Sarah Darer Littman writes regularly about education for Connecticut media.
She recently took her daughter on a tour to select a college where she could get a strong bachelor’s degree and prepare for a career in teaching. Yes, there are still idealistic young people who see teaching as their vocation, their calling.
Imagine her surprise when one young college guide said he planned to try TFA before embarking on his real career.
This got Sarah thinking about why Governor Malloy is so eager to deploy these ill-trained young people for the districts where students have the highest needs. Shouldn’t these students get experienced, highly qualified expert teachers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Remember “DINO Dan” Malloy thinks all teachers have to do is “show up for work for three years to get tenure.” One can assume that he thinks anyone can do the job, so why not bring in lower paid TFA teachers and drive out the more experienced higher paid teachers. Interestingly enough, I also feel that anyone can be governor of Connecticut, after surviving the administrations of Rowland, Rell, and Malloy. I miss Ella Grasso!
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Evidently, anyone can be commissioner too. There’s a reason why Dannel chose a lawyer. Read here…state agency a slush fund for Pryor and his sleazy tricks. He learned from the best, Bloomberg.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Probe-State-agency-a-slush-fund-4299001.php#ixzz2Ld5Gx7GG
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And a recent editorial by the CT Post, titled Bidding rules can’t be skirted:
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Bidding-rules-can-t-be-skirted-4301472.php
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Why can’t we tar and feather these bastards and show them to the border? True, New York, Massachusetts, or Rhode Island doesn’t want them either!
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TFA is cheap labor. The powers that be won’t have to worry about pensions, medical benefits or another brick in the Union’s wall. Sad indeed.
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It’s wonderful that your daughter is going the traditional route because here in Louisiana after they do their two years they are fully certified and highly qualified. I would think it is the same everywhere.
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Please check out the comments on Sarah’s article.
Paul Vallas, the traveling “reformer”, pledges to bring in 40-50 TFA temps/scabs to Bridgeport.
What about the college graduates who majored in education and completed their degrees, student teaching, praxis exams, certification, etc who will be looking for jobs?
What about our kids who attended CT universities? Will they be bumped out of a chance for employment because positions have already been promised to the teach for a whiles? Will they be forced to look out of state because slots have previously been delegated to an intern who will most likely leave within 2-3 years?
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I am a recently retired teacher, counselor and principal and have watched the system go down hill over the last 10 years. Some bureaucrat had this bright idea that anyone can teach. Bull! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. These TFA or TAPP teachers as they call it in Georgia get on the job training while getting paid. Not to mention what it’s doing to our students while these people are learning to be a teacher, with no training in child development or pedagogy. They don’t have the passion for teaching either. This was a second or third choice for them.
I am proud to hear that your daughter has chosen teaching as her career. I wish there were more like her. If you get a chance, read, ” Yes, We Are STUPID in America!”. It’s not referring to the students, but to the leaders.
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“Yes, We Are STUPID in America!” It’s not referring to the students, but to the leaders.
Just about sums it up except that it really is all about the money and not about the students.
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My daughter is graduating with a neuroscience degree, in May, from a prestigious New Orleans University. She wants to take a year off to work for a non-profit before going to med school. She called to tell me that her advisor is trying to get her to do a stint as a TFA teacher. She thinks this is a joke. As the daughter of a teacher/administrator she knows first hand about the real world of teaching. She also hears her friends who have gone that route talk about the abysmal conditions in the New Orleans Charter schools and how horrobly teachers are treated there by Charter administrators. She is having none of it. Also, she added, she doesn’t really like kids that much! 🙂
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She has something in common with the “reformers” unfortunately.
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Oops, horribly…?
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The reforms perpetuate the problems the reformers refuse to acknowledge:
http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/current-education-reform-perpetuating-not-curbing-inequity/
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Training from an elite 4 year school does also not guarantee success. Consider – a student from more affluent circumstances who gets an education degree from a 4 year private (elite(ish)) university and then embarks on teaching in a high poverty school. Do we think this student will outperform a recent graduate from the neighborhood in question who attended community college and then a state university (perhaps tier 2 or 3) to become a teacher?
It’s a bit laughable to think that the teacher from the affluent background will just ‘gel’ in a low SES school (though we’ve heard many stories to the contrary). I’ve seen it. It’s a disaster. The teacher from the more affluent background may have read or studied about issues of poverty – but can (most likely) not relate at a fundamental level. The students can sense that the teacher has had very different lived experiences than they have had. Certainly, these barriers can be overcome – but I do not believe it correlates significantly with having attended a prestigious school.
