As an earlier post showed, Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota vetoed $1.5 million earmark for Teach for America, noting that the organization has $300 million in assets and thus no reason to be charging the state for its bright but poorly prepared recruits. But TFA scored big in North Carolina, where the reactionary legislature handed over $6 million a year to TFA. This from a parent activist in North Carolina:
The NC Senate just passed their version of a budget in which State support for TFA will total $6 million in both years of the biennium.
We had an outstanding program, the NC Teaching Fellows program http://www.teachingfellows.org. That received the ax. Two of our legislators filed a bill to restore the program, but the bill doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The bigger picture so far with the state budget looks like this:
Here’s the Senate’s education budget:
Here’s what the NC Association of Educators thinks of the budget:
NCAE President’s letter to House Speaker with recap of destructive budget cuts in the version passed in the Senate:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teaching fellows is just about the same thing but a different program. It also takes away jobs from certified teachers. Fellows go through a very similar training as TFAs. Same stuff, different title. Glad it got the ax. Unfortunately, TFA prevailed.
TFA and Fellows pretty much took over our math department. Through our excrutiating evaluation process, TFAs scored super high in most areas, and certified teachers did not. However, in a TFA classroom, the teacher scored a 4 (top score) for classroom engagement while she had at least 4 students sleeping during the lesson. A regular teacher scored either a 3 or 2 and had all students working with no one sleeping. That regular teacher was told not all students were cognitively engaged. What a farse.
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Teaching Fellows bears NO resemblance to Teach For America. You are speaking out of ignorance about what was once an outstanding opportunity for promising educators..
The North Carolina Teaching Fellows program was a scholarship program for college students to receive degrees in education, after which they were required to serve in a NC classroom for four years. You can learn more about the program at http://www.teachingfellows.org/
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Ah, I see the confusion, there are other programs called “Teaching Fellows” which are indeed very similar to TFA like in Chicago: http://chicagoteachingfellows.ttrack.org/Home.aspx or New York:. https://www.nycteachingfellows.org/Default.asp This North Carolina program is completely different. Unfortunately, the names are the same. Scholarships programs to real, full education programs=GREAT! Fast-track alternative cert programs=Terrible Idea.
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http://www.upworthy.com/they-canceled-class-today-my-teacher-got-arrested-for-protesting-voting-rights-abuses?c=ufb1 When college professors stand up and get arrested over civil rights, I’m impressed.
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It would still be better if NC could fix Teaching Fellows to do whatever it is that TFA does better and keep that money within the state. My understanding is that many Teaching Fellows grads were having trouble finding jobs (a couple years ago) and that the populations fluctuate so much in rural areas that TFA better suits the need because of being able to place in obscure locations for a short amount of time (which is what NC needed). TFA offered a better service to fix that niche, apparently. But the people running Teaching Fellows maybe should have seen TFA as a possible threat to their “business” and made the appropriate changes. NC should take heed! Let’s fix our business if we want to not have it outsourced. If the action is part of a playbook (a la the Jeb Bush variety), well that is unfortunate and I think eventually legislators making careless decisions with our tax payer money will hear about it. I do think most of these things don’t mean much to people not involved in education until a ways down the road when they see the effects.
NC already has a problem of giving away possible revenue by all the many out of state people who come to the law school at UNC Chapel Hill (good law school for a good price) and then leave the state to go practice law elsewhere and make lots of money–this subsidized by farmers and hard working North Carolinians.
We’ll get it right one of these days.
I find that our state superintendent doesn’t really speak out about vouchers or charters, so long as they are held to the same standards with testing as the public schools (according to her most recent blog post). I am trying to compartmentalize the various aspects to “reform” so as to not get emotional, but think through actual and possible outcomes in this right to work state. That is the only way any real progress can happen here. It is clear just doing things the way they have been done is not an option in
The Old North State.
“though the scorner may sneer at and whitlings defame her. . . “
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” It is clear just doing things the way they have been done is not an option in The Old North State.”
Emotionally charged statement without evidence.
And compartmentalization of education “reform” in NC might be a good idea, and this compartmentalization would also fit on a national scale.
1. Billionaires want to invade public schooling for $$$$$ and power, and maybe even with an innocent desire to actually fix something supposedly broken by introducing a “free market” strategy. They think that capitalism is good and everything else is bad. Bill Gates says, “Me says public sector bad, you believe”. He wants to strip tenure, strip pensions, and increase class size and pay more for those bright souls fortunate TO GET THEIR HAND ON THAT TEST, and teach the crap out of it.
