Teach for America has always said that its long-term goal
was to train future leaders who would take a significant role in
shaping education policy. That is happening. Such alumni as
Michelle Rhee, Kevin Huffman (state commissioner in Tennessee),
John White (state commissioner in Louisiana), and Eric Guckian
(education advisor to the extremist Governor of North Carolina) are
using their power to promote privatization of public education and
to attack the teaching profession. In Atlanta, four
TFA alumni are running for school board and have a good
chance of winning. “Incumbent Courtney English (at-large Seat 7) is
a TFA alum. So is Matt Westmoreland, who is running unopposed for
the District 3 seat being vacated by Cecily Harsch-Kinnane. “So is
Eshe Collins, who is running for the District 6 seat being vacated
by Yolanda Johnson; as well as Jason Esteves, who is running for
the at-large Seat 9 being vacated by Emmett Johnson. However,
neither Collins nor Esteves mention TFA in their extensive campaign
biographies which appear on their respective websites. “Overall,
the four are a largely pro-charter school group. If all four are
elected, TFA alumni will constitute a near-majority voting bloc on
the BOE.” The linked article suggests that the four will advance a
pro-privatization agenda. At some point, TFA will be recognized as
a crucial cog in the rightwing effort to destroy public education
and dismantle the teaching profession.
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Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
MONEY TRUMPS KIDS. SIC. TFA = BAD.
Most of these candidates are black and Latino. I would say they have earned their right to run for public office.
They have all of the answers and none of the facts. What a shame.
What a perfect storm. Right-wing and Left-wing working together to take down the American public school system.
Don’t be fooled by the cliches and faux progressive language that TFA mimics in order to gull it’s (mostly) idealistic recruits and misdirect the public. It is anything but a Left-wing organization.
Any bona fide Left organization would on principle be opposed to union busting, privatizing public respurces, and the monetization of students. TFA is integral to that entire project, adding their own inimitable brand of deception, fatuousness and paternalism.
Acknowledged. TFA is a liberal in sheep’s clothing.
You really don’t get it.
Have to remediate in these kinds of situations. Despite outside financial support TFAers may receive, when folks become aware, they’d probably be more likely to vote for community members over carpetbaggers.
Any people here from Atlanta who can put the word out, help organize and talk to parents and real educators about running for school board?
There is no “left-right” anymore in American politics. It’s really a class war waged by the few ultrarich and their political hacks against everybody else to enrich themselves further.
WALK OUT, and OCCUPY THE SCHOOLS!!!!!
If you are walking out of the school….. how can you then occupy it? It seems like you would be physically displaced from the school.
PLEASE do not keep referring to THE RIGHT WING. this pains us who are conservative and are fighting for GOOD public education and the removal of the Common Core standards/data mining,etc…
This is a bit of an echo chamber here and the discussion is based on a heavy and unsubstantiated premise, namely that just because someone went through the TFA program that they support the TFA agenda. While certainly some do, it is equally probable, if not more so, that many do not. Let us not forget that when TFA began it was a way for kids to earn money for school via servicing communities. Michelle Rhee and the Student First movement eventually became associated with it, but this was not the case initially. Diane, rather than repeated a story please be fair and do some diligence. Maybe, just maybe, they don’t mention it in their bios because it is not their defining philosophy.
I know you are right about TFA. That’s why there was a conference in Chicago this summer by TFA dissidents, who did not want to be associated with the agenda of privatization and union-busting. TFA recruits very smart young people, many of whom are well aware that they are not a “great” teacher after five weeks of training. They should be teaching assistants, as they are in KIPP charter schools.
Thank you Diane. My point is that this article was clearly one sided and failed to present an actual full view. A look at the background of Collins or Esteves would reveal that there is a commitment to education way beyond TFA. The article was irresponsible and not providing context in this forum did a disservice.
Let me be clear–I’ve worked hard for public schools and put a lot of time and personal resources into the fight for public education. I know a lot of TFA people and I know a lot of Ed Reform people. I purposefully distinguish between the two because they are not necessarily one and the same.
