A Comparative Study on Teach for America and Teach for China

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A Comparative Study on

Teach for America and Teach for China

ABSTRACT Although the fulfillment of Education for All is usually treated as the

duty of government, civil society could be a supplement for eliminating the disparities

in education. The dynamic of civil society is attracting more and more youth to draw

attention on educational inequality and calling for social responsibility of individual.

This paper will compare Teach for America and Teach for China---both are branches

of international NGO---Teach for All. Their achievements in reducing educational

inequity are striking, but critiques are also coming afterwards. The main queries cast

to the effectiveness and retention of teachers, and their fast track teach preparation’s

impact on traditional university based teacher education.

KEY WORDS: Education for all; Civil society, Teach for America, Teach for China

1. Introduction

Since the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtiem, primary education

is becoming focused gradually. Government is usually considered as the largest

stakeholder of eliminating educational inequity since promoting EFA requires lager

budget and powerful policies, which hardly to be fulfilled by private sector. However,

during the process of implementing EFA, the contribution of international

organizations and civil societies can’t be overlooked. The paper will concentrate on a

emerging international organization---Teach for All, which is an international

non-profit organization and focus on providing high quality teachers to

under-resourced schools. The organization has obtained big success that founded in

2008 but has already established branches in 40 countries. In the same year, Teach for

China (TFC) was established. During the following 6 years, TFC is gradually

expanding its scale of corps members and corresponding schools. However, could

TFC sustainable develop or not still remains unknown. Therefore, this paper will

compare TFC and the oldest branch in Teach for All---Teach for America (TFA) to see

whether there are some implications for TFC. This paper consists of four parts: Firstly,

background introduction of EFA, TFA, TFC; Secondly, compare the TFA and TFC in

operating model, vision, recruitment, revenue resource and growth speed; Thirdly,

state the main controversial issues towards TFA; Lastly, summary the findings and try

to give some suggestions on TFC’s future development.

2. An Overview on Emerging Of Teach For All

2.1 The Trend of Education for All

Education is the cornerstone of socioeconomic development. Many disputes emerged

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nowadays in worldwide originated from lacking of education and can be solved by

improving education levels. In the context of education, primary education is

recognized as a fundamental for the development of countries, especially the

developing ones (Robinson, B.,&Wenwu,Y.,2009) and exhibits the highest social

profitability in all world regions (Psacharopoulos,G.1994).

However, it is not until the World Conference on Education for all held did people

change their view that tertiary education is more important than primary education.

The World Conference on Education for all was held in Jomtien, Thailand in

1990.Delegates from 155 countries, as well as representatives from some 150

governmental and non-governmental organizations agreed to make primary education

accessible to all children and to massively reduce illiteracy before 2015. (UNESCO,

1990). The delegates adopted a World Declaration on Education for All, which

reaffirmed the notion of education as a fundamental human right and urged countries

to intensify efforts to address the basic learning needs of all.(UNESCO,1990;

Wikipedia, 2015).

Since then, many countries and international organizations have begun to set the

EFA as the priority in their education policy. For example, Chinese government

ratified the Compulsory Education Law, which is intention to emphasis the

importance of primary education. Since then, China’s achievement of nine-year

compulsory basic education for its huge school-age population has been rapid and

successful (Robinson,B.,&Wenwu,Y.,2009). Indian government enacted the Right of

Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act in 2009 which makes it the

right of every Indian between 6-14 years of age to gain admission for education to

complete 8 years elementary schooling. The inspiring fact is that near universal access

for 199 million children and an equity dividend with gender parity at elementary level

education (Indian EFA Report, 2014).

For the International organizations, such as UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF and World

Bank, they are not only the pioneers who put forward the EFA movement but also

take huge responsibility in its implementation. As the lead agency, UNESCO has been

mandated to coordinate the international efforts to reach Education for All (UNESCO,

2015). World Bank helps countries achieve their education goals through finance and

knowledge services in the forms of analytic work, policy advice, and technical

assistance (World Bank, 2015). UNICEF is a key contributor to EFA, responsible for

education in emergencies, early childhood care and technical and policy support

(UNICEF, 2015). Besides these influential international organizations, there are also

some emerging organizations that rooted in social society are contributing to reduce

educational inequity. For example, Teach for American and Teach First in the UK.

Although the impact of there grass-root organization is not as influential as traditional

international organization, their are growing strength in reducing educational inequity

can be neglected.

