Budget Cuts Place Limits on Teach for America

As graduation approaches and many seniors look ahead to a grim job market, the nonprofit Teach for America program presents an appealing post-graduation path. Yet even TFA is feeling the brunt of bleak economic circumstances—especially in New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed significant budget cuts to city schools.

A popular choice for many Columbia graduates, TFA is a national corps that places recent college students in salaried public school teaching positions around the country. If accepted, TFA program participants become employees of the district in which they are placed. Yet as many areas look to strip their budgets of all nonessentials, the need for these teaching recruits is in question.

With about 15,000 teachers and Department of Education employees on the chopping block of Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts, TFA in New York City has had to significantly reduce the number of accepted applicants this year.

Although in past years, TFA has accepted 500 students to its New York program, only 350 will make the cut this time around. “We have been planning aggressively and very far in advance,” David Stanley, recruitment director for TFA’s Northeast Recruitment Team, said. “We have seen this issue of teacher placements coming up for awhile.” But the acceptance cutbacks, he noted, are a measure to ensure that TFA does not accept anyone whose school placement is not guaranteed.

“I am not worried about losing my job [for next year] because they sent us an e-mail assuring us that we would all be placed and that they reduced the corps size for this year to 350 from 500 in order to make sure that we will all have placement,” said TFA acceptee and Engineering Student Council President Peter Valeiras, SEAS ’09. Valeiras, who was guaranteed a spot in a New York school for next year, is still waiting to hear which school he will be placed in.

Columbia students interested in applying to TFA in the future need not worry about a decrease in the acceptance rate in general, according to Stanley. Despite cutbacks in the New York City public school district, Stanley said, “We have a much greater and increasing placement in rural areas.”

Areas like the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans are scaling up the number of TFA teachers they hire. For instance, New Orleans, which typically takes 60 to 80 TFA teachers, took 250 in the 2008-2009 school year and will take 250 again in the upcoming 2009-2010 school year.

“We are actually accepting more people than we did last year,” Stanley said. “The number accepted nationally into TFA is increasing, not declining, but the ratios in certain areas are changing along with the economic landscape.” TFA funding comes from both public and private sectors, and this diversity of funding sources has helped the program weather the nation’s economic storm.

While TFA’s organizational operations are not changing much as a result of the recession, a number of the schools to which the program sends teachers have been impacted. Students selected for teaching positions are employees of the school district in which they work, not of TFA as an organization, so economic downturn and NYC budget cuts will affect the roughly 70 schools in Columbia’s surrounding area—including Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and Harlem, where TFA sends teachers.

TFA might be placing more teachers nationally, but concern lingers about the results of cutbacks in inner-city schools. “I am worried about the effects that this recession will have on the New York City public school system,” said TFA acceptee Hannah Johns, CC ’09, who will also be placed in the NYC area. “It’s exciting that the Obama administration is making education a priority and that the stimulus package is providing funding for education, but I think we need to make an even bigger commitment to get money flowing to the states so that they don’t have to take even more precious resources away from students who need them most.”