Teach for America , Relay Graduate School , and the Charter School Networks : The Making of a Parallel Education Structure

Citation: Mungal, A.S. (2016). Teach For America, Relay Graduate School, and the charter school networks: The making of a parallel education structure. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(17). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2037 This article is part of EPAA/AAPE’s Special Issue on Teach For America: Research on Politics, Leadership, Race, and Education Reform, guest edited by Tina Trujillo and Janelle Scott.

for the emergence of alternative certification programs, growth of charter schools and increased accountability.This parallel structure developed due to ties between Teach For America (TFA), the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), institutions of higher education and their education schools1 , charter school networks and Relay Graduate School of Education, a teacher preparation school independent of institutions of higher education (Mungal, 2012(Mungal, , 2015)).These organizations will help to frame the parallel education structure.
This parallel education structure is made up of two co-existing teacher certification pathways that place their teachers with the New York City Department of Education but are under two distinct administrations.Pathway-1 is through teacher preparation programs located within the education schools.This pathway serves the non-charter or conventional public schools.Pathway-2 is through independent education organizations that recruit and prepare teachers for charter schools.This pathway also involves collaboration between several education organizations that focus on specific strengths of that organization.Pathway-2 serves the charter schools, which are public schools under the administration of non-profit charter school organizations such as KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Uncommon Schools and Achievement First.Teachers within the conventional local-area public schools are predominantly local teaching-degree candidates who apply to local education schools.Charter schools teachers in New York City are often recruited locally and nationally by TFA and then trained by Relay.While completing their coursework modules at Relay, the teaching-degree candidates are placed within high-needs charter schools and are teachers of record-earning a salary as they learn to navigate the classroom.Table 1 outlines the characteristics of the parallel education structure.

EMOs/ Charter School Orgs
The emergence of this parallel education structure has its roots within the teacher shortages that occurred in New York City in the 1970s and into the 2000s.The city acknowledged, "its habit of hobbling its poorest students with unqualified teachers and chaotic, dysfunctional schools" ("Fighting about the Teacher Shortage," 2000).At the same time, the United Federation of Teachers reported, "A teacher shortage will likely reach crisis proportions within several years," with 30-40,000 of the 75,000 teachers expected to retire or to be replaced (Hinojosa, 1999).While the shortage was a major worry, educational leaders such as New York City school Chancellor Rudy Crew was also concerned about the quality of teachers being hired.The dual concern of the growing shortage coupled with the quality of the new teachers led to calls for methods to draw potential teachers to the profession.A key response to the 1970s teacher shortages was the emergence of modern alternative preparation programs.In 1983 there were two alternative teacher preparation programs located in Virginia and New Jersey (Grossman & Loeb, 2008;Newman & Kay, 1999).By 2001 all states had been involved in some form of alternative preparation (U.S.Department of Education & Office of Postsecondary Education, 2013).These modern programs could be local, state sponsored or national programs such as Teach For America and Troops to Teachers.

Research Design
The original research, from a multiple interview study of faculty within university-based education schools, explored how faculty and administrators view the influence of alternative teacher preparation programs on university-based education schools.Between 2000 and 2012 these two entities were forced to partner with each other.This forced partnership presented opportunities for innovation such as a hybrid teacher preparation program (Mungal, 2015).It also suggested the creation of a parallel public school structure consisting of local public schools and publically funded, privately run public charter schools.These innovations emerged within the interview data of the interviewees.
The research involved six sites representing education schools in New York City that were directly or indirectly involved with alternative programs.The site selection was based on the size of institutions, the relation to alternative programs, and whether the institution was public or private.Table 2 provides an expanded account of the selected sites including information on type, affiliation and programs at the time of the study.The research questions guiding the original study focused upon: 1.How faculty and administrators understand the forced partnership with alternative teacher programs and; 2. How do faculty and administrators envision the direction of teacher preparation within the context of an independent graduate school?
From these interviews emerged the phenomenon of what I term as a parallel education structure operating within the local public education system.I conducted 21 in-depth interviews with interviewees from the six sites as well as document analysis of each of the programs.The interviewees range from deans, chairs and teaching and alternative program directors to administrators and professors.A number of the interviewees had taught in New York City schools during the teacher shortages.All interviewees were involved with preparing teaching-degree candidates.The interviews consisted of open-ended questions and lasted between 75-90 minutes with follow-up emails for clarification.Interviews were then transcribed and coded for relevant themes.I used the software Atlas.ti to help manage and organize the interview transcripts.

