To regular readers of this blog, the story is not new.
Teach for America is one of the richest nonprofit organizations in the United States, yet it passes the begging bowl as if it desperately needs cash.
TFA is a brand, a money machine. Its tax reports got out on the Internet, and now everyone who wants to know knows that TFA collected nearly a billion dollars in a five-year period. And that Wendy Kopp, its CEO, pays herself about $400,000 a year. And that other staff members are handsomely paid.
Now this Louisiana blogger wants to know why TFA is pleading for $5 million from poor Louisiana and $6 million from Mississippi.
Why do they put a price on the head of every poorly trained recruit? Do they feel bad about sending in these young kids to replace veteran educators who live in the community? Do they worry about persuading policymakers that teaching is a job for temps, not a profession?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TFA is the Amway of education. It’s not the interns that make the money, it’s the staffers. At the bottom of the pyramid are the interns. School districts have to pay TFA for the privilege of hiring each intern plus a lump sum goes to support the office in the city TFA places interns in. Those that run the TFA offices are next in the pyramid. It’s on up the food chain to the national office. It’s a Ponzi scheme. Those who stay in the organization to the top ride the gravy train.
Don’t forget how the interns take money from the district and or school for all the training (AP certifications/ summer training/time and effort of vet teachers on how to use district stuff ,etc.).
They take/use resources then split. the system then has to spend more $ the next year to get a new AP teacher or SP ed teacher or ESOL teacher or what ever.
TFA…the gift that keeps on taking.
They are not really “interns” any more than they are “teachers”, because they are not apprentices who are being supervised by master teachers that are career educators with decades of classroom experience. They are given some guidance by TFA staff who are former TFA temps themselves, not experts in education. I’d suggest calling them “temps,” because that’s all they signed up for and that’s their commitment.
Yeah, I know.
I meant to put quotes around “interns”.
Like I said.
The gift that keeps on taking.
The ability to plunder the federal, state, local, and wealthy philanthropies proves Kopp and her highly paid executives are “worth” every penny they are paid.
meant federal, state & local gov’ts in previous entry.
They already have a contract with Tennessee for 5 mil. The Achievement School District (the district appointed by the state to manage and privatize public schools) is specifically named in the contract. Funny since most of the ASD folks are former TFA. In addition to the 5 mil noncompetitive contract. To break it down, it’s 9k per TFA person.
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/287626-teach-for-america-contract.html
From Facebook To Pixar: 10 Conversations That Changed Our World
Wendy Kopp comes in at number 5, right after Steve Jobs and right before Target. By the way, the print edition of Fast Company magazine reads “10 Business Conversations that Changed Our World.” I thought it was all about the kids?
http://www.fastcompany.com/3004348/facebook-pixar-10-conversations-changed-our-world
5. Reading, Writing, And Education Reform
Wendy Kopp proposed Teach for America in 1989 as her senior thesis at Princeton. By the spring of the following year, she had lined up 500 recruits and job placements for them. But Kopp still needed more than $2 million to launch. So she wrote billionaire industrialist Ross Perot.
They are a part of the corporate profit greed machine.
It is appalling to me that the corporate encroachment in education can fool the gullible public into thinking that TFA is an upgrade in public education! I feel this assault on teachers was a well-planned campaign that started with the loudly proclaimed falsity that
teachers are; lazy, incompetent, over paid, especially in their pensions, and possibly abusive to their students. Once that Pavlovian knee jerk definition was ingrained in the populace, it made the second step of replacing us with TFA novices a just result to such a bad lot as teachers. Now the corporate greedy hounds are in full array to scrap public schools with charters, deg reed teachers with TFA guinea pigs while destroying the intellectual prowess of the nation! As “W” would proclaim, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” The untold millions that these charlatans are raking in, bear witness to how their disdain for education. Were it not so, these “Philanthropists” could find
a multitude of ways to truly advance public education. What a dog and pony show they can cynically portray with NO regard for the results! It is shocking to me the rapidity of the same old story that goes down in cities across the nation to enforce their goals.
Is the public so ignorant that they can’t see the snake oil promoters who will cause our nation to precipitately fall even farther behind the rest of the world in academics when the TFA’ers dismal abilities produce results that will place us below banana republics!
The nation will realize too late the siren song they sang, and the public happily marched to the tune that lead to a ruination of education that once was hailed as an example to be aspired to in other countries. Corporate America is making a silent assault on every sector of the nation; Black Water took the place of the citizen soldier and brought disgrace upon America for their misdeeds (they have changed the name of their outfit to fool the public yet again), prisons are run by them, now they are in the battle for
our schools and the war against the postal service is in their cross hairs. The postal service was “set up” by the nitwits in Congress who raided their budgets, then bemoaned the economic results! Much like the person who kills their parents, then expects pity that they are orphans! The corporate evil doers present similarly asinine
constructs to gain their greedy ends. Would make one cynical to watch this show
repeated over and over again! The media has greatly helped them in their thefts by sugar coating the false propaganda for the profits they receive from the corporations.