Teach for America is a powerful organization. It has collected hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years. One of its most recent IRS forms showed $300 million in assets. Its board of directors includes some of the nation’s biggest corporate and media leaders.
Yet TFA is considered a charity, and many corporate funders ask you to make gifts to it, as if were the Red Cross or a homeless shelter.
Barbara Torre Veltri, a professor of education at Arizona State, has trained many TFA recruits. She wrote a book about it, called “Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher.” She wrote the following commentary for this blog:
“It’s that time of year––the annual upsurge of buying and giving. Corporations are poised for both giving and receiving as they elect to support particular charities and encourage the public, their clients, and employees to join them. Teach For America has mastered the art of philanthropic fundraising and is deemed as one of the “charities” of choice of numerous consumer-based corporations.
Recently a colleague at a southeastern university shared that Subaru is donating money from their car sales to the “charity” Teach for America, http://www.subaru.com/share-the-love.html, and today, J.Crew sent an email blast to its customers.
“By promoting TFA as a charitable organization to its consumers, corporations obscure significant facts from an unsuspecting public, such as TFA teachers’ two-year teaching turnaround, five week training, and 80% who leaving the teaching profession after year three.
Amanda, a 24 year-old teacher questioned the direct solicitation for TFA during her trip to the mall in Glendale, Arizona.
“I was taken by surprise when the J.C. Penney’s sales woman at the Arrowhead Mall asked if I want to contribute to the charity of the month: Teach For America. Here I am, working full time, taking classes at night for two years to be a teacher, and what is JC Penney doing? Soliciting funds for TFA? They are using my profession, and me, a future teacher, to get money from people who think that they are supporting teachers, but don’t know that TFA prepares its teachers in five weeks, ” (personal conversation, September 23, 2012).
While Teach For America does not represent all teachers, that fact is not shared with the public when corporations or supporters seek donations. When solicitation for TFA comes in the form of pressure from corporate sponsors, full disclosure seems better left hidden. An eighty-year old client of Wachovia Securities/Wells Fargo Advisors received a solicitation from then-President and CEO, Daniel J. Ludeman.
“For each survey received, we will make a donation to your choice of one of the following charities: American Red Cross, Teach For America or the National Council On Aging. Please mail back your survey by July 13.”
“Why would donations be solicited by Wells Fargo for Teach For America? Since when is teaching some kind of charity? This letter bothers me because it is demeaning to real teachers. Who is collecting funds for them? By sending this letter out to its clients, Wells Fargo sends a message to seniors [citizens] who value education, that teaching with Teach For America is something that we should donate to because they are educating poor children” (cited in Veltri, 2010, p. 177).
Teach For America promotes their charitiable status by encouraging tax deductible donations by donors who are told that they will ‘support corps members’:
“As a sponsor, you will also join a unique group of results-oriented philanthropists who have the opportunity to contribute to the impact of our corps members and alumni. Garrett Boone, Chairman Emeritus and Co-founder of The Container Store, is a champion of Teach For America,”
(http://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/dallas-fortworth/supporters.)
During this season of giving and gifting, perhaps consumers would be curious to know that their own money is directed to the 501c3 charity, Teach For America. Perhaps educated consumers might choose to redirect their purchasing, based upon the knowledge of which corporations financially support Teach For America. The list below includes corporations who solict funds from customers, donate millions of dollars to TFA, and/or whose CEO’s serve on TFA’s national or regional boards of directors.
AT & T
All- State
Apple
Build-A Bear
Coach
Coca-Cola
J Crew
The Container Store
Dell
Dr. Scholl
Fed Ex
The Gap
General Mills
Hewlett-Packard
IBM
Kraft Foods
JC Penney
KB Homes
Lowes
Medtronic
Microsoft
Safeway
Sony
Sprint
State Farm
Sylvan Learning
De Vry University
U of Phoenix
Visa
Walmart
Weather Channel Companies
Xerox
[Banks & Financial Services]
Bank of America
BBVA
Compass
BMO
Harris Bank (CHI)
JP Morgan Chase
Goldman Sachs
M & T Bank (BAL)
Mechanics Cooperative Bank (MA)
Wells Fargo/Wachovia
Barclays
Charles Schwab
Credit Suisse Americas
P & C Bank (BAL)
Fidelity Investments
Sun Trust Bank
[Auto Makers]
Honda (AL)
Subaru
[Health Insurance Providers]
Blue Cross & Blue Shield (AZ)
Aetna (CT) GE Healthcare (CHI)
Kaiser Permanente (Pacific NW, CO, OH, GA)
Travelers
[Sports Teams]
Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlanta Braves
Baltimore Ravens
Red Sox
SF 49ers
San Francisco Giants
[Oil – Houston]
Chevron
Conoco
Phillips
Exxon
Mobil
Shell
Teach For America’s Business Plan outlines it’s 2015 goal: Each region will be fully sustainable (TFA, 2010-2015). This prioritizes continuous fund-raising:
“On Friday, March 1st, Teach For America – Phoenix hosted its annual “Building a Community of Champions,” highlighting the role of Teach For America as one piece in the movement to reform education in Arizona. Key gifts were received from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Apollo Group/University of Phoenix, Kitchell Corporation, and Nita and Phil Francis to make the dinner possible. The celebration grossed nearly $500,000 for the region.”