APS is at a very critical juncture. Outlets, be they blogs or traditional print media, have a responsibility to inform their followers and readers so that they can make the right decisions. Too many lives are on the line for us to allow shallow reporting (the original article, not you) to set the pace for this election. We need a thorough discussion and understanding so that we do not have another scandal or embarrassment.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my original post. One last thought-you hit the nail on the head: Just because you went through TFA does not make you a union buster.
A brief perusal of Jason Esteves’ web site shows him having served on the board of a KIPP school, and obeisances paid to the “college and career ready,” mantra – which, translated into honest everyday English, means “all testing and sorting, all privatizing, all the time.”
You correctly state that not every TFA alumnus is a dilettante or education privateer, but those who have been identified, groomed and promoted for “leadership” in education by TFA should be presumed to be such, unless and until they publicly distance themselves from actions of this insidious, destructive organization.
“Due dilligence” in my book means reporting a candidate’s association with TFA, which Diane did. Unless the candidate has publicly repudiated TFA and its campaing to deprofessionalize teaching, I can only assume they intend to advance the TFA political agenda once in office.
TFA will be dismantled when we are “miseducating” not only brown hair and brown-eyed Lauren Hill, but also blonde hair, blue-eyed Lisa Mountain. That time is coming.
Lance, I didn’t realize we were reprising the days of the Salem Witch Hunts. Publicly repudiate or be flogged for your perceived sins, without proof! Sorry, that’s not how things work. Im sure your critical thinking skills are developed beyond such an elementary conclusion. However, if they are not, then the following should suffice:Esteves was attacked by the same groups that you assume him to be supported by this year. He was endorsed by the teacher union. In the case of Ms. Collins, a read of her site will show two things:
1) She has had a life way beyond TFA.
2) She has continued to work in education, especially with low income children, to improve outcomes.
OH NO! We wouldn’t want two attorneys who each have clearly staked their position in support of public education on the APS Board. Nope. That would be bad.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. Just because Michelle Rhee is a alumna does not mean that two of us automatically share the same ideals/experiences/political agendas. This is an important distinction when people decide to start throwing all TFAers into the same pot.
I am not even one of the “renegade” alumni. I am fairly reform minded and I still can’t stand Rhee or her tactics. Ms Ravitch does a very good job of obscuring this difference…. Rhee doesn’t even stand for the entire reform community.
As 1) a TFA alumn and 2) a liberal Democrat this post saddens me. If we have come to a place where wanting real, substantive change in low-income schools is now “right-wing” then I guess I am no longer a liberal? Did liberalism leave me or did I leave liberalism?
These crude association fallacies are disgusting as they are irrelevant. Start providing facts and actual evidence that anyone of these public servants have the nefarious goals you attribute to them…. and then we can start a real discussion based on evidence and facts.
TFA leaders are crushing teachers in Louisiana and Tennessee and pushing privatization of public schools. They work for the most rightwing governors in the US as does TFA alum Eric Guckian, who advises the far-right North Carolina governor on education.
Where are the TFA who fight privatization, who defend teachers’ rights?
Thank you, Diane.
All readers of this blog should notice how these TFA apologists cannot answer your question, and how they increasingly feel the need to distance themselves from their fallen celebrity “reformers.”
Hopefully, we will all live to see them deem it necessary to delete their stint with TFA from their resumes entirely, and will in desperation try to photoshop away their photo ops with Wendy.
This back-and-forth indicates the increasing success of the pushback against the so-called reformers, and the integral role played by TFA in the hostile takeover of the public schools: rather than receiving the fawning praise they had come to expect for their self-proclaimed Excellentnessihoodity they now thrash and flail helplessly trying to defend the indefensible.
I teach and live in Louisiana (going on 4 years) and my colleagues nor I feel crushed. This goes for traditional as well as TFA-trained teachers at my school. Once again… allowing a few to speak for the whole is completely inappropriate here.
