Many students at OU might be considering whether or not they should apply for Teach for America. Teach for America is a program which takes recent college graduates and places them in schools in poor communities. The idea is that doing so will somehow better education equity in these poor communities which will have long-term impacts on the success of the pupils.

Students with some desire for social justice consider joining the program to help decrease poverty by creating better college opportunities for poor children. The problem is that there is no compelling reason to think that Teach for America helps do this at all.

Let’s look at the underlying premise of the program: if we take well-off college kids and put them in low-income public schools, this will help the students in that school do better.

There is absolutely no reason to suspect this would be the case. This idea rests on the assumption that students in poor communities do poorly because of bad teachers and the assumption that recent undergraduates are somehow better than traditional teachers.

In reality, the reason why students from poor communities do poorly goes way beyond teacher performance. Poverty causes havoc for home situations. Impoverished communities are more prone to drug abuse, crime and many other distracting conditions. In addition, schools in poorer communities have less funding which decreases the number of instructional tools they are capable of acquiring. In short, it is the conditions of poverty that lead to low student achievement, not teacher quality.

In addition to this fact, why would a recent undergraduate from OU be a better teacher than any other teacher? Of course some recent undergraduates might be better than some teachers, but if Teach for America is to serve any real purpose, it should be the case that, on the whole, recent undergraduates are better than traditional teachers.

There is no compelling reason to suspect that recent OU graduates would be better teachers than any other teacher. The empirical studies on the efficacy of Teach for America teachers are split, but even the studies that show a positive impact, only show very slightly positive impacts. A study conducted in 2004 found that Teach for America teachers had no effect on students’ reading levels and only a slightly positive effect in students’ mathematical literacy.

But even if Teach for America did somehow significantly increase the quality of education and even if this did somehow mean all of the students involved were able to go to college and get degrees, what would be the impact of this? Some narrow-thinking individuals have this idea that what causes poverty is poor educational opportunities. Those who can go to college and get degrees make more money than those who do not, so surely if we just made it so that everyone could go to college, poverty would be solved!

The problem with this kind of logic is obvious. Ending the cycle of poverty does not end poverty, all it does is redistribute it. So long as there are more people than jobs, there will be poverty. So long as there are jobs which do not pay a living wage, there will be poverty. Increasing educational opportunities does not do anything to solve these actual problems.

Those who are thinking of participating in Teach for America with a social justice mission in mind should consider this. Although a far more daunting task for sure, those really interested in social justice should consider ways of solving problems like unavoidable unemployment and low-wage jobs.

On top of failing to make a dent in poverty, Teach for America actually detracts from social justice by hurting real teachers. Teach for America students take low, entrance-level pay while also receiving a government subsidy for their salary in the form of Americorps stipends. Schools lay off teachers and then hire Teach for America teachers to fill positions that real teachers would otherwise be filling. Teach for America teachers are undercutting the wage needs of real teachers and causing them to be laid off as a result.

Imagine this: a well-off college student takes a subsidized teaching position at an impossibly low wage and displaces actual teachers who might already be struggling to get by — all for social justice!

For anyone who has any concern for labor rights, this is extremely abusive. Not undercutting wage demands of often unionized workers is rule number one of how to be a serious social justice advocate.

In sum, Teach for America is not nearly as good of an idea as it first sounds. It has a limited effect on the poor students it reaches, does nothing to solve systemic problem which cause the poverty it is trying to combat and causes the unemployment of real teachers who might need a job. If you choose to do Teach for America, do it to build your resume, not out of a concern for social justice.