(http://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/phoenix/supporters.)
The questions persist: Why is Teach For America considered a charity? Why is ‘teaching’ poor children of color considered a tax deduction, as long as TFA corps members are the teachers? And why are government leaders shy about examining pervasive concerns about TFA and realizing that there is something more here than a feel good ‘charity’ directed at educational reform for poor children of color.
“A gift of $5,000 or more helps us recruit, select, train, and support a teacher who will help his or her students succeed at the highest levels and work to help ensure that all students, no matter where they are born, get an outstanding education. As a sponsor, you will also join a unique group of results-oriented philanthropists who have the opportunity to contribute to the impact of our corps members and alumni.” (www.teachforamerica.org/supportus).
Families of teachers, supporters of teachers, teachers themselves, and those of us who can remember their most inspirational teacher or coach, might consider how to engage the collective power of the purse(s) to support the profession of teachers. Teaching is not a charity, a tax deduction or community service. Our children are not promotional commodities, to be held up at fundraisers as the emotional hook to garner donations. I do not purchase goods or services from the companies above.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow. Replacing experienced teachers with pimply adolescents with no knowledge or experience seems to be quite the boom industry. But that works well, I suspect, if your goal is to fill classrooms with roboteachers reading scripts.
These aren’t pimply adolescents, Robert. They’re twenty-somethings who are looking for a foot up on a career ladder, just out of a pricey college, with middling academic achievement. TFA recruited them by explicitly promising insider connections for grad school admission or future jobs.
The wealthy class sees TFA as a placement agency for their otherwise unemployable offspring, and is glad to promote the genteel fiction that their kids are embarked on serving poor children, rather than exploiting them. Some TFA recruits I’ve met are mean, stupid, and/or sycophantic, but others are just nice young people looking out for themselves. I have yet to meet one who advances any parallel sense of mission about teaching itself, such as we commonly encounter in young teachers from working class backgrounds who chose teaching as a profession. TFAers are immune from any negative evaluation for their teaching itself, apparently, so they cheerfully share horrifically mean-spirited wisdom they’ve picked up in their two years of ineptitude.
There are about a dozen in my building, and they’re consciously ambitious and competing for the corporate patronage and “educational leadership” paths TFA has promised them. I was surprised recently to learn many of them live like cultists, in shared apartments arranged by their “organization”. I’m hoping Gary Rubenstein can deprogram some of them for future useful lives.
Diane;
I wrote to the CEO of Subaru about TFA sticker on their car in an add and informed them that TFA was not a charity it is part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who train college grads for 5 weeks and then places them in public schools as teachers when they are not ready for anything. Considering I had 4 years training at a university for teaching special needs students and have been an educator for 42 yrs
Doubt the CEO will ever read it. You might be best off to talk to the manager of your local Subaru dealership(s). If enough of them hear the same thing from enough people, and if it gets hard enough to move cars, word will travel up the food chain.
I emailed Subaru also. Very disappointed in their support of this bogus educational organization. I did receive a ‘canned’ response. I will do it again. So should others, maybe Subaru will be ‘enlightened’.
TFA is a wonderful model for corporate giving. It is much, much cheaper to “donate” to “public schools” than it is to pay taxes.
I resent that they’ve set public school kids up as begging for charity. You know, just about every state constitution in this country establishes a right to a “common” education, which has always been translated to mean a public school system. Kids aren’t dependent on corporate PR departments for education funding. They’re not supplicants begging for handouts.
great comment.