Policies and Reports on Teacher Preparation
The parallel education structure that emerged in New York City was due to a number of federal and state policies, and commissioned reports that addressed teacher quality and preparation.Concerns about teacher quality led to policies such as No Child Left Behind (2001), addressing the issue of a highly qualified teacher in every classroom (United States Department of Education, 2001).The current policies that impact education have their origins in the social movement of the 1960s.President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society would play a significant role in future education policies (Middleton, 2008) with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965.ESEA aimed to address equal rights, civil rights, and combat poverty.ESEA would be revised a number of times including Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (IASA), NCLB (2001), American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA).
Following the end of World War II, Europe underwent reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the United States emerged as a superpower.The key economic ideology during this period was from English economist John Maynard Keynes.Keynes advocated that government should play a large role in the economy.This Keynesian model supported a circular flow of money, putting funds into the hands of marginalized groups who would in turn put money back into the economy.This model supported a welfare state that sought to protect its citizens (Darder, 2015).Hyslop-Margison & Sears (2006) describes the welfare state as: A nation where the government accepts responsibility for ensuring its citizens receives necessary levels of basic goods and services.A welfare state commits public funds to meet the basic needs of its citizens in fundamental areas such as education, health services…provide housing or housing subsidies.Antipoverty programs and a system of personal and corporate progressive taxation where wealth distribution is a central objective are also typical features of the welfare state.(p. 3) This Keynesian model would be replaced in the late 1970s with the shift to free market ideologies.
The shift brought a more business and managerial framework to public institutions.The aim was to remove government control and oversight while increasing accountability and self-regulation (Engel, 2000).Market ideologies are also referred to as globalization, deregulation, neoliberalism, marketization, and privatization (Edwards & DeMatthews, 2014).For supporters of deregulation, "the free market, by itself will solve problems by deregulating teacher hiring and teacher education" (Apple, 2007, p. 182).With this emphasis on accountability, educators, researchers and policymakers began looking more closely at the effectiveness and quality of teachers (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005).This scrutiny led to the public perception of a flawed education system with low quality teachers.Driving the policy changes were these criticisms leveled against a weak education system.Criticism of education and preparation has been an ongoing phenomenon.Over the past 50 years, researchers such as Koerner (1963), Conant (1963), Hess (2001), Darling-Hammond and Youngs (2002), Berliner (2005), Levine (2006), andFraser (2007) have presented or addressed various concerns within the field of education.Christopher J. Lucas in Teacher Education in America (1997) (as cited in Gallagher & Bailey, 2000, p. 12) summarized five key criticisms of university teacher programs: (1) the poor quality of pre-service teacher candidates, (2) the weaknesses within the structure of preparation programs, (3) the length of pre-service programs, (4) placement and coursework sequence, and (5) student practicum or clinical training.These five criticisms encapsulate some of the weaker aspects of teacher preparation.Both deregulators and their counterparts who support a university-based agenda have embraced the criticisms cited above.The supporters of deregulation state that alternative teacher preparation programs can address each of these criticisms by providing highly qualified teachers, different avenues of entry, shorter and more efficient programs, better sequencing and stronger clinical experiences with better mentorship.ESEA (1965) tied federal funding to education initiatives and gave government greater control over distribution of funding to the states.The release of the 1983 commissioned report A Nation at Risk (ANAR) stated the United States was no longer as competitive while prompting a wakeup call to improve education (Ballou et al., 1999).ANAR also emphasized principles such as rigorous standards, competition, choice and the need for students to compete on a global scale (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983).Taken together, these concepts are viewed as market ideology (Apple, 2006;Hyslop-Margison & Sears, 2006). No Child Left Behind (2001) set out to reform education by eliminating the achievement gap, providing a world-class education and designating a highly qualified teacher in every classroom (Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2006;United States Department of Education, 2001).NCLB continued to emphasize market reform ideologies such as competition, high stakes testing, standardization, vouchers and school choice.
The Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) introduced the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant program to promote reform in state and local district K-12 education.One main emphasis of RTTT is on Great Teachers and Leaders (United States Department of Education, 2009) which focused on improving and reforming teacher and principal programs.Relevant to this study is the emphasis on "ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools" (p.11) whereby: The State provides charter schools with funding for facilities (for leasing facilities, purchasing facilities, or making tenant improvements), assistance with facilities acquisition, access to public facilities, the ability to share in bonds and mill levies, or other supports; and the extent to which the State does not impose any facility-related requirements on charter schools that are stricter than those applied to traditional public schools.(p.11) Secretary of Education Arne Duncan emphasized that public funding would go to charter schools with the caveat that charter schools would not be capped (Nagel, 2009).Detractors were quick to recognize and to critique "using student test scores to evaluate teachers and overly emphasizing charter schools as a tool for reform" (National Education Association, n.d.).These national policies supported alternative practices to train and prepare teachers and leaders.The discourse within these policies also supported a more marketized education system.
On December 10, 2015, President Obama reauthorized ESEA as The Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA), a bipartisan bill aimed at fixing NCLB.ESSA rejects the focus on standardized testing and the one-size-fits-all dogma of the last 15 years while supporting high academic standards, accountability, state and local control (U.S.Department of Education, 2015).ESSA also includes initiatives to "prepare, develop and advance effective teachers in America's schools" and "expand support for high-performance public charter schools for high-needs students" (The White House, 2015).ESSA continues the strong support by government for charter schools.

Policies in New York State
The forced partnership between education schools and alternative teacher preparation programs resulted from a number of state and local policies.By 2000 alternative programs were gaining greater recognition and support from media and policymakers, as a way to address teacher shortages and to put highly qualified teachers into high needs urban areas.In New York City, pressure from education reformers and teacher shortages prompted Chancellor Harold O. Levy to bring together the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City Board of Education (Goodnough, 2000), and the education schools.At that time, there was broad support for alternative programs to help alleviate the shortages on the condition that students would complete a part-time education degree (Keller, 2000).At the state-level, Commissioner Richard P. Mills supported legislation requiring teaching-degree candidates to earn a master's degree in education at the education schools (National Center for Alternative Certification, 2010b).This partnership would last until 2012 (Mungal, 2012) when new state policies would end the necessity of a partnership.Unlike many other states that have partnered with TFA, this 1999 legislation required all teachers to obtain a master's degree and complete their coursework within the education school.Originally done as a mechanism to protect education and the education schools, it also was another step toward eroding the education school monopoly on teacher preparation.

