A teacher in California heard Tavis Smiley and Cornel West interview Wendy Kopp, Jonathan Kozol, and me–in separate interviews–and this was her reaction. She wrote a post called “TFA can’t connect the dots.”
Here is a link to the interview with Kopp.
A link to the interview with me.
A link to the interview with Jonathan Kozol. I am not sure if this is the right link, as it is a panel discussion on poverty, not the 2:1 conversation found in the other links.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, she certainly knows how to “get” $300 million in assets for her union-busting shop.
I want to say I enjoyed listening to you last night in Baton Rouge, so thank you for coming and I hope you have fun in New Orleans.
I’m frustrated on interviews about TFA because I don’t understand why we can’t talk about the funding these non-profits are getting. I recognize that teachers or educators or policy people would want to discuss education, and that’s certainly important, but I would like to see more straight reporting on the money side of education reform.
It doesn’t have to be accusatory. Questions about funding are ordinary, and of interest to the public who are paying towards these reform for-profits and non-profits. TFA should have to justify the federal funding they receive, in addition to the costs incurred when veteran teachers are expected to “mentor” and train temporary teachers. Training takes time away from those veteran teachers’ students, obviously, and that’s a cost incurred by the school. On the job training isn’t “free.” What is the cost-benefit of TFA to to the public, who are subsidizing the program?
This isn’t complicated and it shouldn’t be off-limits in national media.
Ask Kopp and other school reformers about the money. Reformers should be able to discuss that frankly and bluntly without taking offense. It’s not a personal attack.It’s public funds.
Several years ago I listened to a conversation with Wendy Kopp on the Charlie Rose show. You probably can find the archive on his website.
Anyway, at one point during the interview, Kopp quietly said, almost as an aside, that the problem was with the adults. Usually reformers are talking about the teachers when they reference “the adults,” but this time I “heard” Kopp as referencing public school administrative bureaucracy as “the adult” problem. It resonated with me because it was in line with my experience as a teacher in urban schools.
I believe Wendy Kopp, and the other reformers, know very well what they are doing is a fiction and would like “us” as their ideological enemies to see as them as “clueless.”
This reform movement is about money, a lot of money, or like the junkie said to Bruce Willis’s character in the movie “Fifth Element,” —“Gimme the cash!”
On one side you have the public district administrative bureaucracy trying to protect their goldmine and on the other side you have the corporate reformers elbowing them aside to get in on the 6 figure salaries and equally good pensions–not to mention consulting contracts, private firm contracts, book contracts, computer contracts and of course, the testing contracts.
And in the middle getting crushed in this 21st C. gold rush is the teachers, the paras, the students, and the taxpayers.
Like you say, it’s all about wanting to be the boss.
I just read, or tried to read the interview between Kopp with Tavis Smiley and Cornell West. A few thoughts came to me as I was reading. I was looking for some facts, or studies or anything that seemed to explain in real terms how tfa worked and why.
What I got were platitudes and amorphous statements that seemed to suggest as long as the teachers from tfa were enthusiastic, then they could change the course of education in America.
What folks do not understand is that teachers are given tasks they are to do with their children, that take up most of their day. Most are teaching tasks, but many times these tasks are changed at least once a year, and often have no continuity with previous years.
Furthermore past elementary school, the teachers have two majors in college. If they are teaching math, they have math courses as well as education courses. I was a music teacher, My official degree was music education with a voice major. Any of us were educated enough to be professional musicians as well as teachers. I could have sung opera, tought voice or taught school. I picked the latter. Suffice it to say that I was steeped in my subject matter.
I have met quite a few TFA teachers in training. I have found that many of them have a disdain for seasoned teachers in public school and have a feeling that they are the only ones who can fix the myriad problems that plague underperforming schools. Armed with little or no information on child development and what is important to teach in each grade group, or familiarity with tested and tried pedagogical information under their belt, they soldier foreward with no clue as to what to do.
My point is don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. We need a combination of seasoned teachers and young people with enthusiasm and a willingness to learn, rather than folks having preconcieved ideas of what education is and what children need, without having the information or studies to back it up.
It took me years to become the teacher tht I wanted to be, but in the end I feel tht I attained that goal. A grounding in my subject matter, an understanding that at any moment of time I was tuned into the social and psychological needs of each individual child, a love of seeing children learn, and a relization that it takes a lifetime to learn ones craft are essential to teaching.
A little respect from the powers that be would be nice too.
You may find this illuminating:
Wendy Kopp, Princeton Tory
Thanks for linking to this, Florence.
I left the following comment on Corey Robin’s blog:
It should be of no surprise to anyone that Kopp worked on a right wing publication at Princeton, since, it’s thin veneer of social justice cliches notwithstanding, TFA’s ideology and rhetoric is saturated with old-school racial paternalism, and it’s most prominent alumni have overseen the steep decline of African American teachers in districts they control.
It’s also fitting Kopp went to Princeton, since it was a favored destination for children of the Southern slave-owning class (paw.princeton.edu/issues/2011/03/23/pages/4092/index) , as well as having been led by probably the most racist of 20th century US presidents, Woodrow Wilson.
Thanks for posting my writing Dr, Ravitch. I did spell Geoffrey Canada’s name wrong but have since corrected it and will tomorrow add the links to the interviews tomorrow. I agree we need both a combination of veteran and younger teachers but we need 1) to get rid of 5 week training programs and make sure everyone goes through a credential program 2) start newer teachers at a higher salary and have the pay scale a bit flatter. This might encourage them to stay. The only reason I was able to stay afloat as a new teacher was being able to work off track since we were a multi-track school. My rent was also relatively low. New teachers need to start at least at 50,000 dollars a year. 3) We need to stop demonizing veteran educators.