Someone should also be screaming at the roof tops that TFA does not pay the salaries of TFAers. School districts pay their salaries and districts also have to pay “finders fees” to TFA, which are hefty and amount to thousands of dollars for every TFAer for each of the two years they commit to teach: http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/11/09/cleveland-schools-enter-contract-with-teach-for-america-inc-with-costly-finders-fee/.
The salary school districts pay TFAers is at the same rate as people who have actually studied and earned a college degree in education, too.
(Also, this is just speculation, but considering how often it’s been noted that most TFAers are white and from elite Ivy League colleges, it would be interesting to note the percentage of them who come from families in the upper middle and upper income brackets. I’m guessing that most of the teachers who have college degrees in education have student loans to repay, while the non-education majors from Ivy League colleges in TFA probably do not.)
It seems to me that TFA is but a small bit of the problem, the bigger problem being the willingness of so many with so much to hold sway over the educational policy decision making process. This, of course, is directly related to the problem of wealth distribution in the country, a process that puts incredible amounts of money, that purchases power, power used to insure that the system purchased serves those who purchased it. That this can be happening in a democratic nation is beyond horrible and, as anyone with a decent education would see, the result of too many not receiving decent educations, too many too easily swayed to believe in the goodness of a system tweaked by the few to insure that the many accept whatever it is they get, be it jobs with low pay and without benefits or confiscation of homes for mortgage default or the waging of wars, at great cost, or the wealth of the land in the hands of a relative few who sponsor the low pay, lack of benefits, wars, and evictions. Those of us who are educators need to look at the real causes of the current situation, the few controlling the many, convincing large portions of the people to capitulate to what is truly intolerable in a humane and democratic society.
When people on this site continuously post notes praising the public schools and the people who work in them, it is without, I have to think, consideration of the fact that it is the people who are granted the power to govern in this democratic nation. The people, great numbers of people, understand themselves to hold no power and, therefore, they do little to exercise the power granted them in the Constitution. The obligation of an education system in a democracy is to grow the individual’s capacity to participate effectively in the decision making processes of the society. If the system is not doing this, than the system is useless, even harmful as Ivan Illiach pointed out many years ago, giving people the illusion of education but none of the substance that empowers one.
Schools must be places in which the well informed and intellectually astute help others grow their power as thinkers and decision makers, people articulate enough to find ways to get their way, people who have a sense of the proper way, the humane way, this discovered through meaningful collaboration with other well meaning people who band together to do what is right and get done what needs to be done for the cause of righteousness.
I have asked before on this site what goals we, as educators, are being asked to help achieve through the postings of Dr. Ravitch and I still a not certain that her agenda is the agenda of humanity that to which I subscribe. On the other hand, I too think that initiatives such as Teach for American are problematic, terribly problematic because of the power they wield in the decision making processes that shape educational policy. Unlike Ms. Ravitch, I do not think that, overall, teachers are capable of doing what is necessary to insure that education works for democracy and democracy for the good of the people. While there are many good intentioned, potentially capable people out there in the role of teacher, good intentions and capacity to do the job are not enough to do what is necessary for the cause. Teachers must be risk takers, confident risk takers who are able to refuse to do that which harms rather than helps, to fight the fight that wins back the educational system for the good of the people, that rebuilds the system so that it isn’t serving the few at the expense of the many, so that it works to help the people to take back power and use it to build a more perfect union, one in which the goal of every institution, government and corporate, exist to benefit the people, the whole of the people and not a greedy few.
So, beyond being capable and of good intention, the educational system and the people who work within it need the kind of rebel spirit that made possible the creation of the United States of America, a spirit that pushes the people toward righteousness because their lives are made wonderful by a system of governance that they control, that provides all of what they need to prosper because it would be really stupid of any educated person to support a system that they have a right and obligation to control that worked against their best interests.
I agree with pretty much all of what you write; thank you for putting it out there!