Free Market Ideology and Education Reform
The marketization of public education means the adoption of market principles such as deregulation, school choice, competition and stratification (Bartlett et al., 2002).A common narrative of market-based reform is that public goods such as education institutions are viewed as bureaucratic monopolies and that deregulation opens the market to more agile, efficient and less costly organizations.This ideological perspective supports the notion that competition from alternative organizations will pressure competitors to be innovative or risk losing consumers.Deregulationists pointed to education schools' teacher preparation programs as ineffectual and aimed to grant full certification to candidates who could pass rigorous tests in lieu of coursework (Brewer, 2006).The deregulationists aim to de-academize coursework allowing potential teachers to bypass courses emphasizing pedagogy.Most importantly the deregulationists seek to expand teacher preparation to outside organizations such as TFA.
These market ideologies are embedded within the reform movement of the past 35 years.Market ideology calls for extending market theory from the private to the public sector (Friedman, 1962).Market ideology is also characterized by individual achievement, choice, economic growth, national security and globalization, and competition (Engel, 2000).A Nation at Risk emphasized rigorous standards, competition and choice and tied student achievement to the global economy, and competition with international students (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983).
Proponents have advocated that market principles be extended to public institutions traditionally considered to be institutions for the public good.These public goods are described as schools, some medical facilities, military and prisons (Bartlett, Frederick, Gulbrandsen, & Murillo, 2002;Labaree, 1997).The government's role should be reduced to areas such as national defense, the criminal justice system, healthcare, education and the protection of marginalized groups (Friedman, 1962).The public good of education was now being challenged by reformers, venture capitalists and organizations aiming to chip away at the monopoly of teacher preparation.In this instance breaking the university "monopoly" on teacher education through competition was a central tenet of present market-based reform.This allowed for the new and innovative ways to prepare teaching-degree candidates (Hassel & Sherburne, 2004).

Education Reform
Education reformers have supported charter schools, (Chubb & Moe, 1990;Fruchter, 2007;Renzulli, 2005;N. Smith, 2007), alternative teacher preparation programs (Humphrey & Wechsler, 2007;Walsh & Jacobs, 2007), and high stakes testing (Dworkin, 2005;Hursh, 2008).Other research has suggested that the convergence of alternative preparation programs with charter schools, and educational management organizations (EMOs), venture philanthropy (Scott, 2009), public-private partnerships, and outsourcing of educational services to the private sector represents a new policy network aimed at privatizing and marketizing public education (Burch, 2009).In effect, the market driven educational reform movement created an opportunity for independent organizations such as TFA and Relay to recruit and prepare teachers for the classroom.The competition aspect of market ideology saw school districts close down what they deemed to be failing local public area schools and hand over control to EMOs and to charter school networks such as KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools.
The formation of this parallel education structure was a result of a series of educational reforms that encompassed education and more specifically teacher preparation.The free market ideology promoted less government oversight and the deregulation of a number of public institutions (United States Department of Education, 2009, p. 11).The deregulation agenda supported alternative teacher preparation programs, rigorous testing, and criticized education school teacher preparation programs for unnecessary content and difficult certification requirements for potential teachers (Bartlett et al., 2002).The push for deregulation is also tied into breaking the monopoly held by education schools (Mungal, 2015).Deregulation supporters place a greater emphasis on the clinical classroom experience.These alternative programs originally aimed to attract local candidates in an effort to increase diversity (Humphrey, Wechsler, & Hough, 2008;Walsh & Jacobs, 2007).Supporters and detractors of deregulation share the common goal of producing highly qualified teachers but the deregulation agenda along with a shifting of the economy from a Keynesian welfare model to the free market model created an opportunity for programs such as TFA to take hold and to expand.

The Emergence of Alternative Teacher Preparation Programs
University-based education schools and modern alternative programs have come to dominate teacher preparation.The education school programs have historically been referred to as traditional and support a formalized pedagogical knowledge based on research (Cochran- Smith & Fries, 2005;Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Hellig, 2005).Such programs emphasize increased standards and regulations, longer programs and national exams to improve the quality of teachers.The deregulation agenda believes intensive academic training is not essential but instead places greater emphasis on time within the classroom.
As modern alternative programs appeared so did the calls for greater accountability.This led to increased criticism of teacher quality and education school preparation programs (Walsh & Jacobs, 2007).Critics noted that programs vary in terms of admission requirements, curriculum, and the required knowledge base of teachers in the classroom (Cochran- Smith et al., 2015;Levine, 2006).The largest producers of alternative programs include local education agencies, private non-profit organization, EMOs (Constantine et al., 2009;Levine, 2006;Raphael & Tobias, 1997), and perhaps not surprisingly, university-based education schools that house a number of alternative and fasttrack programs (Walsh & Jacobs, 2007).
Research indicates that between 20% (Walsh & Jacobs, 2007) and 33% of new public school teachers were alternatively trained (Feistritzer, Griffin, & Linnajarvi, 2011).Between 2001 and 2011 alternative programs grew from 70 to 658 (Mader, 2013), and of the 2,124 teacher preparation programs, 69% were university-based, 21% were alternative programs within universities and 10% are through alternative teacher preparation programs (U.S.Department of Education & Office of Postsecondary Education, 2013).Alternative programs have made inroads into drawing candidates who want to bypass the university-based education schools.
The alternative programs that emerged in the 1980s supported a number of distinct goals such as recruiting career-changers and graduates, performing stringent candidate screening, and requiring coursework before and during the teaching placement.These alternative certification programs differ through shorter program length, potentially lower costs, and the addition of a mentorship component (Glass, 2008;Walsh & Jacobs, 2007).Proponents also claimed that alternative programs would attract more minorities, men and content specialists (Feistritzer, 2011;Humphrey et al., 2008;Office of Innovation and Improvement, 2004).Most importantly, alternative programs were viewed as a way to provide teachers to high poverty and critical shortage areas (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005;Partee, 2014;Suell & Piotrowski, 2007).These areas reflect the changing demographics within the United States that project that Black, Latino and Asian students will make up 50.3 percent of school children (Maxwell, 2014).
Modern alternative programs opened up the market to outside teacher preparation programs.They challenged what it meant to be highly qualified.They heralded competition from providers such as EMOs, TFA and the established programs within institutions of higher education.The implementation of alternative teacher preparation programs not only prompted resistance from education schools and teacher unions, but also ignited a new field of research regarding alternative routes to certification programs and teacher certification (Suell & Piotrowski, 2007).Alternative programs have proven to be an enduring phenomenon and as a result, critics and advocates have moved away from whether such routes should exist, to planning how best to design better preparation programs to increase student success (Grossman & Loeb, 2008).

