TEACH FOR (SOME OF) AMERICA

Teach for America (TFA) -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42 percent from 2008. More than 11 percent of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35 percent of African-American seniors at Harvard. [bravo]

So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly: Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that TFA is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of TFA teachers they will accept. This is a tragic lost opportunity:

• TFA picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money.
• More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it.
• Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment [?] to a teaching career; despite two-thirds staying in the field after their two years.

But why have any caps? TFA young people should be able to compete on equal terms with any other new teaching applicant.

The fact that they can't is another example of how unions and the education establishment put tenure and power above student achievement.

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