BREAKING: San Francisco Drops TFA for Next Year

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1. Donna says:

   May 12, 2016 at 6:30 pm

   Applause. Now, other cities and states should follow suit. I want my money back. All the government funding of TFA has been taxation without representation.

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2. Linda Adelman Johannesen says:

   May 12, 2016 at 6:35 pm

   Finally! TFA’s “training” has always been superficial, and I dare say, more focused on funders interest than teacher needs.

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3. KrazyTA says:

   May 12, 2016 at 6:40 pm

   From the linked piece:

   “This week we learned that the SFUSD Board of Education has pulled support for the Teach for America (TFA) program for the 16/17 school year. While we celebrate and respect TFA teachers who commit themselves to our schools, the reality is that the program has a retention rate of just 17%. With the teachers often placed in high needs schools, TFA essentially institutionalizes turnover in these schools, robbing our school communities of the stability and continuity that we desperately need.”

   17% retention rate? Institutionalized [high] turnover? This is what what “education reform” considers success?

   😳

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   • Laura H. Chapman says:

     May 12, 2016 at 9:06 pm

     Wow. Dropout rate 83%. TFA essentially institutionalizes turnover in these schools, robbing our school communities of the stability and continuity that we desperately need.” These are bold statements that deserve high praise. Send the message far and wide.

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4. Barbara L. Braden says:

   May 12, 2016 at 7:17 pm

   It might also be that SFUSD Superintendent Richard A. Carranza started as a teacher in the classroom in Tucson and knows what good teaching is all about. By all reports he is an exceptional educator and leader, e.g. Mission High School, bilingual education. And don’t forget his Mariachi school bands.

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5. erinerin1234 says:

   May 12, 2016 at 8:26 pm

   This is FaNtaStIc!

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6. D L Paulson says:

   May 12, 2016 at 10:46 pm

   Here’s an article from a local newspaper about the school board’s decision.

   http://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-school-leaders-give-Teach-for-America-a-7463170.php

   The article provides fairly balanced coverage of the issue. (Thanks, Jill Tucker. The NY Times should learn from you on this one.)

   Still, the article made a mistake in allowing the TFA spokesperson, Beatrice Viramontes, to lie with statistics. Below is a snippet of the article. You’ll see she equates teachers leaving the district, which is no great surprise, given mobility and different pay scales around the Bay Area, with TFAers leaving the profession altogether. This would make for an interesting comparison study.

   (By the way, a 90% return rate for second-year TFAers seems like a weird thing to brag about. That means 1 out of 10 actually break their two-year contracts—contracts that get them special funding and certification privileges. No penalty?)

   Another interesting thing to study is the *indirect* effects those TFAers are having on the regular teaching corps. I would suggest: devaluation of the profession, downward pressure on wages, and diminished support of actual public (not charter) schools. I’m sure all that factored into the school board’s decision. Bottom line: TFA is a pox on the district.

   Read the snippet below and see if you have the same reaction: “Well, duh!”

   *******************************

   District leaders have complained that Teach for America workers contribute to heavy turnover in high-needs schools. Just 17 percent of the program’s teachers are still with the district after five years, officials said.

   “I actually commend the district and the superintendent for making that decision to back away from TFA at least for the time being,” said Lita Blanc, president of the United Educators of San Francisco teachers union. “TFA actually does institutionalize turnover as a way of life.”

   Yet the school board did not acknowledge that Teach for America teachers are more likely to stick around during those first five years than other instructors, said Beatrice Viramontes, the organization’s senior managing director in San Francisco.

   Overall, 90 percent of the group’s teachers come back after their first year of teaching, compared with 56 percent of those who are new to the teaching profession in general. In addition, most of the program’s teachers stay for a third year after their two-year commitment ends, said both the organization and the district.

   “It was disappointing that was not acknowledged,” Viramontes said. “The thing they focused on was the inexperience and the type of training.”

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7. Linda says:

   May 13, 2016 at 7:59 am

   Perfect location – Bay area (1) epicenter of rephorm (2) home to Kim Smith, founding team member of TFA, founder of the Pahara Aspen Institute, Bellwether and New Schools Venture Fund, all of 3 of which, rec’d Gates’ financing.

