Mark Naison sent the following thoughts about Teach for America:
Why Teach for America is Seductive to Mayors and Legislators and Destructive to Everyone Else
Teach for America offers states and municipalities the opportunity to subcontract their teaching to non-union workers, saving large expenses in pensions and health care. Such a policy saves money, as subcontracting usually does; but it destroys a section of the local middle class, drives down compensation for all workers, and has several extremely destructive consequences for the quality of schools:
1. It destroys the mentoring and relationship building that lifetime teachers provide.
2. It creates a revolving door teaching force that undermines the
role of schools as community institutions.
3. It reduces instruction to test prep since the 5 week training TFAers get makes raising test scores the highest priority and includes cookie cutter, “teacher proof” advice on class management that leaves little room for the creativity that great teachers employ.
No matter what TFA leaders say, its methods lead to the destruction of public education as we have known it in the United States, and the emergence of an alternative model which makes the union teacher and the lifetime educator an endangered species. Its implementation will also sharply widen gaps between those in private schools and public schools, and between high income and moderate/ low income communities, in terms of creative thinking and exposure to the arts, reinforcing and intensifying the nation’s status as one of the most economically stratified societies in the world.
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TFA stands for “Teach For a While”. I have met many, many TFA folk who did the mandatory 2 years and then left for medical or law school. They are teaching to pad their resumes. TFA is simply an organization Hell bent on the union busting/privitization of our schools. I even read that they are trained not to hang out in the teachers lounge or talk to veteran teachers so as not to gain perspective of view that might be different from TFA.
It’s worse than that.
The following is an angry testimony from the father whose daughter was a TFA Corps Member. He is totally disenchanted with, and now opposed to TFA He states that he has proof “in writing” that TFA is “fanatically anti-union”:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2012/11/another-parent-vents-at-teach-for.html
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Father of TFA Corps Members:
“We also discovered that because of its foundation supporters and general philosophical outlook, that TFA is fanatically anti-union. They never tell their trainees that they will be in a unionized work force, and their staff even told us in writing that if they were to attend a meeting at S’s school with a union rep present, that TFA would fire them from their staff positions!”
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Great article. A perspective from someone inside TFA sheds a whole new light on the orgranization.
4. It creates teacher churn which destabilizes fragile communities.
5. It purposefully creates an “us vs. them” mentality among school staff.
I experienced #5 firsthand. The principal enjoyed us vs. them. 35 teachers exited the school, 10 of which resigned during the school year.
“…and the emergence of an alternative model which makes the union teacher and the lifetime educator an endangered species.”
Sadly, too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that these are good things. Anything must be better than those “guvmint” schools full of “entrenched” unionized teachers making “bloated” salaries and pension “indoctrinating” students with that “Commie” nonsense, right?
I just wrote this for the Vallas article, but since it applies, I’m re-posting it here:
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Arizona teacher: “I have seen staffs comprised of high school graduate teachers who bought their degrees online and took not one college level course.”
To the Arizona teacher… destroying the profession of teaching and filling it with unqualified faux teachers is not a bug in the privatizers’ “reform” model, it is a feature.
I just found this from the Connecticut Policy Institute—a “think tank” and “a non-partisan research institute on Connecticut economic policy and education reform” that fronts for for-profit business interests that are trying to profit from the privatization of education. To do this, they put out bogus “studies” and “policy papers” in support of these business interests’ practices and approaches to privatized education:
http://www.ctmirror.org/op-ed/2013/06/30/vallas-certification-debacle-reveals-shortcomings-education-reform-efforts
In this op-ed, Ben Zimmer defends Vallas’ lack of credentialing, but goes one further.
Not only should there be no credential requirement for Superintendents, THERE SHOULD BE NO CREDENTIALING OR EDUCATION REQUIREMENT OF TEACHERS (???!!!) as well as ADMINISTRATORS.
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Ben Zimmer: “With a few exceptions, Connecticut law requires teachers to have a degree in education, meaning many talented people who didn’t decide to become teachers until after completing their educations have difficulty doing so.