Teach For America
Teach For America (TFA) plays a significant role in the creation of the parallel education structure.Here I describe the changing role of TFA as its focus on preparation shrinks and its focus on recruitment and leadership grows.With the teaching shortages, the shift to a more marketized economic environment allowed TFA to make inroads into teacher preparation.TFA partnered with the NYCDOE to place their corps members into high-needs public schools, with teacher preparation coming from the education schools' preparation programs.By 2012, this partnership was dissolved with the New York State Board of Regents approval of Relay.Teacher preparation of TFA members in New York City would now be completed through Relay.
TFA founder Wendy Kopp introduced the organizational concept and mission of TFA in her undergraduate thesis in 1989.TFA has grown from 500 members in 1990 to approximately 11,000 corps members (Westervelt & Kamenetz, 2014) with support coming from various levels of government, business and philanthropic organizations (Teach For America Inc., 2015b).Kopp envisioned TFA as dual-purpose-bringing "missionaries" into the classroom and creating "civic leaders" who are aware of the challenges facing education (Wilgoren, 2000).I contend that while Kopp originally emphasized preparing teachers for high-needs areas and the creation of civic leaders; media and policymakers focused upon the perceived failing education system and the shortage of teachers.The role of recruiter and preparation would take precedent over the creation of civic leaders, at least in the eyes of the public and the media.
Research was conducted into how the media constructed the role of TFA for three time periods, 1989-1999, 2000-2009 and 2010-2015.I contend that in the early period media focused more upon TFA as a teacher preparation organization rather than an organization that produced leaders.The LexisNexis search used keywords "Teach For America," and "teaching" or "teacher preparation."The second LexisNexis search uses keywords "Teach For America" and "leadership" or "leader."I also conducted two other searches that are closely connected to criticisms of TFArecruitment and demographic changes.While this search does not examine how relevant each submission is to the purpose, Table 3 results suggest that leaders and leadership were not a large part of the dialogue in the early stage of the partnership.It is only within the last five years that there has been an increase in focus on leadership (1856 from 771 mentions) and recruitment (1164 from 504 mentions).This strengthens the suggestion that TFA's focus on the recruitment and leadership aspects of the mission statement as well as on issues of demographic diversity (756 from 339 mentions) is a more recent development.
I also collected data from a wide range of categories including newspapers, directories, law reviews, journals, legal news, magazines, trade press, newsletters and other forms of media.The numbers in bracket indicate the breadth of category exposure.While the biggest category for exposure is newspapers, later time periods show growth amongst the other coverage categories.In other words, the categories indicate growing visibility across different media.For example, under Recruitment, there were 51 mentions in five categories (1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999).The 2000-2009 period revealed 504 mentions in six categories and for 2010-2015 there were 1164 mentions found in 12 categories.6) 55 ( 5) 23 ( 6) 504 ( 6) 339 ( 7) 1615 ( 7) 771 ( 8) 84 (3) 1164 ( 12) 756 ( 11) 981 ( 11) 1856 ( 14) 80 (7) TFA's influence on education and teacher preparation is vast.This special issue addresses the influence of TFA in the classroom.I seek to connect the TFA of the classroom to its growing influence beyond the classroom.TFA challenged the education school establishment to rethink many aspects of how best to prepare teachers in terms of shorter programs, less credits, unconventional programs, student recruitment, course redesign and so on (Mungal, 2012).The next section examines the emergence of Relay and its role in supplanting TFA's preparation component.Relay also represents a shift away from the need for education schools.

