Julian Vasquez Heilig, a scholar of education at the University of Texas, has noticed an interesting phenomenon: A growing number of TFA alumni are contradicting the company line. They know how hard the work is. They discover they are miracle-workers and they are not going to close the achievement gap. They don’t like being used to sell a false narrative. One even said it was time for TFA to close down.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, bloggers are asking why TFA wants the state to pay $5 million for their teachers, on top of a payment of $3,000 per teacher, each of whom will get a full salary. The question becomes pointed because TFA is rolling in hundreds of millions of dough while Louisiana’s public schools are under-funded.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you only inspire one student from a hopeless family situation to buckle down and do the work to achieve an education which leads to successful entry into the middle class, it would make the entire two year experience worthwhile.
Oh horse pucky. What makes some elite rich kid witih five weeks’ training better able to do that than a traditionally trained (four years plus student teaching) veteran teacher? What about the fact that many of the latter have lost their jobs and been replaced with the former?
And at what cost?? TFA should be held to the same accountability. Yet their failure rate is excused and Jindal will continue to pay big bucks for a useless organization just to screw public school teachers. What a guy and what an organization!! 2 years!!! What a joke!!!
I’m not sure I understand this comment. Worthwhile to whom? It can’t be the student because students don’t have the two year experience. I’m sure that the TFA members themselves gain a lot from the experience but that’s not, I don’t think, what the money is meant to buy.
Dormand, I think it would be better to spend limited taxpayer dollars to hire teachers from the community who are well prepared and plan to make a career of teaching. It is very expensive to pay a full salary to a poorly trained youngster who inspires one child and then leaves after two years. And on top of that, to pay a bounty to TFA for “giving” you that ill-trained teacher.
My heart says Jindal will not pay more money for more TFA teachers or Positive Change Agents, (which I am assuming are TFAers who have finished their two years and are now going to make big bucks telling 10, 15, 20 year teachers what they are doing wrong and how to do it right) he wouldn’t, even he has his limits as to what is wrong. There has to come a time when he is concerned about the presidential election and how far he can push the voters. On the other hand my brain says he is arrogant and doesn’t really care about us, the citizens of Louisiana.
“even he has his limits as to what is wrong”……… I’d go with your brain on this one.
Well, just look at Obama, Arne Duncan & Race to the Top. Yeah, the voters can be pushed PRETTY far. Unfortunately.
Who (of our elected officials) DOES really care? (Well, maybe Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren.) But we’re all living what happens when there is no really good candidate for POTUS because THAT Democrat failed to “put on his walking shoes” and hie to Wisconsin. Instead, he went to Rhode Island and applauded at Central Falls.
Actually, while the demonstrations were happening in Wisconsin to protest attacks on unions, President Obama and Secretary Duncan went to Miami to hail Jeb Bush as “a champion of education reform.” March 2011.
Some of those “elite rich kids” who agree to serve two years with TFA come from single parent families and had to work their way through college doing incredibly difficult manual labor, in addition to incurring a mountain of student loan indebtedness in order to get the education of their dreams.
In most surveys of teacher effectiveness, the most important factor is usually the teacher’s mastery of the subject matter. It is doubtful that that subject mastery was accomplished in the five weeks training you cited.
If there is even one example of a highly performing veteran teacher from any background being terminated to be replaced by a TFA who may or may not serve beyond the two years agreed to when the applicant won out over the masses of other TFA applicants to win that position, it indicates extremely deficient administrative action.
Sometimes it is really beneficial to all to obtain the facts and background prior to striking out against a class of individuals.
What is important is that students from challenging backgrounds have every opportunity for upward mobility so as to earn a place in the middle class, regardless of the background of their teacher.
“Some of those “elite rich kids” who agree to serve two years with TFA come from single parent families and had to work their way through college doing incredibly difficult manual labor, in addition to incurring a mountain of student loan indebtedness in order to get the education of their dreams.”
Very, very few, I’d be willing to bet. Besides, for those who did graduate with “a mountain of student loan indebtedness”, TfA offers debt forgiveness.
“In most surveys of teacher effectiveness, the most important factor is usually the teacher’s mastery of the subject matter.”
Source? Having “mastery” of a subject isn’t worth a damn as a teacher if you can’t communicate it to others – trust me, I had some brilliant college professors who were lousy teachers because they couldn’t understand how it was that other people didn’t understand what they instinctively grasped.
“It is doubtful that that subject mastery was accomplished in the five weeks training you cited.”
I agree, which is just one of the reasons why TfA is a horrible program inflicting great damage on other people’s children. If TfAers are so great, why aren’t they teaching in the best schools in America?
If TFA is dysfunctional, it should be shut down and thus stopped from taking up the students’ time. You might want to present the scientific studies that you reviewed before taking your position.
You did have a basis for your position based upon scientifically proven facts, didn’t you?
What do you mean “scientifically proven” facts? It’s a fact that TfA gives five weeks of training before placing members in classrooms. It’s a fact that they are exclusively in low income schools. It’s a fact that experienced, fully-credentialed teachers in those same schools have been losing their jobs.
