stayed at the same rural school for seven years. About 40% of the TFA teachers finish their two year commitment and then stay at least a third year if not more. Dare I say that many more would stay if we paid them a reasonable salary? I'm very familiar with the ideological arguments about TFA, but my daughter, like 70 others, is way out on an all too often forgotten frontier, in a small K-8 public school, fighting against tremendous odds. They can use some help any way we can get it to them.
Sam! I'm glad to hear from you and from your daughter. I'm very happy that TFA can bring dedicated young professionals here and get them to stay to help build civil society where we need the help the most. And if normal market forces and state funding can't bring regular teachers to these high-need districts, I'm glad TFA exists to provide a pretty good next-best solution.
Whatever policy and funding we use to staff those schools, we create a second-best solution when we rely more on a younger, more frequently rotating staff. Students and communities benefit from schools with quality veteran teachers who can bring stability and institutional memory to bear in making the school better. The local and statewide community also benefits from having more expert veteran teachers who build political capital that they can use to fight for labor rights and sensible K-12 policy. That's no attack the young Ms. Hurst or the TFA corps; that's just a workforce reality.
And that's part of why I get a little alarmed when the Legislature cuts a second-best solution a break that it won't give to the first-best solution.
(By the way, there is an argument that anyone teaching in South Dakota is doing so for charity wages. But that's another blog post.)
I don't think anyone would disagree that it would be best to have well-trained, "quality" veteran teachers in schools where the problems are most severe. I have not yet seen the rush of such folks to Indian Country. Maybe next year. The reservations pose an incredibly complex problem of mixed jurisdictions (federal, state, local), cultural dynamics for which even the best veteran teachers would need to be trained, terrible housing, banking, food, and depressed local economies that make it impossible for spouses of teachers to get jobs. It is almost impossible for families to buy a house or buy land to build a house on Pine Ridge. Thus...the army of 25 year old, single, TFA idealists jammed into small enclaves of "teacher housing". I for one think the feds should ante in with huge pay incentives that would be big enough to attract veteran teachers like you and the young families that come with them. But that would also require structural changes in the economies of reservation communities, and a massive re-thinking of tribal sovereignty and land distribution. It ain't gonna happen. In that context, it is simply not real to talk about "first-best" and "second-best" solutions. Find five "quality veteran teachers" from Spearfish or Stevens, or Southwest Middle School, or Pinedale Elementary who will sign up to teach on Rosebud and I will graciously withdraw my skepticism. My daughter could certainly use a mentor.
Your skepticism stands, Sam. I'm part of the problem. You could offer double my pay, and I likely would not accept an offer to leave Spearfish to go teach on Rosebud. As you say, for reasons well beyond the ability of education policy to solve alone, I could not find the economic, recreational, and educational opportunities I want for my family there... and I'm not the guy to spend my time trying to create those opportunities by my after-school sweat.
But uff da—now I'm feeling some chicken-and-egg coming on.
...so the point I'd settle for out of all this is that the Legislature shouldn't pretend that it doesn't like giving tax dollars to educational institutions that maintain big reserves to deal with revenue uncertainties.
The internal finances of national TFA are a mystery to me. But I would begin by separating "assets" from "operating budget". Remember, TFA is in almost 50 regions, has a staff of thousands, and works with tens of thousands of teachers. I don't think the executives are rolling the money to light their cigars like Wall Street bankers. I have come to know the S.D. executive director very well. His name is Jim Curran. He lives in Mission. I think he did his TFA service in Arizona. You would like him very much, and if you ever have reason to truck on out to Indian Country I'd be happy to arrange for the two of you to meet. I think there are myriad places in the country where your concerns about TFA's relationship to the public schools are worthy of some serious beer-induced argument. But on the reservations, I think we should support their efforts and hang on for dear life.
Some TFA alums are not as sanguine about the program as Sam's daughter. Also, Louisiana seems to have a similar double standard about funding TFA and shorting public schools.
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/12/heilig-a-tfa-rebellion-brewing/
Sam, I stand corrected about my misbelief that there was a TFA stipend in addition to the district salary. That being the case, it seems that SD has found yet another way to fund education without getting that money to teachers (snark).
From the TFA standpoint, the recruitment of candidates to these districts in need is what I would call a "charitable" endeavor still. Although some will remain in the profession, I believe the TFA model is more geared to do two years good work then go on to the career path the candidate set aside to do this teaching.
I believe it was Jim who I heard at the Senate appropriation committee hearing; I agree, he certainly is passionate and well spoken about this program.