Crosscut Article on UW's College of Ed and Teach for America

Crosscut published an article I wrote about the new partnership between the UW's College of Education and Teach for America.

In it, I pass no real judgment on TFA; the article is about how the partnership came about and its central creator, Dean Tom Stritikus. I had done a public disclosure request from UW and created a timeline of e-mails about the evolution of the partnership (although I was not able to include many other quotes from e-mails). I was careful to try not to take any quote out of context. I had a deadline and a word count limit and so I was not able to flesh out what has occurred past about May 18th but I'll try to do that in a separate thread (as I think there may be more to say).

As I previously wrote about here, Stritikus introduced the idea of TFA to the district. (TFA doesn't directly court districts and my understanding is that generally they have some kind of "sponsor" who does it.) Stritikus wrote to Wendy Kopp, the head of TFA, even before he officially became dean to tell her that he was the first TFA alum to become a Dean of a COE, he wanted to create a partnership with UW and TFA and could she help do press for his deanship. He certainly isn't short on self-promotion or cronyism.

Stritikus says some cryptic things here and there that certainly can be open to interpretation in several ways. For example, he e-mails the local TFA director, Janis Ortega, after the successful vote by the Board for the TFA contract and says this:

"Great work on securing the SPS [Seattle Public Schools] vote."

You could say the word "securing" is an interesting word to use in this case. Great work on lobbying for the SPS vote? Great work on persuading the Board on the SPS vote? Or something else?

He also says in an e-mail that he might talk to the UW President, Phyllis Wise (I was told by her office that he never did) about "tuition flexibility" for the TFA students. He said:

"Since it is an odd time in the University, anything might be possible."

Also a phase that is open to interpretation (or maybe him wistfully thinking outloud).

He also repeatedly says that the partnership with UW is not an endorsement of TFA. It is hard to believe that for this effort and the resources needed to create the program, that the UW College of Education doesn't believe in TFA's program. There's been a lot of talk by faculty about doing research about TFA but TFA doesn't have to be in Seattle for that to happen.

Some other troubling quotes:

In an e-mail to the dean, a TFA staffer, Justin Yan, states, "…I thought I'd reach out to you regarding our recruitment efforts considering it's a fairly controversial topic, considering that TFA applicants will now be competing for spots against your MIT [master's in teaching] grads."

Yes, and this is just what worries those grads a lot.

College of Education faculty member Charles "Cap" Peck writes to Stritikus about the program between UW and TFA and worries about TFA's “prescribed curriculum” and that “this will tend to marginalize” UW’s role. Peck continues, "They clearly do not expect us to have much of value to contribute to this process."

Professor Peck said this in early March. When I asked him about it earlier this week, he said he really hadn't known much about TFA then but does now and thinks highly of them. What is odd is that the agreement (which I have seen in 4 versions but am waiting for the final signed agreement) really is very strict on what TFA wants versus what UW wants. I would venture to say it is apparent in the "partnership" agreement who is in the driver's seat.

But here is the crux of it for me:

What about that issue of "debt load” and "tuition flexibility” for TFA recruits? According to the partnership agreement between UW and TFA, total fees and tuition for the TFA program will be about $11,000 per year, which is about the same as in-state grad students pay. However, the majority of TFA recruits will be out-of-state students.

The normal tuition for out-of-state graduate students would be between $24,000 to $26,000. TFA recruits receive a government grant from the Americorps program for more than $10,000 over two years. They also are allowed to postpone making regular payments on student loans during the two years of service.

This all comes as UW recently announced that it was taking fewer in-state residents next year because they need the tuition money that out-of-state students bring. That likely means fewer Seattle Public Schools’ 2011 grads entering UW.

How can we be asked to accept that there are so few dollars available at UW that fewer in-state students can attend UW AND tuition will likely go up 15-20% and yet there are funds to subsidize out-of-state TFA students?

I was not able to clarify one point in the article but I will here as I suspect the Dean and the College will try to make this argument.

UW is required, under a bill passed last year, to provide an alternative certification program (all public higher ed institutions must do this). They could have created anything under the 4 different alt routes and even created a program with a much wider audience (give how huge UW is). But no, they created the narrowest, least available route possible.

(For some reason, UW COE claims they never had an alternative certification program before but they certainly did because it is referenced in two research documents. It likely ran from about 2001-2004).

Because the people going for an alternative certification tend to be already working, the law provides for the tuition to be lower. I think this is fine.

So I believe UW COE will say, "We HAD to provide a lower tuition because the law requires it." That's true to the spirit of the law except that no alternative route certifications are made in consideration that those in the program might come from out-of-state.

And that would make sense. I spoke to administrators at two private schools and they said they never heard of people coming in from out-of-state to start taking an alternative certification route. When I explained it was for TFA, they both that it was a special case and they didn't think the legislators would have expected anyone to come from out-of-state to use that route. All the students in their alt certification programs are Washington State residents. (And indeed, a few TFA recruits may be Washington State residents which would make the tuition fine.)

Why is UW bending over backwards for TFA?

Why is our district bringing in out-of-state college grads for teaching jobs when there is no shortage of certificated teachers in Seattle?

You have to ask yourself just what is driving this. If I had to guess, it would need to be a pretty big player who convinced the Board to vote yes and who allowed the Dean and TFA to believe (with a lot of confidence) that yes, there would be TFA teachers in SPS in the fall of 2011. And who's the biggest player in Seattle? Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation. That's where I'd put my money.