A-Rus at This Week in Education wonders if alternative certification programs like Teach For America are becoming the “AOL of teacher preparation programs — once innovative, and for a time dominant, but now increasingly outmoded.” He posts a picture of those once-ubiquitous AOL discs to drive home the point.
The cutting edge of teacher prep now seems to be the residency model popularized in Boston and other places, and heralded in a recent report cited by EdWeek (Urban Teacher Residencies Touted). The other reason is that people like Barack Obama are talking about residency programs, not alt cert. TFA has grown tremendously in recent years, and had a lot of Republican support. I’m not sure it will have a similarly privileged position in an Obama administration.
Wasn’t it just last night that both Obama and McCain were pledging to boost America’s commitment to national service? McCain touted TFA by name from the stage at Columbia and Obama has put forth a plan for “universal voluntary citizen service.” Aren’t we looking at a need for 2 million teachers in the next decade? Aren’t lines of applicants still failing to form outside struggling schools?
We needn’t lose sleep worrying about TFA’s decline. Russo did make me feel nostalgic for the AOL discs, however. I used them for coasters.
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