If Teach for America has its way, our nation’s schools will soon be filled with temporary teachers at the bottom of the salary scale, most of whom will leave after two-three years. Goodbye, expensive experienced teachers! If TFA teachers are as great as they say, why doesn’t TFA require a five-year commitment?
“TFA REACHES OUT TO DREAMERS: Teach for America has already expanded its recruitment beyond seniors at elite colleges to mid-career professionals and veterans. Today, it’s announcing plans to actively recruit DREAMers – undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are eligible to obtain social security cards through President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Morning Education has learned.”
Maybe this might dissuade some DREAMERs form joining.. (warning: this post includes Satire.)
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/
When will this nightmare end?!
If I chose to become a teacher, I would get the proper education and become certified. Silly me. Enough with the fakers and posers.
This veteran of 24 years in the U.S. Navy got his certificate the right way. I went to grad school, passed Praxis, and completed my BEST portfolio after my second year of beginning teaching. Currently, TFA in CT is exempt from the replacement program for BEST . . . TEAM. Educated beginning teachers must complete the program. TFA temps are given preferred treatment by the state to my utter disgust.
Sickening. Why aren’t more teachers in CT speaking out? So very distressing!
Wow, TFA will expand at any cost. I think it’s a great idea to reach out to veterans and undocumented workers to become teachers, but not through TFA! If TFA wants to actually HELP children, they should use their massive war chest of 100s of millions of dollars to give out full scholarships to quality ed programs or place their recruits into teaching assistant positions in order to support the work already happening in schools-especially in areas like Chicago with no teacher shortages.
Sometimes I am actually floored by the greed and hubris TFA consistently displays. I fear they have drunk their own Koolaid and it is our children, schools, and the teaching profession which pays the price. Keep exposing the shady expansion of this sick organization. Let’s start by getting the word out to all the people they target: college students, veterans, DREAMERS, that TFA should be avoided at all cost. Resist TFA.
Nobody in his or her right mind is going to go into a TEMP job to be unemployed again and definitely not quit their perfectly stable jobs to go into a field where age discrimination is rampant and where there is NO chance to qualify for a pension given the character of Scabs for America. It is INSANE.
How could a school district properly vet an “undocumented worker”? How would the district know that the person is, indeed, the person he or she says he or she is considering the lack of documentation?
Given that there are about 3,400,000 public school teachers (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28) in the US, Teach for America needs to really ramp up the recruiting from the current level of 6,000 a year if it wants to “fill the schools”.
If we include all the alternative certification programs, which thanks to TFA lobbying efforts, are now considered “highly qualified teachers” many of which are direct spin-offs of TFA, and then look where these uncertified, underprepared teachers are concentrated (low-income urban and rural areas working primarily with students of color) and the connection to charter schools, then include the implications of placing TFA alums in positions of power in the education world (principals, charter orperators, state commisioners, boards of education, thinktanks, venture philathropy foundations, etc) as well as local, state, and national political office-a great majority of whom share neoliberal ideological allegiance of corporate education reform-you begin to see the complicated nexus of power and influence this “small” organization has amassed.
TFA is doing significant damage to our neediest students, schools, and communities. And it needs to be stopped.
It’s really illegal, and lawsuits should be filed against school districts that employ uncertified teachers or ill-prepared teachers as a violation of minority children’s civil rights.
It would be helpful if you could present some information about the number of teachers with alternative certification and perhaps some characteristics of those programs. One of my high school friends is in an alternative certification program now after a time working in Silicon Valley. He plans to teach high school physics and thinks his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford will make up for any missing education school classes.
How does one learn how to teach from doing electrical engineering?
Would you allow my friend to skip content course requirements for teaching certification?
For example, at my university the graduate license program for physics offered by the education school requires a set physics courses that the Physics Department teaches exclusively for the education school graduate program. The Physics Department does not accept those classes for its undergraduate major (they education school classes require significantly less math preparation than the classes the Physics Department teaches for physics undergraduates). Should he be made to take these required courses?
TE,
“his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford will make up for any missing education school classes.”
Funny
The poor wording is what I get for posting while proctoring.
I doubt anyone with a doctorate in anything will be hired in the regular public school system. He’d be way too expensive.
There is NO teacher shortage. Never has been, and there never will be.
There is a massive GLUT of teachers in ALL subject areas nationwide. The ONLY districts hiring are those that have awful working conditions.
