Best & brightest

It started as an idealistic dream and ended up as an education revolution.

From her dorm room at Princeton University in 1989, college student Wendy Kopp decided to launch a movement to improve public education in the US.

For the bright-eyed 21-year-old, the idea seemed simple enough: mobilise the nation's smartest university graduates, convince them to suspend their plans for lucrative careers and offer them a trade-off - a job as a teacher in some of the country's toughest classrooms.

Like many young adults, Ms Kopp's desire to change the world overlooked the difficulty of doing so. She became so obsessed by the idea that she wrote a letter to President George Bush senior, suggesting he should create this new "teacher corps" in the mould of John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps decades earlier.

"With high hopes I mailed an impassioned letter," Ms Kopp writes in her biography, One Day, All Children. "It must have slipped into the wrong stack. In return, I received a form letter rejecting my application for a job."

Ms Kopp wasn't easily deterred, making the idea the subject of her thesis and persisting even when her own professor called her "quite evidently deranged".

Eventually, she secured enough funding, enlisted a team of equally altruistic youth and embarked on the arduous task of travelling around the country to recruit the best and brightest graduates to her seemingly impossible cause.

Fast forward 20 years: more than 20,000 students have joined the Teach For America program, an ambitious bid to make a difference to some of the poorest students in the country.
 
In 2002, a similar program - Teach First - began in the UK, training top university graduates to teach in hard-to-staff and struggling schools.

And now, Australia has sniffed the wind, with the Victorian Government adopting the program as part of its new education blueprint, while the Federal Government pushes the other states to follow.

For Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, the reasons for adopting the plan are simple: Australia's average performance in literacy has worsened in recent years, largely because of a decline in high-performing students.
 
Completion rates are relatively low by OECD standards. The gap between the haves and have nots in education is largely unchanged.

In the latest stage of what Labor calls its "Education Revolution", Canberra will drive a "national policy partnership" with the states to boost teaching quality.
 
It will create national standards to reward principals and the best teachers. It will give the states money to attract and train teachers.
 
And it will have measures to recruit the nation's most talented graduates into teaching and place them where, it is hoped, they make the greatest difference.

"When you look at the UK and US examples, you are actually seeing success," says Ms Gillard.
 
"You're seeing success in that the best and brightest graduates are choosing to go teaching. I think we have to say to ourselves that while we have some unbelievably talented young Australians who decide each year to go teaching, overall, there is concern about where we've got to with the demand for teaching (and) the level of entry scores for teacher education courses. So programs that have lifted the perception of the value of teaching so high in the minds of the best and brightest graduates is something that we can learn from."

But while state and federal policymakers talk up the schemes, not everyone agrees they are worth pursuing.

Critics argue that even the smartest university students of law, medicine or engineering may not be prepared to deal with the rigours of teaching in a challenging school.

Teacher education is a continuing process, they say - one that goes on beyond the graduation ceremony.

Some fear that adopting the international schemes could do more harm than good, by leading to a further burnout of teachers in the system; others say there is a lack of research about the effectiveness of the programs, or worry that they won't fit within Australia's school setting.

David Zyngier, a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at Monash University's education faculty, says that if performance is to be turned around, difficult schools need the most experienced teachers who have shown an ability to engage with students from diverse backgrounds.

"Sending bright-eyed and bushy-tailed graduates to difficult situations is not going to be helping anybody," he says. "The programs in the United States and England have been terminal programs.

People take part for two years. But teaching is a long-term commitment: there's a three-year mentoring process and internship process after graduation, before you get off your P-plates and become a permanent member of staff.

"If we go down the road of trying to entice the best graduates into teaching with some kind of financial reward, I think we're going to be doing them a disservice but, more importantly, we'll also be doing a disservice to our students who need highly qualified and dedicated teachers."

Ringwood Secondary College teacher Jenny Currie knows all too well that becoming a good teacher isn't as easy as one might suspect.

Ms Currie, 24, started teaching this year after completing a three-year arts degree at Melbourne University, followed by a one-year diploma of education.

Her final year involved teaching rounds, including jobs in some of Melbourne's most disadvantaged communities where she experience everything from "outright abuse and students swearing at the teachers" to an overall lack of respect or engagement.

One year of teacher training barely equips you for life in the classroom, she says, let alone a few weeks of boot camp offered under the international programs.

"I'd worry that some of these programs would really focus on one quality of the teacher - having the knowledge to teach - but forgetting about all the other skills it takes, as well as the personal qualities you need," she says.
 
"Anybody can learn year seven history - it's not that hard - but actually learning how to teach and how to be patient and deal with students isn't always a given just because you get high distinctions in law or accounting."

Premier John Brumby disagrees. "There are many kids in universities who haven't made up their mind about what they want to do when they want to complete" he says.
 
"They could be students in arts, commerce, law, science or medicine. They haven't yet decided what they want to do. And for them, the opportunity to teach for a year, or two or three years, is a great opportunity."

Mr Brumby, once a teacher at Bendigo's Eaglehawk Secondary College, is adamant the scheme will help tackle the woes of some of Victoria's most challenging schools, many of which are concentrated in Melbourne's north and west - areas with high concentrations of poor families.

He doesn't see a problem with the fact that many graduates will leave the education system once their time is up - indeed, their teaching stint would simply make them more valuable to employers when they apply for other jobs, he argues.

In Victoria, the government will recruit about 170 graduates from 2010, offering them a starting salary of $52,000 - competitive when compared with graduate salaries in other professions, such as medicine (an average of $51,000), engineering ( $46,000) or accounting ($35,000).

The Victorian model will give young graduates about six weeks' training before they are assigned to a class.