You’re the one making the claim – which should be scientifically verifiable – that subject mastery is the most important trait in a teacher. Do you have anything to back that up?
Multiple surveys have almost universally cited teacher mastery of subject is the most important factor in student success.
Then it shouldn’t be hard to find one to cite specifically.
Yes, Dormand is right. You see “subject mastery” touted by the economists who corporate “reformers” typically cite. Not being P-12 educators though, corporate reformers and economists overlook other important knowledge and skill sets that the research of educators have identified.
For example, in addition to content knowledge, or “subject mastery” in layman’s terms, also critical is pedagogy, or knowledge of child development and the most appropriate content and teaching strategies for children of different ages/levels of development, as well as pedagogical content knowledge, or knowledge of instructional techniques that are most effective for the content being taught.
These are not skills that someone can develop in five weeks of training, especially along with all the other things TFAers need to learn about, such as classroom management, addressing children’s non-cognitive needs, assessment, differentiation, atypical development, techniques for working with kids with disabilities and students who are gifted and talented, general ed and Special Ed laws, best practices in bilingual ed, etc…..
Corporate “reformers” and the economists they cite have a tendency to try to distill everything into a single input, like “subject mastery” and a single output, like standardized tests, and trivialize everything else that goes into the very complex processes involved in teaching and learning. .
Dormand, it would be great if TFA youngsters served in schools as assistant teachers. They are prepared for that. And, yes, there are districts that are laying off veteran teachers to hire young kids from TFA, despite the absence of evidence that an untrained teacher is better than a professional. Let me ask you this: If you have an emergency medical problem and you are rushed to the hospital, do you want to be treated by an intern or by a doctor?
The TFA is after the money, just like Matt Taibbi described with the Vampire Squid of the financial system. Not too surprising really, considering the players and the lumpenthink.
Amen to that! To me, it is the height of stupidity to have so inculcated into the public’s thinking that REGULAR teachers are; lazy, stupid, not worth their salaries, possibly abusive, etc. and that TFA novices are God’s gift to education! That’s a logic only a pretzel-mind could rationalize. The corporate elite, always looking for a killing in any public enterprise, be it; prisons, military, education and now, it appears, the postal service, always ends up being far more expensive, quality deficient and damage done to the institution, regrettable. To put someone, greener than a olive, into a classroom and expect the results to be superior to a deg reed teacher is ludicrous on the surface!
How many institutions will corporate America parasitically feed on and leave in ruins before the public can realize the scam that has been perpetrated upon them? Doesn’t say much for their ability to “connect the dots,” does it? With education, when the reality of the charade the greedy corporates have frosted off on the public is undeniable, who will be willing to join the ranks of teachers? The saddest part is that the phony, “I want to help education in America” loudly proclaimed by the Bill Gates, Bush family, etc. is such a disingenuous veneer for nothing that virtuous…its ALL about MONEY, POWER AND CONTROL !
The saddest part is that Gates, Bloomberg, Duncan, Broad etc. will never be held accountable for wrecking public education.
How true! Just like the ridiculous scam of the ’08, white collar robbery perpetrated on the public! We are fleeced like sheep, and with not even the respect given to the lambs…its obscene!
Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Education is currently being subjected to the shock and awe tactic. I see it. I feel it.
Right on!
Reblogged this on Restore Reason and commented:
The AZ Senate Education Committee gave a due pass to a bill in February that would appropriate $5M to expand TFA from the 300 we currently have in the state to about 500. Why not just use the money to help our teaching professionals do their jobs better? TFA does not have a record of generally outperforming regular teachers, that is another myth the reformers are perputating.
Much as I hate to admit that a Fox News even exists, much less cite them, I did just run across this, as I was looking for some credible citation of a comparison between the infidels from TFA and their performance as compared to seasoned teachers with their teaching certificates:
For years, critics — mainly teachers’ union officials — have said the program allows cash-strapped districts to replace experienced, full-time teachers with lower paid and often more transient instructors.
According to Teach for America, just above 7,000 of the 24,000 teachers it has deployed since its inception were still teaching as of 2011, though program officials say nearly two-thirds make education their full-time career.
One superintendent in southeast Arkansas told FoxNews.com her school district could barely open its doors if it weren’t for Teach for America.
“We have a shortage of teachers, and you never know where you’re going to find one, or if you’re going to find one,” said Joyce Vaught, the superintendent of the Lakeside School District in the rural community of Lake Village.
Vaught said all but one of the school’s math teachers and the entire English department came to the district from TFA, and said many stay on well after the two-year hitch. Perhaps more importantly, Vaught said her only other option is often luring older teachers out of retirement.
“The principals tell me they’d rather have a Teach for America teacher for two years with no experience than to have a teacher who’s taught 30 years and retired and is tired,” she said. “There’s just no comparison between what they bring to the children.”