2. Politicians – see #1.
3. Unions – see #1.
4. Corporations – see #1. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the rooms of SAS in Cary NC. Can you imagine them being “awarded” all that $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$? I bet they are having a great Memorial Day. Teachers are struggling to make ends meet and these crooks are laughing all the way to the bank.
I would love to see William Sander’s (founder of EVAAS) house, just out of curiosity. I have a feeling he’s like those evangelists and preachers that beg you to send them money on the TV. He is just selling his oil to the politicians though.
5. School administrators – tough job, but they are overpaid making many times more than teachers. County personnel make me sick. Why in the flippin’ world do we need all of these positions?
School administrators also know that what is going on is wrong, they just want their six figure salaries.
6. Teachers – it is partly our fault for being so ignorant. Many teachers haven’t the faintest idea of what is going on. I will say this – since the Senate’s proposal, some teachers are getting suspicious that teachers and students are getting screwed. Why do you have to mess with people’s money before they wake up?
7. Students – their families are just trying to hang on for dear life.
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The evidence is the threat of privatization; the emotion you mention is really not there—you, the reader, put it there.
The way things have always rolled is now being called into question by the very possibility of reform.
If things are to continue as they always have been, it won’t be without a fight–sitting back and saying well we had it right won’t keep reform from happening.
I think district or county level jobs are very necessary. We do have to have that leadership (maybe this is a good time to trim and consider what is absolutely necessary, but again. . .the very fact that we have to look at it again provides the evidence that business as usual will not do). And in our county I am seeing people on that level take pay cuts. They are fighting for public schools too.
I see it kind of like when Prince William broke it off with Kate Middleton. Her position was challenged. So, following her mother’s advice, she got out there and got fit, into shape, went out, was seen, was stylish, was social and eventually he came back to her and now they’re married. She did not let that setback and that threat of another possibility for him destroy what they had already built.
Interesting that NC has alienation of affection laws. If only we could apply those to this reform situation. Again, let’s consider the public schools the wife, and the state the husband. A temptress has come in. She is taunting the husband. She wants to lure him away from his plump, happy wife who has not had her hair done in years. Does she sit and complain or does she get out there, get her hair done, be the best she can be and remind her husband of all they have built together and what a shame it would be to throw away? She would have to do both, I think. She can’t just complain. He will leave if that’s all she does. The temptress will win if the wife doesn’t take cues that she needs to do some self-improvement.
I have many friends who are marriage and therapy counselors and I think the family and marriage analogies work quite well. We as the state and the public schools need to see it as a marriage that is on the rocks. And we need to tend to it delicately and with attention to detail.
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NC Teaching Fellows is NOT similar to TFA. Fellows must complete a teacher education program at an accredited college or university. TFA complete a 5 week program. My daughter is currently a NC Teaching Fellow. She is in the last cohort. Trust me. There are stark differences between the two.
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Teaching Fellows is NOTHING like TFA. Teaching Fellows is (was) a scholarship program that pays for college students who plan to become educators. Upon graduation the recipient of the scholarship has to teach for so many years in NC public schools or pay the money back. NOTHING like TFA.
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Our Teaching Fellows program in Chicago is similiar to TFA in that they place novices in schools as the teacher of record after only the first summer training session, while fellows are expected to pursue the rest of their teaching coursework at night while teaching full-time. They are just as uncertified and just as unprepared/inexperienced. It differs from TFA in the requirement for service (at least 5 years) and in the intent to create career teachers. Here’s one NYC Teaching Fellow’s story: http://atthechalkface.com/2012/08/21/hi-im-lauren-and-im-a-recovering-elitist-nyc-teaching-fellow/
At the end of the day, TFA will always be the worst offender, but all fast-track alternative programs which place uncertified novices in the classrooms alone should be rethought. Places like Finland or Japan would not allow these types of programs. And they are especially damaging when they are used in only the most underserved student populations. While there are a handlful of expections, alternative certification generally serves to exacerbate inequality in American education.
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unless I’m reading this incorrectly, some of the budget cuts seem wrong; like to ELL students, bus upgrades, classroom teachers, etc.
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supplies, support personnel, instructional aides, teaching assistants.
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I see that NC will be paying ACT 15 million and SAS almost 3 million over the course of the next couple of years for their laborious work of testing our kids to death, along with turning over 6 million to TFA over the course of the next two years.
Now that’s a waste of money – ALL of it.
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the temptress is winning.
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What’s fascinating to me is that the founder of SASin fact started his own school- Cary Academy- to avoid the very schools he’s testing to death….
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TFA Diversity Statement: “Teach For America seeks to enlist our nation’s most promising future leaders in the movement to eliminate educational inequity”
Why are they knee-deep in CREATING and facilitating “educational inequity?”
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