Relay Graduate School of Education
Relay Graduate School of Education has its origins in Teacher U-a teacher preparation program at Hunter College that specifically prepared teachers for charter school networks.Founders of three charter schools; Norman Atkins of Uncommon Schools and David Levin of KIPP approached Hunter College Dean David Steiner about supporting strong clinical-based programs.Along with Dacia Toll of Achievement First, this partnership led to the formation of Teacher U (Carey, 2009) and its goal to prepare teacher-candidates for positions within the charter school networks.The program is described in the following way: Three of the highest performing charter school organizations, KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), Achievement First and Uncommon Schools to collaboratively design a new teacher program that will lead to teacher certification and a master's degree in education.The mission is to create a transformational change in teacher education and student achievement (Welder, 2008).
Norman Atkins sought a preparation program independent of the education schools where charter schools could have more input into the type of teacher preparation.Hunter College's involvement with Teacher U ended abruptly after four years as events at the state level created the opportunity for the independent education school.David Steiner's promotion to the New York State Board of Regents Commissioner of Education in 2009 would allow him to put into place the necessary policies to create a new graduate school where charter schools could have more input in teacher preparation.In 2010, Commissioner Steiner established a clinically rich preparation program whose aim was to address teacher retention, shortages in science and math, and "students with disabilities and English language learners," as well as to establish a program grounded in the clinical experience (New York State Board of Regents, 2010).This program allowed organizations other than institutions of higher education-specifically not-for-profit organizations such as "cultural institutions, libraries, research centers, and other organizations with an educational mission" to prepare teachers (National Center for Alternative Certification, 2010a).Atkins, who established Uncommon Schools and Teacher U, submitted a proposal for a new independent graduate school.Less than a year later, Steiner and the Board of Regents granted a provisional charter authorizing the creation of the Relay Graduate School of Education (Zeichner & Conklin, 2005).
Relay is an independent graduate school of education and has no affiliation with any college or university.Relay's preparation model emphasizes the clinical experience plus a strong mentorship with short teaching modules (Kronholz, 2012;Mooney, 2013;Otterman, 2011).Key to this provisional charter was the approval by the Regents to allow Relay to grant a Master's of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) degree in middle childhood education (New York State Education Department, 2011, 2015).Since then Relay has partnered with Teach For America to prepare their teachingdegree candidates.
In essence, in New York City, Teach For America was no longer responsible for the training program for teachers.Instead TFA would focus on one of its strengths as a recruiter (Mungal, 2012).By 2012, TFA had severed most ties with education schools and begun funneling its corps members to Relay (Mungal, 2012), which had an inaugural class of 250 teaching-degree candidates.About half of those candidates were Teach For America corps members (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2011).Both TFA and Relay were seen as a "means of privatization of a public good by creating an enterprise for external people to make money" (Mungal, 2012, pp. 155).

Charter Schools in New York City
The increase of charter schools in New York City came as Mayor Michael Bloomberg (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) pushed for mayoral control of education.Mayoral control took decisions away from school boards (Koros, 2015) and extended greater powers over education decisions (Herman, 2013).Bloomberg, and New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein (2002Klein ( -2011) ) supported the empowering of families by allowing greater school choice (City of New York, 2003;Koros, 2015).School choice is viewed as a market driven way to reduce state intrusion and affirm parental control (DeBray-Pelot, Lubienski, & Scott, 2006).By 2013, Bloomberg had "closed over 160 regular public schools" (Knefel, 2014, p. 6) and opened 183 charter schools (Knefel, 2014;Kravitz, 2013).By 2015 the New York City Charter School Center (2015a) listed 205 charter schools.The public schools that were closed were considered to be "failing" schools.These schools were then reopened as charter schools under EMOs or taken over by new venture philanthropists (Scott, 2009).
Under Bloomberg, charter school money grew from $32 million to around $669 million (Chapman & Lestch, 2013).Charter schools receive a governmental grant of authority to provide specific programs (Chubb & Moe, 1990).They are independently run, non-religious institutions that "are free from any regulations" (Hicks, Ohle, & Valant, 2008, p. 10).Most importantly, the charter schools are publically funded receiving "funds from New York City Board of Education [and] other city, state and federal monies-roughly thirteen thousand five hundred dollars per student," in 2012 (Kravitz, 2013) compared to the national average of $3,814 (Batdorff et al., 2014).

Research indicates that:
On average, charters receive somewhat more state money than traditional public schools, while receiving somewhat less federal money.Although there is a perception that public charter schools receive a great deal of money from non-public sources and private philanthropies, this careful research shows that traditional public schools received slightly more funds from non-public and charitable sources, per pupil, in 2010-11 than did public charter schools.(Batdorff et al., 2014, p. 6) TFA and Relay are also supported by a number of philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (New York City Charter School Center, 2011;Teach For America Inc., 2015a).These organizations also support a number of charter school networks such as KIPP, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014;The Broad Foundation, 2010, 2013;United Federation of Teachers Research Staff, 2014).Support from these philanthropic organizations suggests that charter schools are well connected to the financial and philanthropic world.
Enrollment in New York City charter schools was 95,000 in 2015.There were 64,600 students applicants for the 22,000 available seats with the waitlist being 42,600 (New York City Charter School Center, 2015b).Thirty-four percent of students were accepted with 65.9% of students on waitlists.All students can apply but most charter schools operate on a first-come, firstserve basis.Charter schools hold admission lotteries but preference is given to returnees, siblings of current students and local area students (Smith, 2014).Students who are not accepted can still attend their local area non-charter conventional schools.
To understand how this parallel structure came about, it is necessary to understand this phenomenon in terms of the economic, political and educational events that transpired.In this case, the shift from a Keynesian welfare economy toward a free market economy from 1979 to mid-1980s put into place the tools that would first allow alternative programs such as TFA to help provide teachers for high-needs areas.Eventually, entrepreneurs recognized the potential for accessing public funding for EMOs and charter schools, which in turn were supported by free market policies which emerged in the late 1970s (Bartlett et al., 2002).
As teacher shortages grew, so did the pressure on politicians to create legislation to allow for alternative preparation while ensuring that the training was linked to education schools.These policies forced alternative organizations such as TFA and the New York City Teaching Fellows (a collaboration between the NYCDOE and The New Teacher Project) to partner with education schools to provide teacher training.This would last from 2000 to 2012 when more state policies were enacted to allow for an independent graduate school of education-Relay Graduate School of Education.
Relevant to the parallel education structure is the changing role of Teach For America.In addition to its role as recruiters and preparers of teachers, TFA was also positioning itself to take on greater roles in the influence of policies via an organization with links to TFA and alumni organization Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), which "is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Teach For America corps members and alumni to grow as leaders in their communities and help build the movement for educational equity" (Leadership for Educational Equity, 2015).With a budget of 3.9 million in 2012, their mission is to "propel Teach For America alumni who "share a commitment to ending the injustice of educational inequity" into leadership roles" (Sawchuk, 2014).LEE also represents an organization whose goal is "to be one source of diverse leadership working at all levels and across disciplines -policymakers, community organizers and elected officials-to ensure that every child in every community has the opportunity to attain an excellent education" (Leadership for Educational Equity, 2015).