Public education, as we all know, was NOT created so that we would have a nation of creative, critical thinkers…
BUT… it is a wonderfully double-edged sword that the plutocrats created – we, who are capable of critical thinking and want a more humane world, one where individuals reach their full potential and where society is about serving the needs of the many, can use public education to achieve that…
and that means we need teachers who are willing to take risks and who refuse to enable this monstrosity that is education ‘reform’…
Education, in a democracy, is created for the well-being of the people, a people understood to deserve freedom by virtue of their “nature,” their capacity to think for themselves and participate in the shaping of their own destinies. If the system was not created to nurture what comes naturally to human beings, then the system is inhumane and sensible human beings, in touch with their humanity, humanity made possible by intellectual capacity, come to know that is not the proper system. Our system, as it is, does nothing to inspire human beings to do what is necessary to bring about the change necessary perfect the political system and this is because the educational system is governed by the will of the few who wish to maintain governance for the few and by the few. James Moffett wrote for the PDK journal, back in 1985, that ““The public wants schools to prepare youngsters for jobs and roles such as they grew up among. It wants to perpetuate the world it understands, a world limited to a particular era and culture.” “You can’t,” he says, “both indoctrinate students and teach them to think for themselves.”
And so it goes unless, as he says elsewhere, we grow one generation of teachers who will teach one generation of students to do well what the proper citizen of a democracy does, take charge to make change for the cause of building the more perfect union.
A follow-up to my last post, this a statement by Noam Chomsky made recently in an interview. For those interested in Chomsky, take a looks at the editorial by Stanley Fish at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/opinion/fish-scholarship-and-politics-the-case-of-noam-chomsky.html?_r=0.
Here is what Chomsky had to say in the interview:
Actually, there’s a famous sort of paradox posed by David Hume centuries ago. Hume is one of the founders of classical liberalism. He’s an important philosopher and a political philosopher. He said that if you take a look at societies around the world—any of them—power is in the hands of the governed, those who are being ruled. Hume asked, why don’t they use that power and overthrow the masters and take control? He says, the answer has to be that, in all societies, the most brutal, the most free, the governed can be controlled by control of opinion. If you can control their attitudes and beliefs and separate them from one another and so on, then they won’t rise up and overthrow you.
That does require a qualification. In the more brutal and repressive societies, controlling opinion is less important, because you can beat people with a stick. But as societies become more free, it becomes more of a problem, and we see that historically. The societies that develop the most expansive propaganda systems are also the most free societies.
The most extensive propaganda system in the world is the public relations industry, which developed in Britain and the United States. A century ago, dominant sectors recognized that enough freedom had been won by the population. They reasoned that it’s hard to control people by force, so they had to do it by turning the attitudes and opinions of the population with propaganda and other devices of separation and marginalization, and so on. Western powers have become highly skilled in this.
Chomsky
What do we have to do to get these corporations and other donors, to support Public Schools with their monies? This has become beyond absurd.
They support by buying them and controlling them. Does anyone out there really think that the public schools are not the creation of the monied, the corporate?
TFA managed to find the loophole in the tax law. Charity does not begin at home but at the CEO’s corporate office. What’s the next absurd scam from TFA? Give donations to support TFA teachers who teach at third-world public schools in the Bronx.
This makes me sick! Real educators need to bombard these companies with (short) letters explaining why they will no longer do business with them. Would there be any way to get such a campaign started (maybe through BAT)?
I refuse to (knowingly) do business with any companies who support the likes of TFA. Thank you for this list of companies; they won’t receive another dime from me as long as they support TFA.
Joe, not exactly. Real educators need to do what is necessary to help future students understand the conditions of their existence and how to work toward changing the circumstances that interfere with both quality of life and individual freedom, both amongst the primary incentives for citizen participation in a participatory democracy.
It’s not an “either/or” situation Iafered. I completely agree with what you say about educators helping students. It would also be wise for real educators (i.e. not TFA) not to support these companies financially if they’re going to support TFA.
I do not disagree, but even to make the boycott effective, enough people, enough properly educated people, would have to understand that money to the corporations was money that would be used against the people’s best interests. We really need to think in terms of something bigger than the occasional outburst and build a concerted effort to wrest back what is rightfully ours, the democratic process.
I think we’re on the same side Iafered. Again, I don’t see it as an “either/or, and I think both are simultaneously possible. I believe in the democratic process. I also don’t plan to knowingly support these companies as a consumer as long as they support TFA.
I have not watched TV commercials for decades and usually change the channel when they come on, but sometimes I’m too busy doing something else and just don’t pay attention to them. That’s what happened this week when the commercial came which mentioned supporting the “charity” TFA. I was outraged and attended to the commercial just long enough to find out that it was Subaru who was promoting this nonsense.
As a classroom teacher, beginning decades ago, I’ve taught my students about commercials and their aims to sell people stuff. I think this is one of the things that every teacher should do, to help students become critical consumers of information, because commercials are how PR people have been able to enter our homes and make folks immune to propaganda.