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2.2 A History of Teach For America

The education inequity is usually discussed in developing countries, but some

perspicacious leaders still find the issue in developed countries. After witnessing the

high drop-out rate and low teaching quality in poor communities of America, Wendy

Kopp proposed the creation of Teach for America in her undergraduate thesis at

Princeton University in 1989 (Wikipedia, 2015). The activities of Teach for American

consists of three parts: (1) Recruit committed recent college graduates and

professionals of all backgrounds to teach for two years in under resourced primary

schools (2) Give previous and on job training for corps members so that they can have

an immediate positive impact on their students. (3) Foster the leadership of TFA

alumni and prepare them to be the future leader in eliminating educational inequity

(TFA, 2015).

TFA developed quickly in the past 20 years, and both the organization itself and its

founder is highly appreciated by the American society. The TFA corps members

have increased into 35,000 in 2009, which is 13 times of that in 1990 (TFA, 2015).

FORTUNE magazine announced that Teach for America ranks No. 88 on its 2014 list

of “100 Best Companies to Work For.” This marks the fourth consecutive year Teach

for America has made the competitive list (TFA, 2015). The founder of TFA--Wendy

Kopp was selected by “Times” in 2008 as one of the 100 most influential people

worldwide. In 2009, TFA’s 20th

anniversary, the general director of American

education bureau attended and appreciated the contribution of TFA. (Wikipedia, 2015)

2.3 From Teach for America to Teach For All

After Teach for American established for ten years, a similar organization was

developed in the UK called Teach First. Teach First is a social enterprise registered as

a charity that aims to address educational disadvantage in England and Wales. It

coordinates an employment-based teaching training programme whereby participants

achieve Qualified Teacher Status through the participation in a two year training

programme(Wikipedia, 2015). With more and more social enterprises asking to apply

the TFA/Teach first model in their country, in 2007, Teach for America and Teach

First collaborated to establish Teach For All. Its mission is to expand educational

opportunity internationally by increasing and accelerating the impact of these

independent social enterprises. Teach for all currently has 40 partner organizations

around the world. Within this network, Teach for All is supporting over 11,000

teachers that are impacting nearly 800,000 students (Wikipedia, 2015).

2.4 Establishment of Teach for China

With the innovation TFC model and the establishment of Teach for All, anther

Princeton alumni---Andrea Pasinetti set up his mind to establish Teach for China

during his studying in Tsinghua University in 2008. The organization operates as a

partner of the Teach for All network, it recruits outstanding college graduates from

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China and the US and trains them to serve as full-time teachers for two years in

under-resourced Chinese schools. At these schools, Teach for China Fellows are

full-time members of the faculty and receive a salary commensurate to that of local

teachers in their placement regions. (Wikipedia, 2015)

Teach for China has grown substantially since its inception in 2008. Currently, TFC

deploys more than 400 teachers serving 80 schools across the Yunnan and Guangdong

provinces, impacting more than 40,000 students (Wikipedia, 2015). As same as TFA,

TFC also draws lots of attentions in China. The leader of TFC---Andrea Pasinetti was

rewarded as an excellent leader in 2014’s World Economic Forum, and he is the

youngest prize winner in this year.

3. Comparison between TFA and TFC

Because TFC is generated from TFA’s model, the two organizations are sharing a

lot of common things in common. For example: (1) The vision and model; (2) The

way of recruiting; (3) Corps member training program. However, there are also

differences between TFC and TFA: (1) The growth speed; (2) The way of revenue

resource collected.

3.1 The similarity between TFC and TFA

3.1.1 The Vision and Model

The vision of TFA is “One day, all children in this nation will have opportunity to

attain an excellent education”, which is almost as same as TFC’s “One Day, All

Children in China Will Enjoy Access to a Quality Education”. Both of them recruit

graduates with highly self-motivated, passion and leadership to work in the under

resourced schools for two years. TFC’s model is a little different with TFA’s, that it

recruits corps members from America and China at the same time. American corps

members are going to teach English and Chinese corps members will teach other

subjects. However, they still share the same dual mission of recruiting high-quality

teachers and cultivating lifelong leaders in the education sector

3.1.2 Many Applicants are From Top Universities

Both TFC and TFA are recruiting excellent students from leading universities. In

2014, there were 5,300 individuals joined Teach For America, among which 4% were

from Ivy League Universities and 3% were from University of California-Berkeley or

Los Angeles(Adapted by author based on TFA official data). Among 2005’s

candidates, there were 12% from Yale University and 8% from Harvard and Princeton

University (Xu, C., & Hong, M..2007). According TFC’s 2013 annual report, their

recruitment got significant outcome in Zhejiang University, Peking University,

Nanjing University, Zhongshan University and Nankai University. All of them are

ranking in Top 10 among Chinese universities.