“This serves the economic interests of existing teachers and administrators by limiting competition for their jobs, but does not advance the goal of obtaining the highest quality teaching and administration possible.”
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Don’t you get it? If the government entity in charge of education requires thing like ohhh… bachelor’s degrees, or even 2-year community college associate degrees… or even one single college course… well, you’re just “serving the economic interest of existing teachers and administrators by limiting competition for their jobs.”
Those teachers who’ve actually achieved these “worthless degrees” will bring along with them accompanying demands for a decent salary, health benefits, retirement, etc…. AND WHO NEEDS THAT when you’re trying to make a profit… err… excuse me… make “transformational change” in education?
Oh, you don’t believe this? Well, Connecticut Policy Institute’s “studies and papers” have “proven” all of this to be true… that you need nothing more than a high school diploma to teach in K-12 schools.
Zimmer goes on:
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Ben Zimmer: “As the Connecticut Policy Institute has discussed in our papers on education reform, there is no evidence linking certification regimes to teachers’ or administrators’ effectiveness in increasing student achievement. They simply serve to limit the recruitment pipeline of outstanding educators and keep the antiquated education administration departments of the state university system in business.”
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An organization fronting for business interests that want to profit from the privatization of education—some of them charter school chain CEO”s making $500,000/year or more (Geoffrey Canada)—has its spokesman attacking education departments—some of them Ivy League universities… most of them having turning out quality teachers for 100-150 years or more—as only being “in business” to advance the selfish financial interests of their administrators and professors that work in them. They are deliberately blocking “outstanding educators” from entering the field because they are out for themselves, and not the students’.
Wow! I”m so glad someone’s finally blowing the lid off this!
But then look at this assclown Zimmer’s bio at Connecticut Policy Institute:
http://ctpolicyinstitute.org/about/bio/ben-zimmer/leadership
He proudly touts his own education credentials:
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“Ben received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he specialized in business law and economic policy, and a B.A., magna cum laude with highest honors in history, from Harvard College.”
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But Ben, I thought those high-falutin’ things like degrees didn’t matter. Aren’t those “J.D.’s” and “B.A.s” and “magna cum laude’s” just worthless pieces of paper spit out by “antiquated” entities that are only trying to keep themselves “in business” to pay the undeserved salaries of the folks who work in them?
No, no, no… you see in Ben’s world, rigid requirements like… oh… years of post-secondary education, or even passing a certification test…. those things only matter in OTHER careers or professions. They don’t matter in the realm of K-12 education… as his noble “kids first” organization, Connecticut Policy Institute, has produced studies and papers” have “proven” that.
No, according to Ben, teaching is like working the fry machine at McDonald’s… just let anyone in the door—education and credentials be damned—to have at it and compete for the job, then just keep the ones who do it best. And THAT is how you end up with a staff of what Ben describes as a nation of “outstanding educators.”
Got that?
You see the way to get better teachers in front of kids is just simple… so simple that those antiquated ed departments full of money-motivated hacks have been missing it for over 150 years.
The way to fill our country’s schools with “outstanding educators” is to lower or even eliminate the standards and requirements for becoming one.
That’s it!!!! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that until now?
What’s that, you say? The highest achieving nations like Finland and South Korea don’t operate that way? In those countries, becoming a teacher is as difficult and demanding as becoming a doctor?
Well, that would never work here in the United States.
Behind the cheap labor, quick-fix and undermining unions appeal of TFA, there are ideas. We need to address and challenge the ideas. They include, 1) Ignorance: Knowledge of teaching and learning is easily learned and is relatively unimportant compared to content knowledge; 2) Elitism: Attending a prestigious college is prima facie evidence of the intelligence and disposition required for effective teaching; 3) Arrogance and/or Naiveté: Teaching as a profession is devalued, as it is considered as temporary employment rather than a lifetime profession in which expertise increases over time. On the other hand, we need to be careful to attack the ideas, rather than the TFA teachers, most of whom are well-intentioned. I touched on some of this in an earlier post here: http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=196 and here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/18/key-questions-begging-for-answers-about-school-reform/
Who cares what the effects are, TFA saves money. It make the politicians look good.