Findings and Analyses
The parallel education structure was a result of a number of elements coming together in New York City.The forced partnership between the alternative teacher preparation organizations and the education schools precipitated the parallel structure.However it would not be until the charter school networks partnered with Hunter College to form Teacher U and Relay's emergence from Teacher U, would the pieces of the parallel structure become more visible.

Choice, Competition and Criticism
While the market forces described above were instrumental in opening up alternative teacher preparation programs to competition, it was not the only catalyst.School districts were also critical of the university-based education school preparation programs (Mungal, 2012).In market rhetoric, consumers should be given choice and are encouraged to seek out the competitors to find better service and competing costs.Competition would also lead to new or innovative ways to prepare teachers (Hassel & Sherburne, 2004).The parallel education structure came out of this environment where local schools were viewed as failing and teachers prepared within the education schools were viewed as not being highly qualified.One interviewee, a former New York City teacher during the 1970s and a director of a university-based teacher preparation program explained that even then the New York City Board of Education was at odds with the education schools.He explained: Historically, the public schools had not been great fans of schools of education to start with.They have criticized schools of education for not preparing [their candidates] for success to become effective teachers in the inner-city schools.
[They] didn't know the public school curriculum, didn't know the standards.They weren't familiar with the inner-city population.They weren't prepared to manage a classroom.I know this personally because I used to hear these complaints and I used to make these complaints.
As a consumer, the NYCDOE was unhappy with the product coming out of the education schools.
Alternative programs offered the NYCDOE choice but also, since they were the ones doing the hiring, they felt they should have more input into the training of the teaching-degree candidates.A former Dean stated, "the districts found it easier to control their hiring by hiring people and training them at the same time.Hiring people…who had whatever the qualification that the districts were thinking, and TFA…has become a broker to the DOE."With the influx of alternative programs and the support from all levels of government, the NYCDOE also set out to establish their own teacher program.In the spring of 2000, the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) "was launched to address the most severe teacher shortage…in decades" (NYC Teaching Fellows, 2014).NYCTF's focus would be teaching diverse students; those with special needs, new immigrants, non-native English speakers, and critical-needs subject areas.NYCTF would be independent of TFA and the education schools, but still beholden to the education schools for coursework.This too was in response to the belief that teaching candidates within the education schools were not adequately trained.Like TFA, the NYCDOE and its NYCTF program set out to recruit a higher caliber of candidates for its schools and place "permanent teachers into low performing schools"(NYC Teaching Fellows, 2014) The Teaching Fellows became the third major program within New York City and a part of the parallel education structure.While TFA and NYCTF shared similar characteristics such as recruiting from elite selective colleges and universities, TFA's role is pivotal in the parallel education structure.These elite candidates are also recruited nationally and are paid for their in-service teaching.

Converging Forces and Shifting Economies
Modern alternative programs were designed to alleviate the teacher shortages.The length of the teacher crisis changed the expectations of alternative programs.One Dean described the situation, stating: I don't think that there was any kind of thought of how long-term this was going to be.We didn't know if this was going to be a temporary thing to fill this gap.Who could have predicted that this was going to be the new wave?I would have to say to you that honestly, I did not think that was the case.I would never have predicted this.I thought that this was going be something that maybe we had to help the chancellor in partnership, think about how could we do this in a very thoughtful way to fill the gaps that we just didn't anticipate.
The longevity of the teacher shortage led to strange bedfellows as local government, university education school preparation programs, unions and school districts cooperated to solve what was viewed as a crisis but in all likelihood a temporary problem.At the time, no one could have foreseen alternative programs as permanent.However, they emerged during the period where market reform was taking hold.As a result, these alternative programs became more than just a solution to teacher shortages.They represented a mechanism that reformers were able to use to open up the field of education to marketization.The parallel education structure revealed a degree of marginalization of the education school programs.According to Mungal (2012, pp. 126) "Education schools were never able to shed the image of a slow-moving out-of-touch institution."Another Dean expanded on this and explained: The problem is that schools of education have been branded as traditional and therefore whatever they do is traditional and traditional is bad [as] opposed to the reformers who cast themselves as first of all-reformers and innovators and alternative.
The emergence of the parallel education structure can be attributed, in no small part to the inequalities and ideological differences between the education schools and the alternative programs, and also the tensions between the NYCDOE and the education schools.One assistant Dean described the tension between the education school programs and the NYCDOE as the alternative organizations pushed their agenda on the two entities.She explained: Right from the outset, they created this adversarial relationship [between] us and [the NYCDOE] who said, "Other colleges are doing it our way."We said, "if you want a true collaboration, you should listen to us and we have certain issues of integrity about our program.
Other faculty went on to criticize the admission process of the NYCDOE and TFA.One program director reported that TFA pushed their program to accept potential candidates that would not have met the education school criteria for admissions but were pushed to accept them due to their elite status (Mungal, 2012).
The marginalization of the education schools by the NYCDOE revealed another facet of the parallel education structure; that of choice and competition as represented by TFA.Disenchantment with the education schools and an adversarial relationship prompted the NYCDOE to grant greater accessibility to TFA.Interviewees explained that teaching-degree candidates from the education schools were marginalized in terms of funding and job opportunities as the partnerships between TFA and the NYCDOE guaranteed teaching positions for the candidates in the alternative programs.TFA received public funding from the NYCDOE as well as guaranteeing many student placements within the public schools (Hernandez, 2009).Though critical of the education schools, the amount of teachers required for public schools is far greater than those produced by the TFA.As a result, the education schools still were needed to produce a great number of teachers, but competition from TFA's elite candidates offered the NYCDOE an alternative choice.As the ideological stances and tensions between TFA, the NYCDOE, and the education schools grew, the growing gap led to the emergence of the Relay Graduate School of Education.