3.1.3 The Summer Training Institute.

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All qualified candidates in TFA and TFC are required to participate in the Summer

Training Institute before their actual teaching. The training is divided into two

parts---coursework and teaching practice. During institute, corps members teach new

comers for four of five weeks and help them master critical content in future teaching.

Teach skill training consists of (1) Teaching: Corps members teach summer school

students for an average of two hours each day and are observed by experienced

teachers; (2) Observation and feedback: Teach For America instructional coaches

observe each corps member several times a week; (3) Rehearsals and reflections:

Corps members meet in small groups that provide a supportive yet challenging space

to practice teaching new lessons, react to classroom management dilemmas, discuss

feedback they’ve received, and analyze student progress; (4) Lesson plan clinics:

Corps members receive extensive lesson planning instruction from Teach For America

instructional coaches; (5) Curriculum sessions: Corps members study the

fundamentals of teaching and practice teaching techniques to prepare them for all

elements of classroom instruction. (TFA, 2015)

Coursework includes (1) Teaching as leadership; (2) Instructional planning and

delivery; (3) Investment, classroom management and culture; (4) Diversity,

community and achievement; (5) Literacy development. Coursework is designed to

help corps members establish a bold vision for summer school and learn essential

teaching frameworks, curricula, and lesson planning skills while building

relationships within their school and community. We can conclude that the corps

members received amount of training before they become a real teacher. (TFA, 2015)

3.2 Differences between TFA and TFC

3.2.1 The Outreach of Program

According to the Table1, we can see that because of TFC is founded almost 20 years

after TFA, so that the scale of TFC is quite limited. Its main activities conducted in 4

cities in Yunan and Guangdong Province, which is only 1/10 of TFA. Because of the

limited geographical scale, the TFA corps members are 55 times of that of TFC; the

accumulative number of students is 30 times than TFC. Compared to TFA, TFC is still

a small organization.

Table1: Comparison between TFA and TFC

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(Adapted by author based on Data from TFA and TFC websites in 2015)

However, it doesn’t mean that TFC is lack of potential. Table 2 shows the

development trend of TFC in last 4 years and its predicated growth in the future. It is

obviously that TFC is growing very fast in the number of teachers and effected

students. According to the TFC’s annual report, the number of incoming corps from

2010 to 2013 is 50, 100, 120, 202 people respectively. New comers in 2013 are 4

times than that in 2010. Because the program lasts for two years, so the actual number

of teachers working in local schools should be double of above number. As Table 2

shows, the number of students taught by corps teachers increased 6 times from 2010

to 2013. The impact of TFC is quite obvious.

Table2: The increase trend of teachers and effected students of TFC (2011-2016)

(Picture from Teach for China annual report 2012-2013)

According to Table3, we can find that TFA’s growth speed is not as fast as TFC’s.

The size of incoming corps didn’t change much from 1990 to 2000. The number of

students taught by corps members in 1990 is 7000, which became double in 2000.

However, in the context of TFC, this number became double in one year. Although it

partly resulted from the huge population in China, the success of TFC still can’t be

neglected.

Tabel 3: Corps Size and Student Taught of TFA

The year of found

Reached Cities

Accumulative

number of

Teachers

Accumulative

numbers of

Students

Teach For China 2008 4 600 100,000

Teach for America 1989 50 33,000 3,000,000

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(Data from Teach for American website; Data valid as of: August 2014)

It is notable that TFC’s growth speed is much more quickly than TFA, which can be

related to the “voluntary teaching boom” in China recently years. The boom is led by

two reasons, firstly, Chinese government have published a lot of policies to encourage

university graduates to go to remote and rural place. For example, government has

published a policy that, for the student who would like to work in the rural area as a

teacher, their four years’ tuition will be afforded by government. And more and more

civil servant positions tend to have a requirement that the applicant must have worked

in a rural place. Secondly, the “voluntary teaching boom” can be related to the

media’s advisement. Many voluntary teachers were nominated and rewarded as the

“The person who moved Chinese people most” by China Central Television. Because

the prize itself is full of impact and appealing, many Chinese youth are starting to

focus the educational inequity issue and deciding to take part in voluntary teaching.

TFC developed exactly during the boom, in addition, its model of combining

voluntary teaching and leadership cultivation are also very attractive. Hence, TFC

developed quite fast since its establishment.