The attacks on Teach for America aren’t really about children or education, according to Robert Enlow, president and CEO of The Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice. He said Ayers, Lewis and other critics of Teach for America see the program as a threat to teachers unions.
“The fact is the union wants to have people collectively speak, and what’s happening is TFA teachers are getting into the ranks and influencing the thoughts on collective bargaining, which is where the union’s had its power for so long,” Enlow said.
“The reason he’s doing this is because when you’re doing such a good job, like TFA is doing, you have to start to discredit the opponents, and what Ayers is great at is being a discreditor,” Enlow said.
Ayers’ past ties to President Obama surfaced when Obama first ran for the White House in 2008. The two worked together on a charitable board starting in the mid-1990s, and Ayers once hosted a campaign event for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois Senate. Obama later distanced himself from Ayers, who wrote in late 2008 that the two were not close.
Garrett Tenney is part of the Junior Reporter program at Fox News. Get more information on the Junior Reporters Program here.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/10/bill-ayers-chicago-union-boss-rip-teach-for-america/#ixzz2NMoYZvkO
It is so disrespectful to assume that 30 year vet teachers are tired. I know teachers who are in their 35th and 41st years, and they have more energy than I do!
Ageism is alive and well, and an excuse to hire on the cheap! How shameful.
“Much as I hate to admit that a Fox News even exists, much less cite them”
Then DON”T cite the unfair and unbalanced “news” reported by Fox pundits who regularly trash unions, while failing to reveal that they belong to unions themselves. Fox is all about promoting a conservative agenda and has no objectivity or credibility.
Total bs. They came to Detroit and a bunch of teachers were fired. The state of Michigan has way too many teachers. There is no need for TFA here. They are used to destroy unions. They have no experience and bring nothing new to teaching. It is a crime that they have been allowed in these classrooms. If you were a teacher that had followed the state rules by graduating from a teaching program and then paying for then passing a certification exam wouldn’t you feel angry that some kids from out of state were given special treatment? (some unqualified kid). Shouldn’t the state pay back the teachers who paid for certification? Aren’t they being misled and ripped off if a kid can graduate out of the teaching field and walk right into a job???? How on earth could you believe FOX news? John Stossel is full of lies and propaganda.
DeeDee
It may be that the situation in Detroit and the situation in rural Arkansas are not the same. Both the reporting by Fox and your experience could be true.
Yes, how about putting that money into smaller class sizes and hiring more social workers, psychologists and counselors? Oh, the hue and cry after Sandy Hook and the dire need for better mental health services, but what’s being done? Nothing. And money continues to be wasted on TFA and testing, neither of which actually help children OR society.
TFA students are only elite by school reputation and not by ability. Some are really smart and some are not, but in all cases they are not prepared for the classroom. TFA is another part of the attack on professional education. I came to the classroom from a career in engineering. The biggest surprise for me was how much more competent the experienced teachers were than I and I completed a two year training program with a year as an intern. TFA was an elitists school girl’s dream but it is based on the false premise that graduates of Cornell are superior to a graduate from UCLA or University of Nevada Reno. It is the delusional self-aggrandizement associated with thinking you are superior to others because of your wealth or school. Don’t buy the hype.
I thought TFA was supposed to be a non-profit. What gives with demanding those steep payments?
Mike-
You might want to read Steven Brill’s cover piece Bitter Pill in the March 4, 2013 Time Magazine for a better comprehension of the realities of the organizational concept of a not-for-profit.
As Brill clarifies, a not-for-profit does not have an arbitrary limit on revenues, it just cannot distribute retained earnings to stockholders, as it does not have stockholders.
AND they are tax-exempt, AND they get away with calling themselves a “charity, AND they pay their executives highly inflated six figure salaries.
Many “non-profits” today are just fronts for “free profits” and their agencies mirror the organizational structures of corporations, with few, if any, at the top who have actual experience, education and expertise in the field, such as Wendy Kopp, who is not a trained educator and has never been a classroom teacher, yet she aims to set P-12 Education and Teacher Education policies across America.
Right, that’s why reuters reported that it has over three hundred million dollars in assets.
Some “non-profit.”
In other words….follow the money, someone is sucking up profits off of children. P.T. Barnum would be proud!
In this atmosphere of teacher (deg reed, that is…) bashing, and decrying the supposed extravagant salaries they have or have the union help them gain (we’re not talking over
five figures, and low in the five’s at that), it seems strange that the pitchfork crowd that squeals in self righteous rage at pension plans, miniscule raises, etc., end up paying TFA in the millions for such scantly educated teachers. That perversely seems to run askew of their imaged groundless gripes with education. But then, reasoned thought, deliberative positions, and civility never seem to darken those thoughtless crusaders.
I wonder what pause they might have as they witness the results of being pawns in the corporate game of fleecing education, with nary even the poor sheep left in the end!
I think there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with TFA, ON THE CONDITION that the state give all working and retired teachers a refund on the tuition paid for teaching degree and license. That being said, I will take my 20000 dollars now for my MA and license I obtained in 1995. 😉