EduShyster tells a fascinating story about Nevada’s love affair with TFA.
It is humorous but not funny.
Nevada has large numbers of non-English speaking students but does not want to pay what t csts to help them learn.
Nevada has the lowest graduation rate in the nation, worse even than Michele Rhee’s D.C. Schools.
Las Vegas has some of the most overcrowded classrooms in the nation–as many as 50 in some classes.
Two TFA alumnae have been elected to the Nevada state board of education.
One of them was asked about those packed classes.
QUESTION: How do you prepare teachers for Clark County’s large classes, which are among the nation’s most crowded?
Serafin: We don’t allow class sizes to be an excuse for lackluster achievement. You control what kind of teacher you are and what your students learn. If a member is struggling with a large class, we’ll find teachers who have succeeded with many students and see what we can learn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Again I am going to say boycott, boycott Vegas. I used to live in Lake Tahoe, and I remember the casino’s made a large part of their money back by their employees putting their paycheck back into the casino they work in. Maybe they should boycott the casino’s. Maybe it is time to hit them were it will really hurts, in the wallet.
People won’t boycott where their gambling is concerned – this country is too hooked on it.
A while back I posted that a partner in our firm had joined the auxiliary board of TFA and was holding a “football squares” fundraiser. I talked to a lot of people at the firm and explained what’s wrong with TFA. Most were appalled to hear it. But they still went right out and bought their square because, as one put it, “well, I’m still a gambler and there’s a lot of money at stake”. He sold all the squares and the fundraiser was a rocking success.
And there you have it.
Humorous, but not funny. Too right.
TFA has a love affair going on with several states particularly New Orleans, we have been replacing regular certified teachers with TFA novices fro 7 years. Louisiana is a proud and major contributor to the TFA war chest which I believe is over one billion dollars.
And like other cities and states in love with TFA, the schools where their novice teachers work are the worst performing schools in the state.
Arne and Barack, is stuff like this going to continue for four more years? Are you at the wheel or asleep at the wheel? Either way, like Michelle Rhee says, the person in charge is the person who owns the situation at hand.
Looks like reformer’s Sherman’s March is moving through Nevada and leaving a smoldering landscape behind.
They are the ones behind the push to privatize. The minute Obama got in the White House, public education has been on the ropes. This is a fight to the death, and “Democrats” are the ones openly engaging in warfare against an underpinning of democracy.
Joe Nathan will yell at you for even suggesting this. Pre-K programs in Chicago & perhaps all of Illinois now have to apply for funding annually. There just simply isn’t enough paperwork. More hoops. Job creation for more paperpushers. This must be part of the big money for early childhood education.
What arrogant stupidity! Saying numbers in a classroom don’t affect outcomes is ludicrous on the face of it! I’m really sick of hearing false bravado from elitists that never taught a day (Gates), “educators” with hidden, corporate motives to trash teachers (Rhee) and all the other toadies who peddle such insanity as this! What parent would want their child in a class with 50?? What’s next? Teachers who do the janitorial jobs in their rooms? Don’t laugh, that idea is posited in many public school administrators, right along side the rule that elementary schools have NO recess, so they can cram more for the state tests! There is no end to such idiocy which is treated as though it had merit!
No, no, no, it’s the *students* (the, ahem, darker skinned ones) that will be doing the janitorial work. After all, all those poor kids clearly have have never learned a sense of “work ethic”, just ask Newt Gingrich.
Sure, we’ll go right back to the early 1900s, when teachers had to stoke the stoves (haul in the coal), couldn’t be married and couldn’t be seen in town after 7 PM. Oh, wait, that last part would really hurt the Vegas economy. That would mean a large number of city residents wouldn’t be able to patronize the casinos.
This is all about saving money on salaries and pension costs. The districts in Nevada, especially Clark and Washoe, are terrible because of corrupt administrators. The “reformers” are going to make an already bad situation worse. People down there don’t care enough about the schools since there is a large transient population there.
The tragic, perverse environment for the destroyers to run a muck! So sad for anyone involved in public education…
Serafin is an idiot. How do these people get elected?
They get elected with donations from people who are interested in getting them elected. Follow the money.
I still can’t get over 50 students in a class.
Sink or swim is one thing – but must they tie boulders around some kids’ necks? What a shame. What a nightmare.
Clark County teachers have to deal with this as well.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/district-wins-teacher-arbitration-raises-awarded-this-school-year-rescinded-190276611.html
Mining and the corporatists have owned Nevada from it’s inception. When I first started in Clark County I had 38 fourth graders. At the end of the year I still had 38 fourth graders, but only 11 of them were on my roster from the first week.
When you look at all the stupidity that is going on in education across the country, one has to think, “Who would want to become a teacher these days?” No one.
I keep looking at the student teachers in my school with pity. Their careers will be very different from the career I had which, until ten years ago, was dynamic, challenging, and exciting. There is no more room for creativity in teaching. Teaching from a manual sucks the life spirit out of me.