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8. markstextterminal says:

   May 13, 2016 at 8:42 am

   Good news! And San Francisco? You made the right choice here.

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9. David Greene says:

   May 13, 2016 at 12:04 pm

   Keep adding cities, but not only because of the corps member dropout rate…because of what TFA is and what it does.

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   • Linda says:

     May 13, 2016 at 2:10 pm

     And, “what it stands for”, a corporate agenda (1) to eliminate middle class jobs and, (2) to de-professionalize the career path that has had the most beneficial impact on women.

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10. Cupcake says:

    May 13, 2016 at 8:43 pm

    Bay area parents are wealthy and educated. They don’t want temps teaching their children.

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11. k says:

    May 13, 2016 at 10:46 pm

    I am a teacher in SF who went through a new teacher program a few years ago with several TFA teachers. I became good friends with one of them. She was not a fan of TFA but ended up leaving after 2 years partially because it had stressed her out so much, but also because her principal restructured her job description in a way that was extremely unfriendly for a beginning teacher, making her abandon the curriculum she had developed since starting and writing a new one from scratch. I don’t blame her for leaving, and I told the person who replaced her (who came from my traditional teacher credential program) that she was setting herself up for failure. I am glad that TFA is out–I work at another hard to staff school and didn’t want TFA at our school, but realistically, SFUSD needs to do something better right now. The city is completely unaffordable for teachers regardless of preparation and we have a ton of open positions. We will continue to have high turnover since new teachers can’t afford the rent and will move to other districts that have higher pay and lower cost of living, or as long as we keep having to hire people with intern credentials, which is very stressful for those working and going to school at the same time.

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    • Linda says:

      May 14, 2016 at 10:20 am

      Are your fellow teachers aware that the Gates-funded New Schools Venture Fund has the stated goal, “To develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale?” Do they understand, there is a billion dollar plot, by Silicon Valley moguls to take our tax dollars, intended for kids? Are the teachers with whom you are familiar demonstrating a concern that “…reformers…declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the ed schools.’ ”
      Have they forecasted the implication of the Gates/Z-berg/Pearson for-profit, Bridge International Academies, when the business is foisted on the U.S..?

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12. E. Rat says:

    May 14, 2016 at 11:01 am

    This is an election year for the school board, and a member of the board is running for District Supervisor too. Additionally, the District goes into openers around salary with UESF this fall. I think these factors had a big impact on the contract being voted down this year (after a big debate and narrow passage last year).

    The Chronicle failed to mention the cost of the contract to SFUSD, even though other TFA funding sources were mentioned twice. I believe the contract was for more than $140,000. That seems like a lot of money for 15 uncredentialed first year teachers (and “support” for whichever second year TFA members finish their commitment). I’m sure both the SF Teacher Residency and the District’s para to teacher program could do far more with those funds.

    As a side note, I’m an experienced and award-winning teacher, and I’ve always taught at high-poverty schools. I left the hard to staff school in SFUSD for a more stable one after six years. A big part of the reason I left was that I could no longer handle running my own classroom and providing triage to an endless churn of inexperienced new teachers. No matter how well meaning and how talented they are, brand new teachers at a high-needs, high-trauma site need lots of support. Without that support, their classrooms can become so difficult and low-functioning that they negatively impact the school as a whole. So veterans have to support them. In the case of TFA, this means veterans are essentially unpaid, on the job trainers for their itinerant teachers who are destabilizing the profession. That adds insult to injury.

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13. Lita Blanc says:

    May 14, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    San Francisco Board of Education’s decision around Teach for America in an important step in the fight for quality public education. United Educators of San Francisco has been in an on-going dialogue with the members of our school board about the need for stability in our schools, but particularly in those schools with high concentrations of students of color. Our most vulnerable students deserve the best prepared teachers. We support those dedicated teachers who came into our classrooms through TFA but believe that, overall, the program does not promote quality teacher preparation and undermines the professionalism of educators.

    Lita Blanc, President United Educators of San Francisco

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