North Carolina has been cutting the budget of public schools, but there is always plenty for Teach for America in states with a rightwing legislature and governor. The state is increasing class sizes and eliminating the NC Teaching Fellows program, among many other cuts.
A reader sends this comment:
“In North Carolina, the state has invested four million dollars in TFA despite getting rid of teacher assistants, cutting supplements for teachers for advanced degrees, eliminating class caps, and other misguided policies that will spell disaster for public schools. From Senate Bill 402
“Teach For America
$5,100,000
Current state support is $900,000. State support to increase by $5,100,000 to establish a TFA program in the Triad region, grow in the southeastern region, targeted subject specific recruitment and the assumption of management responsibilities for the NC Teacher Corps beginning 2014-15.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sickening.
My daughter is in the last cohort of the NC Teaching Fellows. I am really scared for her and her associates. I told her to teach her required 4 years in NC then leave the state. I am seriously considering doing the same. It is a sad state of affairs when ill-trained college graduates are recruited to teach in public schools.
Do I smell Koch and Pope? People, keep fighting!
We are losing the fight!
Ms Dee
We have only begun to fight
Ms Dee and her daughter have to eat. How many well trained and experienced teachers will be able to outlast this juggernaut?
“… and the assumption of management responsibilities for the NC Teacher Corps beginning 2014-15.”
This is sickening. TFA is a patronage agency, placing the children of the well-connected into jobs for which they have no qualifications whatsoever. To add insult to injury, NC taxpayers subsidize the operation!
We’re fighting for the souls of our TFA colleagues against these corrupt lures. They’re disappointed by their actual teaching results, but six figure salaries beckon to soothe their feelings. Please, help them be strong, and bring them over if they’ve got the guts to stay in the classroom, once they’re here.
A young woman from my building is moving up already, to a charter chain that’s expanding its footprint by taking over community schools for pregnant teens, and turning them into profit mills. They’ll set her up to front their proposal for a specific target school, and if it’s accepted, she gets to be the principal. She’s young, and this big thing just fell on her, but she actually knows nothing whatsoever about the charter’s plans for the low-income pregnant teens.
So please explain this to me. I live in TN and am seeing this “reform” from a first hand perspective. I am a PhD level educator so am fairly intelligent. Now, I understand the corporations are trying to move in via charter schools and standards and assessment but I do not understand why NC would invest this much money in TFA. Is there a shortage of teachers? Are they not renewing teachers contracts or is it simple economics by which they save money paying TFA teachers lower salaries? Have TFA teachers shown some amazing ability that our current teachers don’t possess. Someone please explain.
First, they are starting to lose big fights against PEOPLE POWER.
I just went line by line through the attached budget and it is a total plan for destruction. What they are doing to long time teachers and then puffing up TFA is outrageous. The cutting of money for textbooks and instructional materials and supplies is a devastating cut. No textbooks is what originally got me into education. Unacceptable. Pumping virtual and charter schools. We do not have the total revenues and expenditures and such for a real analysis. Can you put that up also? I would really like to see it. I also see low funding for special education. I wonder what Title 1 is doing. They seen to have good money for highly gifted next to California anyway.
Corporate America has gone overseas to use cheap labor for years. Now they want to use that same principle here. Hire the cheapest labor (TFA) in schools and destroy power of unions. Don’t get me wrong, when a principal can leave position to go back to classroom and not get a pay cut is OK, then unions are also wrong. There is a lot of changing that needs to be done on both sides.
I understand the concern but, I have witnessed amazing TFA/TeachNola teachers in action in New Orleans and they produce RESULTS. As with every organization, there is bound to be some negatives…. it’s not a patronage agency as most people in TFA and teaching fellows programs are not from the elite classes…most are from the disappearing middle class and many are the first in their families to graduate from college.
The thing is, veteran teachers aren’t down with ED reform. They are complacent. New Orleans is a shining example of why and how ED reform is working.
Dan, do you think TFA should replace all 3 million teachers? Being such great teachers, it is a shame that most of them are gone by the end of their third year.