EduShyster has some fun with the crazy idea that Teach for America is a charity in need of your holiday gifts, your nickels and dimes and quarters..
She notes that TFA has an annual budget of $300 million plus; it also has a score of high-paid executives, and many hundreds of millions in assets.
Let’s just say that this is not exactly like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army.
Yet some of our nation’s biggest, richest corporations ask you to buy their products with the promise that they will make a donation to TFA, which is rolling in dough.
What a great marketing plan!
Now if only they would require their recruits to have a year of professional preparation and stay in their jobs for 4-5 years, they would be worthy of all those gifts from Subaru, FedEx, J. Crew, etc.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a letter in response to the NYTimes pundit on teacher quality:
“Joe Nocera cites a report by the National Council on Teacher Quality that advocates teaching classroom management techniques in stand-alone classes. But in our teacher training programs, we have determined that classroom management in inner-city schools can best be taught by putting teaching interns into those schools for an extended period of time, rather than having the future teachers sitting only in our college classrooms. Our interns spend a full academic year side by side with an experienced teacher, understanding these challenges in a real-world setting.
While college classroom instruction is important, and videos can convey some of the challenges of working in inner-city schools, nothing can substitute for the real-world experience of putting teacher candidates into these schools.
DONALD E. HELLER
Dean, College of Education
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Mich., Dec. 17, 2013”
Is there a public school parent in this country who wouldn’t choose a teacher who had interned for a year over a teacher who had 5 weeks training?
Not to mention that the intern isn’t actually teaching the class, so the students in that class get both an experienced teacher and the intern. Why doesn’t TFA do that? ADD a teacher instead of subtracting one?
I really think this is a matter of educating parents. I’m pretty plugged in to the local public school and I had no idea they were putting people with 5 weeks training in, until I really started reading on ed reform. We can demand better from politicians.
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I would choose a totally “unqualified” graduate student to teach my son calculus over a “certified” teacher in the public system. In fact I did do that very thing! Just speaking as a parent here.
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The luck of the draw. Next time – who knows?
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None of my son’s math teachers for his last two years in high school and his chemistry teacher for his senior year were qualified to teach by public school standards. The next time worked out pretty well.
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I know situations where the opposite has happened. I’m glad your son had excellent “teachers”. Some are born to teach, some learn as they go, and others need to walk away.
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And of course your anecdote should be treated as generalized data. Right?
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Not claiming it as data at all, just pointing out that this parent did choose an “unqualified” teacher. That is what the original poster on this thread asked about.
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Politicians are great users of situational ethics…rather than being moral.
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“Why doesn’t TFA do that? ADD a teacher instead of subtracting one?”
Districts that love TFA, like the one in which I work, would have to pay two teachers then instead of one. The current approach allows districts to say, “Look at the bright, enthusiastic people we’re bringing in as teachers!” while cutting costs–their real motive.
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With over $300 million in assets, TFA itself could (and should) fund their own positions. Imagine offering struggling schools teacher assistants free of charge! This would help retain teachers who would get support with ridiculous work loads and large classes, it would help the students who would be spared a novice teacher and be given a second hard-working assistant in the room instead, and TFA could still go on with its mission of creating “leaders” with some experience in classrooms. TFAers who dedicided teaching was the profession for them could do a teacher prep program at night and transition to becoming the teacher of record after becoming fully certified and having two years assisting to boot, and those that moved on to grad school, law school, politics, finance (gag), etc could be proud of their time in the classroom.
TFA, of course, is not actually in the business of helping public education, especially anything that would support teaching in struggling schools. They purposefully isolate recruits from veteran teachers and the education justice movements happening in cities across the country. Plus, it’s unlikely they would cut back on their high-paid staff or get rid of their ridiculously inadequate Summer Institute. The fact that TFA has never even offered to pay for their recruits despite their massive reserves proves that TFA is not about helping kids, its about helping TFA and their corporate reform allies.
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Only one wee little problem with your proposal. It makes sense.
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So true, Dienne. “Reform” that would actually improve public education is not what corporate reform is all about. How can you prove that education is failing and that we must-we MUST-therefore hand over the public dollars to private hands if education was actually improving through research-based interventions? Sigh…
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Dienne,
You have a wonderful way with your comments! I always appreciate them!
Duane
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I’d actually donate for the worthwhile program you describe, but I thought the whole idea of TFA was to get rid of us old, decrepit, incompetent, but expensive, veteran teachers to replace us with young, clueless, inexperienced, but cheap, novice teachers.
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As far as one of those companies, JC Penney, well they lost my business (which had been there for over fifty years including when my mom used to shop their “bargain basement”) over this TFA campaign.
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On top of this they have individual fundraisers with the help of corporate backers so people can get suckered into buying their crap.
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Thanks for helping shed light on this very misguided notion that TFA is a charity. I recently wrote about this at http://reconsideringtfa.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/tfa-takes-advantage-of-season-of-giving/.
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According to the Buffalo News, the TFAs the district is planning on hiring will go on step and also earn a stipend. In essence, they’ll be making more than the teachers who have been working in Buffalo for six or more years.
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