Charter Schools and Choice
Under Bloomberg and Klein the number of charter schools increased dramatically.However, this was at the expense of the closing of failing local conventional public schools.These charter schools offered urban families choice of schools.The choice came with caveats that did not guarantee acceptance.One faculty member explained the growth of the charter schools: As the public becomes dissatisfied… the charter school movement is certainly going to increase.It that a good movement?Or is it that there are schools within the charter schools movement, because of having more freedom in certain ways to do certain things, I mean does it matter?There are still some very good charter schools.I think some of them are getting better and there are probably some charter schools that are not good.But that's true with alternative versus traditional and all schooling.
Interestingly this faculty member expressed a concern that has been taken up by many educational researchers-that being alternative or a charter school does not instantly make the system any better.The public dissatisfaction with local schools, accompanied by media, political and philanthropic support for charter schools, established them as a perceived solution to local public schools that were seen as failing minority groups.

Prescriptive and Differentiated Models of Delivery
The parallel education structure can also be distinguished by the methods in which the teaching-degree candidates are trained to deliver lessons.Education schools utilize a number of teaching methods to connect with the diverse learners within the classroom.Education schools recognize that students learn at different levels and stages and support differentiated learning methods that can address learning differences between students (Teaching Methods, 2015;Tomlinson, 2014).TFA on the other hand, incorporates a method that is more prescriptive.The type of training that the teacher receives distinguishes the type of delivery.One Dean described this type of TFA teacher; "They're looking for teaching technicians.They're also looking for people who are willing to execute curriculum that has been prepared by somebody else."Even before Relay had been established, a number of interviewees noted TFA's training model was prescriptive.This prescriptive model of instruction is highly scripted and is referred to at Relay as the Everybody Engaged class (Kronholz, 2012).The model presents a series of scripted commands, suggestions for gestures, narratives and questions.TFA/Relay candidates would move down the list of instructions as a delivery method.Kronholz went on to describe the observed behavior of Relay teaching-degree candidates who were participating in the summer institute.Quoting David Steiner: Relay students "model" the kind of behavior they hope to see in their own classrooms, so their hands fly up at questions, they rush to stack chairs and pass out papers, they snap their fingers or waggle their hands to show approval.Relay's scripts do the same kind of modeling by showing students how to effectively use their limited class time (Kronholz, 2012, p. 5).
Critics responded that this model did not address the students who learned at different levels and would benefit from differentiated instruction methods.The different methods of delivery would be one more element that frames the parallel education structure.

Discussion
The parallel education structure came about as the result of a teacher shortage, a forced partnership between alternative and university-based teacher preparation programs, coupled with an ideological shift toward a free market economy that sought to increase privatization of education, healthcare and the military (Engel, 2000;Labaree, 1997).For education, market ideology meant calls for greater accountability in the form of testing, teacher quality, and the opening of education to competition (Harvey, 2005;Hursh, 2008;Schray, 2008).The parallel structure of public education consists of Pathway-1-non-chartered conventional local schools and the New York City Department of Education; and Pathway-2-Teach For America, Relay Graduate School, and charter schools.The first pathway places teaching-degree candidates from the university-based programs as well as candidates from the NYCDOE sanctioned NYCTF into the non-charter conventional public schools.The other pathway focuses on TFA's strongest component-recruitment.Relay then provides the teacher preparation for TFA candidates who are placed within the public charter school networks, which are already partnered with the NYCDOE.As TFA withdrew from the forced partnership with the education schools, Relay was establishing itself as an independent graduate school of education.With TFA focusing specifically on recruiting, Relay would now focus on the preparation of teaching-degree candidates specifically for the charter schools.
Currently there are 205 charter schools in New York City (New York City Charter School Center, 2015a).Uncommon Schools has 21 charter schools (Uncommon Schools, 2014).Achievement First has 17 charter schools (Achievement First, 2014) and KIPP manages 10 schools (KIPP NYC, 2014).It is important to note that the co-founders and a number of the trustees of Relay also hold leadership roles within various charter school networks.Table 4 shows the relationship between key actors and Relay (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2014).These charter schools' founders are also listed as founders of Relay while a number of the TFA donors also support Relay (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015c).This has become a closed system where recruitment, training, and placement are done by a select group of organizations that have utilized public and private funds for charter schools.