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Mayor Bloomberg proposed higher salary incentives to any and all teachers who chose to teach in the most impoverished, crime ridden neighborhoods of NYC. I’m not sure why, but that program didn’t get very far, as far as I can see.
It might be because the union struck it down, initially. Or it was deemed a failure after a trial period. I’m not sure. I do know this, though: my colleagues and I have all worked in these neighborhoods for many years. Many, but definitely not all, of us began our careers there, as special ed teachers. No incentive pay. It was the time when a lot of the crack babies were entering the system and the DOE was hiring new teachers to fill the need.
Based on that experience, I’d say that it’s not so far fetched to have young teachers in these positions. I’d add, as a caveat, however:
> To teach in these neighborhoods, part of a teacher’s psychological makeup has to be tough, with the ability to remove the ego from the equation. Many of the kids will try to get to you and absolutely love it when they do. Teachers without this ability often leave either the school or the profession within the first 2 to 3 years, ime.
> The expectations for these teachers should not be the same as those in areas where there’s more parental involvement. Many of the kids I’ve taught are years behind in math and reading. They need work in learning social skills. Many of them are kept indoors at home for fear of gang activity. These kids need exercise. All of the above needs will take time out of the school day which, nowadays, is devoted towards teaching to the test (which will be irrelevant to many of these kids, because of their academic delays).
> Don’t get rid of the experienced teachers. I was mentored when I started. I’m a much better teacher now, as a result of this guidance and the experience I’ve gained through the years. I’m always helping out young teachers and they’re thankful for it. Without the experienced teachers, you’re going to have another generation of students being taught by new teachers who are not equipped to do the job, learning through trial and error.
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Yes, I agree. But I don’t think the purpose of the national corporate privatization movement is to elevate the profession…actually, just the opposite.
The goal is to reduce labor costs and funnel money elsewhere. If the goal is to merely improve test scores you don’t need professionals…you need compliant newbies who believe teaching is preparing students for standardized tests.
Bloomberg, Rhee, Bush, Gates, insert blowhard name here could care less about experienced, great teachers.
They wouldn’t have a clue what a great teachers looks like.
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I agree with almost all of this, Linda. Especially the idea of relegating the status of teachers to that of data collection specialists. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s what’s happening.
My only real exception is that I believe the billionaire boys club has a certain standing belief that their efforts are philanthropic and guided by the needs of the kids in the “New World Order” (how I hate that phrase…I sure didn’t vote for it).
The problem is that their vision of the future generation’s needs is not very well rounded, to say the least. These are business oriented men (notice, not “women”) and that’s their field of expertise. Find a successful model and apply it to the rest of the related operations. The areas that fail will sink. The rest will swim.
So, yes; they want to “streamline the operation”. And privatizing is one means of doing that. Easily quantified test scores is another one. Run like a business. But there are no children in the business world.
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And what do they propose for all the sinkers? Institutions? Death?
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A disposable workforce that doesn’t expect healthcare, a living wage, or retirement.
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I share your disgust, Linda.
I think that Don nailed it on the head, there.
17 years ago I attended a unique DOE event: a question and answer session followed by a mini workshop on implementation of the “New Math” initiative. It was different because teachers from both General and Special Education, throughout the 5 boroughs, were in attendance. We were all being told to follow this new, intensive program.
The “Process over Product” model is not news. Lots of word based problems with the emphasis being on how the student arrived at an answer…right or wrong. This was the beginning of that movement.
After the initial speech, I asked three questions:
Q: What about my Special Education students with little to no knowledge of basic mathematical concepts and even less skills in reading? The concrete aspect of learning basic number operations was not only necessary in lending purpose to solving the word problems, but also an aspect of math that many of them enjoyed and took pride in.
A: You’ll have to find some time during the day to fit that stuff in there.
Q: What about finding the time during the day to have our daily anger management periods, if I’m having to combine two math programs?
A: You’ll have to find some time to fit that in there, too.
Q: Why are you doing this? It kind of takes the “Special” out of “Special Education”.
A: We met with the CEOs of some of the top Fortune 500 companies and asked, “What do you want from our NYC graduates?”. The answer was, “We want problems solvers. We don’t need calculators. They can be bought for a dime a dozen”.
The main thing that my colleagues and I discussed after the meeting was how few of our students would ever see the inside offices of a Fortune 500 company. Or sit behind the desk of any corporate office, for that matter.
That was the first glimpse I had of the corporate takeover of our educational system. The expansion, since that time, has been exponential, with little or no regard for the needs of students outside of the mainstream. I, personally, question whether those mainstream student’s needs are being met, either.
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