3.2.2 Revenue resource

Table 4 shows the revenue resource of TFC and TFA in 2012. We can find that most

of their revenue is from foundations. Both for TFA and TFC, the revenue from

foundations are more than 1/3 of the annual revenue resource. However, in other ways

of collecting revenue, TFA and TFC differ a lot. (1) Government’s support for TFC is

just 5% of the total revenue, according to TFC anuual report, the mainly government

revenue is from Baoshan, Lincang and Dali municipal government. TFC’s most

schools established in above cities so that we can infer that TFC can only get

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monetary support from the local government which they have close collaboration with.

On the contrast, TFA’s government revenue support occupies near 1/3 of their total

revenue, in which the ratio of federal funding and state’s funding is 1:2.

Table 4: TFC and TFA’s revenue resource in 2012

(Data from TFC annual report 2012-2013 and TFA annual report 2012-2013;

Adapted by author)

Referring to TFA’s homepage, TFA is receiving revenue from both state and

federal government .The state’s funding is mainly from state government and

department of education, for example, the State of Missouri, Mississippi Department

of Education and so on. The federal funding is mainly from The Corporation for

National and Community Service and U.S. Department of Education. We can

conclude that TFC doesn’t get enough support from the central government and the

revenue from local government is limited.

The corporation and individual revenue support differs among TFA and TFC

dramatically. TFC’s corporation support revenue is two times of TFA’s, while, TFA’s

individual support revenue is two times of TFC’s. This can be related to the different

socioeconomic environment of two countries. We can infer that American companies

don’t have a very high degree of freedom to do charity and Chinese citizen’s attitude

towards charity is not as active as Americans.

4. Critiques towards TFC and TFA

Because TFC is just established for 6years, there is seldom study toward it. However,

for TFA, the critiques includes the effectiveness of TFA, the retention of teachers and

the TFA schemes’ challenging to the traditional teach preparing system.

4.1 Are the TFA Teachers as Effective as Traditionally Prepared Teachers.

Although we will infer that TFA teachers will not as effective as normal teachers

for they just received 1 month intensive training. Some corps in TFA also states that

they suspect themselves because they are not effective enough. Here is what a former

TFA teacher said to an interview: “When I accepted the offer to join the corps, Teach

for America inundated me with materials and videos that showed its teachers as

miracle workers. I drank the Kool-Aid, honestly shocked during my summer institute

training to see data that showed not all corps members were making significant gains

with their students.” (Lowe, B. 2010, May 22). However, the evidence about TFA

Foundations Corporations Individuals Events Government

Teach for

China

37% 21% 12% 25% 5%

Teach for

America

33% 10% 25% 2% 30%

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teacher’s effectiveness is mixed. There is insufficient evidence to conclude that TFA

teachers are systematically less effective in fostering or advancing student learning

than their traditionally prepared peers, either novice or experienced. (McConney, A.,

Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. 2012).Some empirical studies shows that TFA

teachers are on average, produced significantly better student outcomes than non-TFA

teachers (Raymond, M., Fletcher, S., & Luque, J. 2001).Table 5 shows additional

amount that TFA teachers improved student test score compared to other teachers

from Raymond, M.et al(2001)’s research. It is obviously that TFA teachers are more

effective.

Table 5: Additional Amount that TFA Teachers Improved Student Test Scores Compared to

Other Teachers, in Percentage of a Standard Deviation

4.2 THE RETENTION OF TFA TEACHERS

It is reported that 30% of new teachers leave in the first year, and 50% leave within

the first 5 years. Few studies provide actual data around the retention of TFA teachers

in the schools (McConney, A., Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. 2012). Many people

would believe that most TFA teachers will leave their schools after the two years

commitment. The fact is that almost 43.6% of TFA teachers remained in their initial,

low-income placement school beyond their two-year obligation. However, many

individuals who stayed in teaching did leave their original placement schools at some

point. About half of those who remained in teaching after their third year had changed

schools. And, after the fourth year, only 14.8% continued to teach in their original

school. This level of turnover is very problematic from the perspective of low-income

schools and their students since 71.3% of education majored students taught longer

than four years (Donaldson, M., & Johnson, S. 2011, October 4).

This level of retention is very problematic from the perspective of low-income

schools and their students. The relatively short duration of this commitment means

that hiring a TFA teacher is likely to have both overt and hidden costs for schools and

students (McConney, A., Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. 2012).

4.3 Impact on Traditional university-based teacher education

In recent years, deregulation of teacher education is widely discussed in US.