In America, the process is much the same: graduates get about five weeks of intensive "summer school training" before they are assigned for two years in an urban or regional school.

Depending on the location, they earn $US27,000 to $US40,000 ($34,000-$50,000) a year and get a $US4725 education bonus at the end of each year plus access to loans up to $US6000.

In Britain, participants do a six-week residential teacher training course, which includes theory, school observations and skills.

There's even a seminar known as the "cock-up club" in which business leaders and educators talk about their biggest failings and how they recovered.

During their first year, graduates who sign up to Teach First teach about 70% of the school timetable and get continuous training and mentoring.

By their second year, they receive a minimum qualified teacher salary and are offered extra credit or experience to earn above the base scale.

The US and UK programs are viewed as successful based on the number of graduates who sign on.

Many schools have reported benefiting from the arrival of smart, enthusiastic graduates who genuinely want to make a difference.

But the level of continuing support they receive is questioned. And the number of graduates who drop out of the program as soon as their initial stint expires raises concerns about whether the costs are worthwhile.

A recent analysis of the UK program found that a third of schools that had hired a graduate retained half or more by the end of the two-year period. A third retained less than half and a third had not retained any.

And then there are the horror stories. Writing in New York's City Journal in 2003, Yale graduate Joshua Kaplowitz outlined how he gave gave up a promising job with a polling firm to take up an appointment with Teach for America.

Mr Kaplowitz was assigned to Emery Elementary School, a tough primary school in a mostly African-American neighbourhood north of Washington DC.

"I smiled to myself as I imagined the creative lessons I would give to these children, who had never had a dynamic young teacher who could get them excited about scholarship the way I knew I could," he recalled.

"Their minds were kindling ... All they needed was a spark to ignite a love of learning that would lift them beyond the drugs, violence and poverty. That spark, I hoped, would be me."

His optimism diminished within hours. His year five class took every opportunity to misbehave; one would throw wads of paper in the middle of lessons, another would scream like an "air-raid siren", some would get violent with each other. In the end, he was too busy putting out fires to teach.

As the months dragged on - and without the necessary support of the school's administration or what he says was the necessary training to begin with - the job got harder as his classroom dissolved into complete chaos.

Just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, it did: one day, he escorted a troubled child out of class after he'd asked to go to the bathroom.

About 15 minutes later, a security guard appeared at his door. The boy had claimed to his mother, who had been at the school for a meeting, that Mr Kaplowitz had violently pushed him in the chest out of the classroom, injuring his back and head.

Two months later, Mr Kaplowitz was slapped with a $20 million lawsuit. The claim was eventually unproven in court but an aspiring teaching career was over.

This is the sort of story state Education Minister Bronwyn Pike hopes she won't hear when Victoria begins its own version of the scheme.

While the government is still to find a provider, the trick, she says, will be ensuring that graduates are given adequate training before they enter a school - and continuing support during their time within it.

"We're working on that at the moment but certainly the feedback from other jurisdictions is that it's a very successful program," says Ms Pike.

"It is about making sure there are sufficient contact hours (during the training period) to get across the essential elements and then about having support."

But the extent to which university students want the experience is debatable.

In the early days of Teach For America, Kopp and her team distributed a flyer at Yale university, which tugged at the idealism of that generation.
 
"Yalies, remember the great privilege that we've been given and please consider, before embarking on your ambitious careers, to devote two years towards bolstering the general strength and wellbeing of our nation," said one of the flyers, which drew 170 responses.
It is yet to be seen what sort of recruitment program will be undertaken in Victoria - and if it will work.

Third-year Melbourne University law and engineering student Antigone Rogers reckons many students have already decided on a career path by the time they reach university and that it would be more effective to appeal to students at high school to take on teaching degrees.

Asked if she could be convinced to give up her goals in law or engineering to teach in a struggling school, her answer is simple: "No".

"I'm sure there would be some students interested in it but I don't know if it would be an effective program," she says.
 
"It just seems to undermine teachers and teaching as a career. There are specialised courses for education - my course does not have anything that would help me with teaching, especially in a tough school."

But Federal Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith reckons Australia should give programs such as Teach for America a chance.

On a recent visit to the organisation's headquarters in Washington, he was struck by the enthusiasm and determination of the young recruits. They believed they could make a difference once they entered the classroom.

"It's played an important role at the direct level in the schools but also at an indirect level - and that is, the experience it has given over two decades to the armies of people who have been through it," he says.

Bronwyn Pike knows that for any graduate recruitment plan to be successful, it must have the support of teachers and principals - and so far the response has been mixed.

Melbourne Girls College principal Judy Crowe says it is critical "to get smart people into teaching" and any opportunity to break down the barriers between schools and the community is a good thing.

"The more people who have experienced other fields or the more people who do a stint in teaching and then take that back into another profession role, the better. The days should be gone where we think people are going to stay in one job for life," she says.

But Australian Education Union branch president Mary Bluett disagrees.

She points out that being academically smart in law or medicine doesn't mean you're cut out for the demands of the classroom.

Her federal counterpart, Angelo Gavrielatos, thinks the government has the formula wrong.

Instead of spending money recruiting high-flying graduates to lift the performance of struggling schools, he says, it should be investing more into existing university teacher training programs and better training and career structures for existing teachers.

Sue Willis, president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, is even more blunt: "In America, it's a solution that says the government is not prepared to do the right thing and invest in sufficient funds to ensure that kids in disadvantaged areas have well-qualified teachers," she says.

"It seems unfeasible to me that we'd ever suggest putting someone - just because they're bright - into a hospital as a nurse or doctor. Why would we allow our children to be in that sort of situation?"

Published: 15 September 2008