It is nothing to find hundreds of applicants for a single teaching job. Not even science, math, and special education certifications a guarantee for jobs in this economy.
Especially true when so many are, unfortunately, being pink-slipped.
@te…your friend should definately be required to have to take education classes…developmental psychology, how to teach students with IEPs, how to address learning differences, teaching to multiple intelligences, classroom management, student teaching experiences, just to name a few. A PhD in physics means you have been dealing with a very limited type of student and learning environment, not at all like the varied demands encountered in the real world of K-12 education.
I agree that teaching courses would be a good idea. My main question is if he should be required to take the physics courses for non-majors that the graduate licensure program for physics awarded by the education school at my district requires.
There is no other professional career where it would heralded as a great innovation to intentionally introduce inexperience and churn.
It takes more training and experience to become a licensed beautician than a TFA teacher. This is madness!
Well, it makes sense if you think about it. I mean, what’s more important – some rich person’s hair style or some poor kid’s education? You know at least 25% of those kids aren’t going to amount to anything anyway – I have that on good authority.
I don’t know. . .I have seen “disruptive” used as a proud compliment in the business world. “Disruption” is considered a branch of marketing and is associated with technology marketing, or so I glean from some websites I have read.
The conditions of work described in the TFA piece above seem to mirror the world of work in which too many of the students in America’s classrooms today will labor. This is not because of TFA, but it may be because of what the people sponsoring TFA, those corporations, want of schools, job preparation sites for whatever kinds of jobs are most profitable for the corporations and their shareholders. Good teachers, good American teachers, teaching for the American of the Declaration and Constitution, prepare students for the work of democracy, that work preparing them to do what is necessary to insure that the work they do secures them quality of life in an economy that is for the people, that provides for the common welfare and provides the human beings who are citizens of the nation to have access to the amenities that make it possible for them to pursue happiness with the promise that good work will move them ever closer to such goals.
People who have gone the route of going into teaching in midlife KNOW how treacherous it is given the rampant age discrimination that goes on in public education. People also have to realize that once they hit fifty especially, their health insurance premiums go way, way up, and that’s another incentive for districts to ditch you.
They will ditch you on the most bogus of allegations to save a few bucks. I have been there.
There is NO teacher shortage anywhere in the United States. TFA needs to be shut down.
In other words, nobody should go into this field in midlife given how risky it is, so why in the world should you deliberately become a temp to wind up unemployed anyway?
Thought this was interesting:
“Teach for America is coming to the Buffalo School District after a two-year lobbying effort.
The Buffalo School Board voted, 6-2, Wednesday night to approve the program, which will result in the hiring of as many as 60 Teach for America recruits over the next several years.
Although a majority of board members indicated they have no issues with the program, several said they were troubled that the board approved the Teach for America program without having been given a copy of the actual contract.
“I understand we have the ability to do it,” said board member John Licata. “I’m just not comfortable doing it.”
He and board member Mary Ruth Kapsiak voted against the proposal.
The district is responsible for covering the salaries of Teach for America recruits and for paying a $5,000 fee to the organization for each teacher hired.
However, M&T Bank has agreed to cover the fees for the first group of Teach for America teachers in 2014-15, and district administrators said they expect grant money to cover future fees to the organization.”
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/buffalo-public-schools/teach-for-america-coming-to-buffalo-20131211
Are they having to offer a pot-sweetener to get into these communities, where a business donates the TFA fee?
I’m just asking.
How competitive are TFA’s, anyway, as compared to local teachers? Would Buffalo have let them in without the “discount” on the fees? Are they having more trouble entering these markets?
If you want a chuckle – look at the “exemplary” job the Buffalo School Board has done over the past ten plus years (NOT!)
The TFA teachers are in for the ride of their lives. It is not easy teaching in Buffalo. Of the thirty they hire – how many do you think will be left standing after 1week, 1month, 1marking period? Any?
Even experienced teachers from other districts, don’t always last. And the new bees, fresh from college, they are a dime a dozen. They are down and out for the count before their name gets erased from the board. And they’ve had education classes and student teaching.
I hope these TFA’s are a hardy bunch. Even if they last the two years, you can bet that they’ll run from the idea of being a teacher.
The Buffalo kids have spoken.
So, if this is the new normal and states go with it, if you want to be a teacher you no longer go through Universities and accredited institutions, but you go to a non-profit organization and they place you and then you move on?
I don’t understand how this fits into certification and lateral entry. And will TFA eventually stamp out all University preparation programs for teaching? Is that their goal?