Teachers who are educated and certified via alternative routes established part of the

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teacher education landscape now. For example, by 2008, more than 60,000

alternatively prepared/certified teachers were employed in US schools, and the

likelihood of a public secondary school teacher being alternatively or provisionally

certified had risen from 2.5% (18,800 teachers) in 1993-1994 to 4.9% (44,600

teachers) in 2003-200 4(McConney, A., Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. 2012).

TFA can be classified in the alternative route of fast track teacher training program

and can have three identifiable types of impact on traditional teacher education:

(1) Promotion of view of teacher preparation that de-skills the profession of

teacher and potential devalues public education (McConney, A., Price, A., &

Woods-McConney, A. 2012). The fast track approach implicitly suggests that few

special skills are needed to teach. Such a view instead communicates that only a

strong knowledge of content, an ability to communicate, and a good dose of altruism

are necessary to teach successfully (Lacsko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002; Labaree, 2010).

(2) Potential competition for teacher education students. It seems that along with

the TFA teachers swarming into schools, the students majored in education will suffer

from more competition. However, TFA’s does not emphasize competing with

traditional teacher education programmes for its participants and it aims at making a

new group of leaders who have passion in eliminating educational inequity rather than

just increasing the number of teachers. “Teach for America taps into a non-traditional

pool for teachers” (Xu, et al., 2007, p. 2).

5. CONCLUSION

Generally speaking, Teach for American and Teach for China have obtained big

success in their respective contexts. In addition, the international NPO---Teach for All,

which is generated from Teach for American’s, has already introduced the model to 40

counties and continuously sending excellent students to the less resourced, remote and

poor area. According to the comparison between TFA and TFC based on their annual

report, we can find that the growth speed of TFC is much faster than that of TFA. This

can be related to the “voluntary teaching boom” in China and also shows the concern

towards educational inequity in Chinese civil society. Besides this, it is obviously that

TFA received more revenue from government than TFC. Both states government and

federal government are allocating revenue to TFA and consists 30% of its total

revenue resource. However, in the context of China, only the local government offer

monetary support to TFC and the budget is limited.

Some people are questioning on TFA’s teacher preparation, retention and its threat

to traditional university based teacher education. For the teacher preparation issue,

based on some empirical studies in American, it is proved that TFA’ teachers are

effective as normal teachers. However, the teacher retention problem indeed exists. As

for the issue of threaten to traditional university based teacher education, it is still

under discussion.

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The teacher preparation and retention problems can be seen as the common issues

for Teach for All’s model. It is difficult to say that TFC is also effective in China

without any empirical studies. As for the retention issue, since most of Chinese

remote area are experiencing a shortage of teacher. Although the TFC teachers are just

staying two years there, it still contributes to reliving the local teacher drain. Since the

legislation of teacher qualification in China is imperfect, the discussion of

deregulation of teacher education is not existing in the context of China.

According to the above comparison and analysis, we can find that TFA and TFC are

sharing a lot of common characteristics and also differ in some degree. The

differences normally result from socioeconomic development and legislation. For the

sustainable development of TFC, it requires the effort of many sides: more empirical

studying of academia, more budgets from government and citizen’s awareness of

social responsibility.

References:

Psach4aropoulos, G. (1994). Returns to investment in education: A global update.

World Development, 22(9), 1325-1343.

Raymond, M., Fletcher, S., & Luque, J. (2001). An Evaluation of Teacher Differences

and Student Outcomes in Houston, Texas. Hoover Institution Stanford

University.

Xu, C., & Hong, M. (2007). The new route of American teachers training under the

deregulation system: Analyzing the development, function, merit and miss of

the "Teach for American" program. Studies in Foreign Education, 34(7), 24-28.

Robinson, B., & Wenwu, Y. (2009). Strengthening basic education: An EU-China

joint project in Gansu Province. European Journal of Education, 44(1), 95-109.

McConney, A., Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. (2012). Fast track teacher

education: A review of the research literature on Teach For All schemes. Perth:

Murdoch University, Centre for Learning, Change and Development.

Teach for American Annual Letter 2012-2013. (2013). Teach for America.

Teach for China Annual Report 2012-2013.(2013).Teacher for China.

Donaldson, M., & Johnson, S. (2011, October 4). TFA Teachers: How Long Do They

Teach? Why Do They Leave? Education Week.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/04/kappan_donaldson.html

Lowe, B. (2010, May 22). Mind the Gap: An Insider's Critique of Teach for America.

GOOD.http://magazine.good.is/articles/mind-the-gap-an-insider-s-critique-of-tea

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_China

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mmer-training

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https://www.teachforamerica.org/our-organization/our-history.