Throughout the county there are TFA alumni organizing unions within charter schools, working within their union as active participants, and engaging their communities. You draw the line that you are either fighting for “privatization” – a loaded term considering most charter schools are non-profit and government funded – or fighting against “privatization.” There are A LOT of TFA alumni who are just fighting to 1) make their schools excellent, regardless of the type of school 2) fight to make the school better for teachers, regardless of the type of schools and 3) deepen their commitment to their community.
The paternalistic of view of anti-TFA critics that these 24 year old children know now what they do is really getting old. This is a diverse body of young people who have a diverse set of beliefs. Set your sights on Michelle Rhee and other leaders, but don’t try to make the tenuous connections to the rest of the 30,000 alumni until you can account for the actions of every single one of us.
The problem with TFA is not the idealistic and dedicated young people who join it, but the premise of the organization that experience is not needed to be a good–no, great!–teacher. And that young people who have just finished college can be “great” with no deep preparation at all. Buy that, and the teaching profession is toast.
North West,
If you and your fellow reformers/TFA alumni feel so strongly about Ms. Rhee, where is the public criticism, let alone repudiation? Don’t you think your status as alumni would give your views a wider hearing?
Or would that be inopportune, career-wise?
As for all those TFA alums organizing unions in charter schools – and no, they’re not public schools, but publicly-funded private entities – please inform us about them, especially since you are so concerned about Diane’s purported lack of evidence.
Regarding your claims of internal union activism, in New York City, where I teach, some of the most prominent TFA alumni are leading the Gates-funded E4E, seek to undermine the union and union working conditions, and are given media space all out proportion to their actual following among teachers. What’s your feeling about that?
Are Diane and the commenters on this site claiming that every individual ever associated with TFA accepts and acts upon the policies of the organization at all times? Of course not, though that’s the straw man argument we always get when we criticize TFA as an organization. And the reality is, the robotic, Stepford Wife caricature is all-too often borne out by the endless surroundsound of buzz words and tropes, along with the corporate-nice-while-closing -your-school perkiness.
Thousands of people have passed trough TFA: where’s the mass organization of alumni to reform it?
If you honestly believe that there is something of great value in so-called education reform that is threatened by the actions of Michelle Rhee and others, where’s the public statement? Some TFA alumni are courageously beginning to speak up about how pernicious this organization is: are you one of them?
If so, you have my admiration. If not, everything you’ve said goes at a very high discount.
It’s hard to understand why someone based in New York takes such an interest in an Atlanta election. Diane says that Teach For America wants to “destroy the teaching profession.” Let’s assume it’s true that Teach for America wants to privatize public education. If this happened to all schools, then the “public” school teachers would still be teaching the public (in privately owned and managed school buildings). What difference does it make if a good teacher winds up teaching in a privately owned building? She’s still educating the public, presumably with public funds. In such a situation, the teaching profession has not been “destroyed.” Hopefully, it has been elevated–although this is hardly guaranteed. The real issue is that many public school teachers know they’re not doing very well–mostly because of bureaucratically imposed rules coming from many levels of incompetent government hacks. Teachers who know they’re not doing well may not recognize that it’s not they’re fault–but they do recognize that they may not make the cut in an improved school system so they talk about “destroying” public education and the teaching profession in a desperate effort to scare the ignorant. Private and parochial schools in Atlanta have 1/10 the failure rate of the Atlanta Public Schools. The APS drop-out rate alone (ignoring graduates who can’t or simply don’t read) is 49%. These figures show that it is the Atlanta Public Schools themselves who are destroying the teaching profession.
Greg Tuve, I am interested in elections wherever the future of public education is at stake. Did you check who was funding the slate of four TFA candidates? Did you object when members of the Walton family of Arkansas funded the Georgia charter referendum? As I recall, millions of dollars of out-of-state money poured into Georgia to fund that ballot initiative. Did you complain? By the way, I endorsed the pro-public education slate in Atlanta, but I did not send any money. That is, I was exercising my First Amendment rights.