More than a New York City Phenomenon
There is evidence that the parallel education structure is making inroads across the nation.It has expanded into seven other states in the span of three years.Relay GSE is set up in New York City; Newark, New Jersey; New Orleans, Louisiana, Chicago, Illinois, Philadelphia/ Camden, Pennsylvania, Memphis, Tennessee, and most recently, Houston, Texas.Table 5 shows the potential for growth of parallel education structures from the number of TFA programs and charter schools across the U.S. (Achievement First, 2015;KIPP Foundation, 2015; Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015a; The Center for Education Reform, 2014; Uncommon Schools, 2015).  .In Houston, there is evidence that KIPP and YES Prep have connections to Relay GSE ("TFA Houston Alumini Community," 2014).In Louisiana, Relay is linked to the charter school network, New Orleans College Preparatory Academies and TNTP with TeachNOLA (Dreilinger, 2013;Hasten, 2014).TFA is a primary recruiter for Relay GSE and will have approximately 60 programs in 48 urban and rural regions in 35 states and D.C. by 2016 (Bentsen IV & Simons, 2014;Teach For America Inc., 2014).These 60 programs also offer an established market of recruited teachers for potential Relay campuses.

Diversity in a Parallel Education Structure
One concern with the parallel education structure and TFA in general has been their demographic diversity.One of the original objectives of alternative programs was to diversify the teaching pool by drawing men, minorities, career changers, and specialists into the profession (Feistritzer & Haar, 2008;Humphrey & Wechsler, 2007).The decline in the diversity of classroom teachers over the past ten years was hastened by the election of Mayor Bloomberg and New York state 2003 requirements that all public school teachers be certified.Since then, the number of Black teachers has dropped to 13% in 2007 from 27% in 2002 (Green, 2008).A study by Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, Rockoff and Wyckoff (2008) reported: In New York City elementary schools in 2000, nonwhite students were 40 percent more likely to have a teacher who was not certified in any of the courses she taught and 40 percent more likely to have a teacher with no prior experience.(p. 2) Green (2008) noted that before 2003, 60% of new teachers were uncertified, and 15% of the overall teachers were not certified.The underlying and unsaid message was that a majority of the uncertified teachers were minorities.With the enactment of state certification requirements the number of teachers of color drastically dropped while at the same time the number of students of Black, Latino and Asian background grew (NYC's disappearing Black/ Latino public school teachers, 2006).
During the tenure of former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, the hiring of Black teachers has declined by 50%.Teach for America has made claims of addressing issues of diversity but their recruitment data indicate there are still relatively smaller groups of visible minorities.
While tracing the emergence of the parallel education structure, I have also connected how market forces have brought about this parallel education structure that places two pathways under the NYCDOE.One pathway takes elite students from elite schools and trains them in alternative teacher preparation programs such as TFA.Depending on the mission statement of the alternative program, TFA then took these elite teaching-degree candidates and placed them within another elite system that of the charter school networks.These networks tend to be receive funding from school districts using public money, philanthropic organizations, private interest, businesses, and so on.The other pathway would rely on teaching-degree candidates from the university-based education schools to fill positions into the conventional non-charter public schools.
As noted earlier, NYCDOE believed that the education schools were not preparing the types of teachers needed in urban schools.Marketization would suggest that the NYCDOE is a consumer that demands a product that the education school provider is not producing.Instead, alternative programs and specifically TFA responded by asserting that they were providing the skillset that the NYCDOE demands.These charter schools further marginalized the education schools by demanding a specific type of prescriptive teaching methods for students that ignores the differentiated learning that is so relevant within education schools.
TFA's influence has spread beyond the classrooms, to teachers, school districts, universities, preparation programs, and government policies.The influence has been subtle, as the process did not happen instantly.TFA has both positive and negative impact in the classrooms.It has pulled elite graduates into teaching that would never have considered teaching.Demographically the alternative candidates did not reflect the make-up of the schools or communities where they worked.TFA candidates over time, created some friction within their schools.One interviewee reported that early in the partnership, principals viewed TFA candidates positively.However over time, the short commitment and constant turnover of alternative candidates proved to be more detrimental to the classroom, school and community.

Future Research
The parallel education structure offers a number of opportunities for future research.Researching the success of students under both systems could prove challenging as the charter schools focus on high-needs areas.There are also opportunities to explore expulsion rates for the charter schools.Research be done on the teachers within the charter schools to understand whether recruiting from elite programs results in student success.Along with this would be to track length of teacher commitment to the classroom and whether they remain after their two-to-three year commitment.Education schools could benefit from closer examination of recruiting practices of Teach For America.Another strand of research may look at the connection between charter schools, their faculty and the community compared to that of local conventional public schools.With the reauthorization of NCLB as The Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) and the increase of government support of alternative teacher routes and charters schools, it will be important to track how this support will unfold within school districts.
Market ideologies such as competition, choice, deregulation and accountability created an environment where organizations such as Teach For America, Relay and charter schools were allowed to flourish.It has only been four years since the parallel education structure emerged in New York City.It is worth a constant vigil to see what occurs and whether the prescriptive delivery can be successful.It is also worthwhile to track the growth of the parallel structure to find out whether it can survive or whether there will be a tipping point.

Table 1
Characteristics of the parallel education structure

Table 2
Selected institution sites in the Greater New York City area(2012)

Table 3
LexisNexis search of teacher training keywords and leadership training keywords

Table 4
Relationship between charter school network founders and Relay

Table 5
Growth potential for TFA and RelayThere is already evidence that other charter school networks have partnered with Relay.These newer charter school networks include Chicago's Noble Network of Charter Schools, Camden's and Philadelphia's Mastery Charter Schools and Memphis' Yes Prep (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015b