Teach for America is reducing its corps members in Memphis, according to Chalkbeat.
“The organization is projecting placements of 110 new recruits in Memphis-area schools during the 2015-16 school year, down from 185 last year….
“TFA’s presence has not been without controversy. While school administrators in Memphis have struggled to find and keep qualified math and science teachers to work in some of its lowest-performing middle and high schools, local hiring of young, mostly white TFA members coincided with layoffs of many older black teachers amid significant budget cuts.
“Local teachers’ union officials have maintained that TFA recruits aren’t qualified and equipped to teach students in low-income environments.
“The district is required to pay TFA a $5,000 annual fee per recruit, most of which comes from a $90 million grant awarded to the district in 2009 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That money – designated for programs that improve teacher effectiveness in Memphis schools – soon will run out.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When Gates cant get what he paid for, what he paid for will be gone. Good riddance!
News on TFA got my interest but what was even more interesting is the source – Chalkbeat. That prompted me to follow the “About” link. It appears this is the same online news originating out of Tennessee, Colorado, New York, and Indiana. The personnel are the same and the funders are the same. Third on every list is the Gates Foundation and last on the list of supporters is the Walton Foundation. Fair and balanced?
Of course its not fair and balanced; that isn’t the agenda. We all know what the agenda is, and these reformers are long on money and long on patience. The ROI agenda has been going on for 20 years with taxpayer dollars being moved to private bank accounts.
What really eats me is that, purportedly: “That money – designated for programs that improve teacher effectiveness in Memphis schools….” That money particularly paid the $5,000/per TFA recruit to improve the schools? Seriously? Laughable.
I wonder what social toy the gazillionaires will tinker with next when they are done ruining education, or plain grow tired of education.
The only way they will grow weary of tinkering with education if they find they can’t make a good profit on it.
“TFK”
Teach for Kopp
For Wendy’s pay
Yearly crop
Four hundred K
With the flop
In TFK
Where’s the drop
In Wendy’s pay?
You are right, Mary Ollie, to follow the money. Chalkbeat is funded by reformers and definitely reports with a pro-reform slant. Chalkbeat doesn’t generally cover the controversial subjects that make their donors look bad like the Relay Program that is coming to the University of Memphis. In fact, their reporter was at the heated public meeting about Relay a few weeks ago, but never published a word about it.
Chalkbeat also has an arrangement with the biggest newspaper in Memphis, the Commercial Appeal. The Commercial Appeal often will print articles by Chalkbeat. I’m sure the education reporters for the Commercial Appeal don’t feel a bit threatened by that, right? After all, everyone is replaceable.
Coincidentally, as TFA presence declines in Memphis, this new Relay program is beginning. It is basically the same concept as TFA: recruit college kids, fast-track their teacher training, and put them in classrooms for a few years with poor, black students. The difference is the recruits will walk away with a Master’s degree and some loans paid off.
It is a crime what is being done to the poor children in our city. Their schools are being closed and/or privatized, and they are given unqualified, temporary teachers. This would never happen in the suburbs.
These scabs already get weekend bogus Masters degrees and their loans paid off. That is the beauty of TFA – not so much for the poor shlubs who go the traditional route.
This sounds just like Idaho’s Idaho Education News (funded by the Albertson Foundation – which subsidizes the TFA finder’s fee). The local newspaper cuts and pastes or prints a blog. Finally have a disclaimer on the fully written news articles but not the blog. TFA has been quite actively pushing for positions in Idaho – always at the lower socioeconomic schools.
Here in NYC, where they got their start as “Gotham Schools” (and with hedge fund money from the beginning), they are known as “Charterbeat.”
Looking at this from the reverse perspective– 185 last year, 110 this year, new, not total, recruits– means in those 2 years Memphis has effectively laid off the equivalent of 2 high school faculties for high schools of 2,000 students in favor of staffs that have their preppie privilege, enthusiasm, and good looks as their sole qualifications. Glad they are fewer, but what craziness.
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
Here’s some interesting news.
I got my 1st teaching job when I was still working on my master’s in education. I was filling in for a teacher who was taking a 1 year sabbatical to be a teaching mentor. When that year was coming to an end, I was dismissed. This was expected because of the circumstances under which I was hired. I didn’t take it personally. It was automatic. The difficult part was knowing that I had to wait for all of the TFA and NFT (Nashville Teaching Fellows) to be placed before my principal could offer me a position.
I had subbed at this school for 7 years before I decided to get my master’s from Trevecca Nazarine University. By the time I finished that first year of teaching, I had completed my master’s. To sit and watch people in their early 20’s who had had 6 weeks of training get the positions was a very demoralizing experience.
I already had an undergraduate and a master’s, 8 years’ experience in the classroom (a year of which as a teacher of record) under my belt, and I had to wait at the back of the line behind young people that were GOING to go to a 6 week training in Mississippi.
I’m happy to say, that at the last minute, the teacher, for whom I’d been filling in, had decided to go to another school and I got hired.
On what planet does something like this happen, unless someone is profiting from it in an inappropriate manner?
My personal experience with TFA and NFT teachers is that they have been bright, hard working, and dedicated… for 2 years.
Shameful! I think lots of potential TFA candidates are more reluctant to get involved in the charter school racket. I don’t blame them. Even a bright person needs a solid foundation for teaching, especially poor students with so many needs.
dharrison1: I had all sorts of high-falutin’ words ready to use and then figured out that sometimes fewer is better—
Thank you very much for putting so much of yourself into being a teacher.
😎
So it turns out that 40% of TFA recruits can’t keep steady time or sing. So no Memphis jobs for them!
I see that $90 million grant from the Gates foundation as seed money with a goal to break teachers’ unions.
As a poor state, our legislature is most likely (or has) approved “adjunct instructors” to sidestep paying TFA. These scabs will never go away.