TFA Alumni Have the Right Ideas

Over the weekend, Teach for America held their DC-metro area meeting. The event brought together leaders in education including Prince George's County Superintendent John Deasy and District of Columbia Chancellor Michelle Rhee. A few of our staff are Teach for America alumni, and they participated in the conference by handing out information about our campaign, talking with current and former teachers, and recruiting 60 additional supporters to our effort.

Aaron Seligman, our field director, attended the opening panel that featured Superintendent Deasy and Chancellor Rhee. He told me that they were asked, "What is the most important thing that would make your schools better?"

I'm encouraged by their answers. They both said that having outstanding teachers and being able to retain them in the classroom is the most important element to improving our schools.

I agree -- we know that teachers have a greater impact on student learning than anything else in schools.  It's critical that we have an effective teacher in every classroom. I applaud Teach for America for their emphasis on recruiting the best performing college graduates to the classroom. However, to attract the nearly 3 million teachers we will need to hire within this decade, we also need the next president to work with state and local leaders to find ways to attract talented adults to the profession.

I was also impressed to hear that Professor David Gergen from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government spoke about how education is linked to our decline in global competitiveness and the problem this creates in our economy. I've blogged about this many times to get the facts about the relationship between education and economic competitiveness, download the fact-sheet.