But those same politicians would
never allow their own kids to attend
a school with a TFA staff, or a TFA-
dominated staff.
Seriously… compare the two following
categories of teachers…
1) four years of an ed. degree,
with courses in pedagogy,
child development, etc.
plus
another 2 getting a Master’s
Degree / credential, with
intense training in classroom
management, lesson planning, etc.
plus
a year apprenticeship period working
as a Teacher’s Assistant (teacher in
training) alongside a veteran teacher
who imparts his/her experiences and
knowledge…
versus…
2 a) no training in any of the above,
or
2 b) the 5-week Jonestown-ish quackery of
TFA training… (do NOT get me started
on all that I’ve learned about THAT!)
Well, it’s not really a close call, as to who’s
going to do a better job.
And if you don’t buy this, keep in mind
that it’s the first category of teachers
that make up the staffs of rich kids’ private
schools that the money-motivated ed.
reformers send their own children to.
You think for a second that they would
pay $20,000 – $50,000/year to K-12 schools
staffed by people with no degrees in
education, or with a TFA-dominated
faculty—you know like the staffs that are
filling up the newly-created charter schools
or “charterized” schools in lower-income
neighborhoods after they’ve been
“reformed” (i.e. in Chicago) ?
No, these parents demand something for
their own children that—in the pursuit of
lowering costs and maximizing
profit—they would never provide for
the children of the schools that they
“reform.”
Undermining all this is a philosophy
of de-regulate everything, let the
free market run wild, and a new
privatized educational utopia will
emerge, as the competition and
profit-motivated entrepreneurs
will lead us there.
Can you name one country on
earth, in all human history, that
has improved its educational
system this way—through rampant
profit-motivated and cut-throat
competition?
Indeed, the record shows that the
countries with the highest
educational achievement (Finland)
DO EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE.
As I have written before, the Peace Corps was not transformed into Doctors Without Borders so doctors could be pink slipped or replaced to save money.
Sure, give me a college graduate with strong mission, a desire to change the world, and the ability to build rapport with kids and I will take them…as extra supports in schools and classrooms, opportunities for one-on-one student support, an extra set of hands and group work under the supervision of a Teacher, long term sub… Teach For Awhile can provide support for kids and professionals and gives these future lawyers and business leaders (and taxpayers) first hand experience of what it takes to educate a child in a meaningful way and why teaching is so complex – – – but…
But, they are not teachers and they are not teachers who will be there for the long haul shaping the vision and culture of the school, learning how to activate learning (instead of following scripts and pacing guides), and becoming teacher-leaders.
What began as a good idea with peace corps at home mindset has become business model for low-cost, efficient, highly structured schools whose results are touted in terms of attendance, school behavior, and regurgitation of and E.D. Hirsch curriculum
A perfect example of why TFA can never be reformed by piecemeal changes. Recently TFA leadership had been searching for “reforms” it can implement to create the illusion of change in response to critics. One of these tactics is to permit TFA recruits to “refuse” to take the job of a veteran teacher. In truth, euphemistic staffing language obscures the replacement process: all new teaching positions appear as “new jobs” rather than replacement jobs, even if they were created by closing schools and firing teachers.
As long as TFA contracts with government entities to provide labor to school systems that are already fully staffed, then someone had to lose their job to make way for the TFA recruit. If that process is fundamentally unjust, then TFA is fundamentally unjust and beyond reform.
I’d like to know how many national board certified teachers have been laid off in Chicago and Philly. Also how many TFA alum still teaching in those districts. How many of them were laid off? Then chart that next to incoming TFA corp members. Then I want Hanushek to monetize all that lost experience in “excellence”, compare it to the cost to hire and train college grads.
EduShyster is always worth a read: http://edushyster.com/?p=2985
TFA cannot be reformed.
It should take its hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, donate them to urban school districts as reparations, and disband.
Since that will never happen, it’s up to us to drive a stake through its greedy, lying, patronizing heart.