Can someone please explain to me why TFA needs charity money?
It is my understanding that the organization charges districts ” placement fee” for each ” teacher” hired from their ranks.
TFA has many corporations that contribute.
Why do they need the spare change from shoppers?
Seems like taking money from real charities to me.
Ang: Money is power, the more money, the more power.
True that!
I would attend a rally outside one of these businesses if one were to be organized by my local teacher’s union. A picket line this time of year would make for great television.
In the excerpt below, Jefferson explains that “our work would have been compleat,” (sic) if the Virginia legislature had passed his bill dividing the state into school districts.
He had already served as a Governor, a minister to France, a Secretary of State, the Vice President, and the President of the United States. He had founded America’s first university. And he had written one of mankind’s greatest documents.
You only need to read the final sentence to understand that he was addressing the core issue of every post on this blog.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813
…”For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society…May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?…
These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudoaristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat.
It was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be compleated at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught.
Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and compleatly prepared by education for defeating the the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.”
Thanks Michael. To be read and read closely by all who wish to understand both education and proper leadership for democratic societies.
Nice model of Machiavellian dishonesty for the kiddies!
New group may beef interest:
TFA truth squad:
http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org/announcing-the-teach-for-america-truth-squad
“be of interest”
One minor correction – she’s actually a professor at Northern Arizona University, not ASU. Go (s)Lumberjacks!
Any charity who is helping the needy people always likable. Nice to find and read your post. Like Dreamsbag.com. Thanks a lot for sharing.
it’s the favorite charity of many
Reblogged this on Middletown Voice and commented:
Diane Ravitch writes a very insightful article about Teach for America which is considered a charity for teachers – it’s actually a 5 week program for training teachers who will go into charter schools. Not 6 years of college education, but 5 weeks training.
She also provides a list of companies who support this so-called charity.
Tell survey monkey TFA is not a charity!
https://contribute.surveymonkey.com/charity
Proudly built by Architects For America with 5 weeks training. A subsidiary of TEACH FOR AMERICA.
http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai/
Of course, there is a profound need to show that the teachers coming out of institutions such as the one in which I work are ready to build what won’t topple over and here, toppling over may be the current state of a nation in need of those who are truly ready to do something to begin the process, the revolutionary process that is the promise of America, the process by which a free people exercise their minds and share thoughts to build better tomorrows, the MORE perfect union. If schools simply continue to do what they have done for so long, the best we can hope for are enough people to clean up the messes a toppling democracy creates. Reform is not ever a problem if the intentions are good enough to catch the attention of good people who see reform as a means to a better way of doing things, better in that the reforms signify the possibility of a better life. The group that is, and rightly so, opposed to the current reform movement needs to consider why it is that people, besides them, either accept the current misguided reforms or do not care enough to participate in the kind of conversation that would lead to a potently meaningful resistance movement, on that resisted only that part of the reforms that people could be helped to understand to be harmful. As I said in an earlier post, the CCSS are not necessarily bad in their specifics, look rather good to some who have suffered standards, such as those produced for NCLB, that have little to do with empowering the people of a democratic nation and more to do with insuring that a self serving few get what they need to keep the disaffected under control.
If we see that TFA leads to more crumbling than building, we have made a start.
Oh, irony of ironies. I know a middle school language arts teacher who has just begun her second decade of teaching with a part-time job at J. Crew. Apparently, she has to work nights and weekends to meet her expenses because her job does not pay enough.
I just received this email from the Teaching Channel, asking for donations:
“A year ago, Teaching Channel asked me if they could film several Common Core videos in my classroom. How could I say no? I love the idea of educators, like us, sharing our best practices, Common Core knowledge, and classroom techniques and strategies with teachers around the world. … Please give a tax-deductible gift to Teaching Channel today. A donation of any amount will help Tch add more videos to their library, help further unwrap the Common Core Standards, and share more resources with us. (Also, by donating, you may be eligible for a special gift!) Thank you for helping this great work continue. The stronger our network, the stronger our profession. Let’s keep this going.”
– Katie Novak Reading coordinator, K-12, Classroom teacher, K-4 ELL Director, Title I Director
If you look at its Board of Directors, you will notice multiple ties to Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, “educational entrepreneurs,” Capital Management Funds, media, and other corporations. And yet they need donations? Something doesn’t seem right.