“$5,000 fee to the organization for each teacher hired.”
Someone please tell me why tax payers are OK with this.
Ang, are the recruits rented, leased, or sold?
Signed, sealed and delivered.
After my daughter’s disaster of a TFA experience I have been on a mission to let Washington know what TFA is all about. It has been an education for me to say the least. After months of letter writing on Senator finally thought he had solved it all – he sent me a letter with information you could have found on the TFA website that said Corp Members get 6 weeks of training. First of all did he think that was news to me but more importantly, did he think this was going to make anyone a good teacher. My daughter’s training was disorganized and far from giving her the tools she would need to be effective. When she tried to tell them that they said she would get better in a few years. She explained to them that in the meantime the preschoolers she was trying to help would never be four again and deserved better. Their script didn’t have an answer for that.
I had an epiphany today: the Finns’ proven approaches (ultra-prepared teachers, poverty reduction) CANNOT be accepted by the ed reformers because they leave little room for money-making and technology. Take investing in teachers –the Finns show there’s no substitute for this. Nothing beats a smart, knowledgeable, humane human at the front of the classroom. Yet the reformers are pushing in the opposite direction –deskilling the job –substituting teacher-smarts with scripts and technology, reducing pay and job security. Why? Because investing in teachers yields businessmen no profits, while scripts and tech do. Ed reform really is primarily monetization of public education, not improvement of public education (though I suspect many reformers sincerely believe their schemes will benefit kids). I know Diane and others have been saying similar things, but it finally struck me clearly today. The soundest approaches to reform ARE NOT EVEN ON THE TABLE because of the business- and tech-besotted mindsets of the heavyweights.
Preparing teachers is a great money opportunity for education schools. On line masters programs are seen at my university as “cash cows”. The key is that being smart and knowledgable is not the key, the key is being certified. This gives the
certifying institution the power to extort money out of those wishing to be certified.
Are any billionaires pushing for a reform of the teacher training culture in America to be more like that in Finland? No –their solution to everything is to turn it into a business (“When you’re a hammer…”). The idea that socialized schools with unionized great teachers would equal or outperform privatized schools probably does not compute with them.
A potential complication with Finland’s model applied in other places is that their system is *extremely* selective – the first round of selection requires you to be in the top 10%, and it gets more selective from there. It’s unclear that the freedom teachers have in Finland classrooms would be as effective if they didn’t spend so much effort in making sure their teachers are the best of the best, and it’s unclear that the top 10% would want to be teachers if they didn’t have a guarantee that they will then have a stable and high-autonomy profession. (And, culturally, how much do the top American 10% have to be paid vs. the top Finnish 10% for the position involved to be competitive?)
It’s not like it couldn’t be done, but it would require a more massive overhaul than it looks like it would on paper.
TE: I would agree with you that the ed schools’ greed is part of the problem. They are not doing the right thing either.
Until we move away from this Ivory Tower mentality and looking at schools at a one size fits all proposition (while masking it with talk about differentiating) we will fail our children. Researched best practices need to be mixed with compassion and environment where each child is seen as an individual with different needs and learning styles. all children don’t come to school ready to learn for a variety of reasons and until we find ways to fix that we are beating our heads against a very hard brick wall. I believe that it was Finland where they said they help teachers who are struggling and when that doesn’t work, they help them some more. From my experience Teach for America frequently leaves their inexperienced students on their own when they need the help the most. The fact that this program continues to expand is a sad commentary on the state of our government and our society.
We are going to find out how much help they get. TFA is coming to Buffalo. They’ll be in the hard core schools (the ones most teachers transfer out of as soon as they have enough seniority). Even experienced teachers struggle teaching at these schools. They usually have strong faculties (they have to – it’s us vs them).
TFA will be part of the union, will get a Buffalo teacher’s step salary, plus the TFA extras. The five thousand dollar fee will be paid for by outside groups.
Will they be accepted by the other teachers? Will they get the support they need (and they will definitely need a lot of support and training)? Will they last longer than a week?
I need to either set up a “Days to Drop Out” pool or start my own blog.
I can’t wait to see what happens. Maybe there should be a reality show: Meltdown of the TFA in Buffalo, NY! Oh my, that sounds like a horror movie (there might even be some guns and knives involved).
TFA-ers are mostly well…no prepared and scary re: their the mantra they spout from, of course, being trained as a TFA-er.