Reunions: SFER, TFA hold joint panel

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Students for Education Reform and Teach for America held a joint panel in McCosh 2 on Saturday morning as part of the weekend’s Reunions programming. The panelists included Rep. Jared Polis ’96, Alyson Goodner ’00, founder of The School Collective and a former member of the TFA corps, Eric Westendorf ’94, the chief academic officer at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., and Marc Sternberg ’95, deputy chancellor at the New York City Department of Education and a TFA alumnus.

The panel sought to address the problems surrounding the recruitment and retention of high-quality educators. While the panelists discussed their involvement with education reform from several different perspectives, all shared the experience of founding or working at charter schools in communities with substandard public schools.

Polis founded the Academy of Urban Learning in Colorado, a transitional housing program targeted toward homeless youths, as well as the New America School, a public charter school with four locations in Colorado and New Mexico that helps immigrant students learn English. Polis also served as superintendent of the New America School.

Since then, he has gravitated towards policy and advocacy in the reform movement. Polis discussed the federal government’s efforts to address the nation’s declining educational environment, citing a recently proposed Senate bill that would force teachers in Colorado to lose tenure if their students weren’t performing well on exams.

“We’re trying to make this issue a moral imperative,” he said.

Sternberg said his interest in education was sparked by a three-year stint with TFA as a corps member in the South Bronx. Soon after, he founded the Bronx Lab School to replace the phased-out Evander Childs High School. Since then, the high school’s graduation rate has risen from 31 percent to more than 75 percent.

Despite his success, he noted, individuals working with programs such as TFA are limited by school systems that are “systematically broken.”

“We’re got unions that have made it clear that they will protect inefficient teachers and inefficient organizations,” Sternberg said.

Westendorf echoed Sternberg’s worries, explaining that fixing the system will depend exclusively on talented teachers. “We are only as good as those teachers in those classrooms,” he said, adding that he didn’t feel secure about the well-being or longevity of E.L. Haynes, which his kindergarten-age daughter currently attends.

Sternberg noted, however, that during his years in the Bronx with TFA he was “only going to be as effective there as the institution allowed [him] to be.” Like Polis, he emphasized the importance and effectiveness of policy-making in effecting real change.

“This president and this secretary of education have done more to advance the cause of great teacher recruitment and retention than any organization out there,” Sternberg said.

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Goodner explained that a greater respect of the teaching profession could catalyze necessary change. “Teaching is the hardest profession out there,” she said. “Our culture has created this environment where teaching is ‘easy,’ and it’s something we really need to shift.”

She also praised parents’ roles in their children’s educations, relating the story of a parent who couldn’t speak English but contacted Goodner to ask how he could help his son learn. “Parents could be, and should be, our greatest partners,” Goodner said.

Although the issue of education reform is still in flux, the panelists said, they noted that they were grateful for and amazed by the attention education reform has been receiving. Sternberg joked that if he had applied to Teach for America this year along with the 50,000 other university students who did, he wouldn’t have been accepted.

“It is exciting to me that this many people, early on a Saturday morning, are excited about education reform,” Polis said, looking around the packed room.