The Durham public school board voted 6-1 to finish its current contract with Teach for America and then sever the relationship.
“The Durham school district will honor its current contract with Teach For America, but the national teacher training program’s future with Durham Public Schools is up in the air.
“The school board voted 6-1 last week to honor its commitment to TFA teachers, including five hired to work for DPS this school year, but to not pursue any new relationships with the program beyond the 2015-16 school year.
“That’s when the five TFA teachers hired for this school year will complete their service obligation with the program.
“Seven other TFA teachers have begun their second years with DPS and will complete their two-year obligation with the program at the end of this school year.
“Among concerns voiced by school board members who voted not to pursue any new relationships with TFA is the program’s use of inexperienced teachers in high-needs schools.
“It feels like despite the best intention and the efforts, this has potential to do harm to some of our neediest students,” said school board member Natalie Beyer, who voted against the school district’s contract with TFA three years ago.
“Others said they were concerned that TFA teachers only make a two-year commitment.
“I have a problem with the two years and gone, using it like community service as someone said,” said school board member Mike Lee.
“School board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown was the only member to vote in favor of the district’s continuing its relationship with TFA.
“She agreed that school districts need teachers who are willing to make long-term commitments, but only if they are doing a good job in the classroom.
“Having tenure, just being there because you’re there and not dong what you should be doing, committed to every child, every day, having high expectations for every child, every day, if you’re not doing that, it doesn’t matter if you’ve become a veteran in the classroom,” said Forte-Brown. “I need a veteran, qualified teacher in every classroom.”
Some teachers asked the board to use the funds to try to replicate the highly successful North Carolina Teaching Fellows, a five-year training program for career teachers that was defunded by the Legislature. But the executive director of TFA for Eastern North Carolina defended the program, saying that it was “North Carolina’s source for our state’s most effective beginning teachers.”
The district was expected to pay TFA $3,000 for each beginning teacher. But the board decided not to continue the relationship.
GOOD! Use the $ on teachers who will stay in the classroom more than 2 years.
I think Durham has made a wise choice, belatedly.
One problem with the TFA recruitment model might be the structure of their student loan subsidy. I think it encourages young TFA colleagues to grit their teeth and hunker down, rather than seek needed growth in facing real teaching challenges. Many just hang on, clinging to an empty ideology that fails their living students, until they can cash the job and loan rewards TFA promised them for their 2 years.
http://www.teachforamerica.org/why-teach-for-america/compensation-and-benefits/assistance-pre-existing-loans
agree – The people at the top of TFA do not seem willing to listen to the ideas that are needed to make the program into what it could be – so it has become just another part of the reform mess. These young people are really not being honestly or fairly treated by TFA. TFA is not being transparent to them about many aspects of teaching – and saddest of all is they are being used for their youthful idealism. Teaching is hard work – it has always been hard work – and it takes a certain skill set that not everyone has.
Amen. Are they now drinking refreshing clear water instead of ed reform koolaid? One can hope all districts will get rid of TFA. TFA itself should just implode; it has lost its usefulness, if there ever was any usefulness. For the past 10 years or so TFA and charter schools have gone in tandem – to the detriment of public education. Good riddance. I hope to see TFA and all its spinoffs disappear. TFA has done great injustice to many of the districts wherein its “teachers” have been placed, and further in the charters it has opened and fake/bogus masters degrees it has granted, and its alignment with Broad and the Supes schooling. Lots of people, all connected, are recently going down due to their lies, phony credentials and degrees and titles. Hopefully, everyone is waking up and drinking cool clear water now.
Durham is an enlightened area in terms of progressive politics.
Definite leadership coming out of that part of the state for supporting Public school and a good understanding if what gambling with it really means for our state.
I didn’t mean to put my main comment
here.
Interesting analogy with the water, considering coal ash from Duke energy is another huge issue in NC right now. Speaking of water.
HEY, can’t TFA be considered a UNION for its trainees/scabs? Doesn’t TFA bargain with districts for its trainee/members, and structure the deals for the scabs, and its own fees that the districts pay directly to TFA? Is this a novel point of view/approach to use against TFA and its policies?
I feel like I just got jolted by an asteroid to the head with this notion.
I was thinking about that earlier. I was thinking there should be a corporation whose business is to run unions.
🙂
Joanna Best,
There IS such a corporation.
It’s called the AFT.
Which is TFA written backwards.
Akademos,
You spelling trick is mean spirited and vitriolic. Which is why I enjoyed your comment.
I cannot top that one.
Except that when you look at the coffers of TFA and the AFT, after having taken money from Gates and other reformers, you must rearrange the letters again and conclude that their egos and bank accounts are FAT . . .
Swacker, will you join in and offer a “TAGO!” ?
Robert, I will.
TAGO (I sort of helped get that one started too. . .I acknowledged Swacker’s use of it, and it grew from there).
Just read it now Robert and agree the thread of acronyms deserves a hearty TAGO!!!
The comment by Chairman Forte-Brown, if I read it correctly, is incredibly insulting. If you are in this business for more than five years, you are definitely a dedicated professional. I have yet to meet anyone who isn’t.
Starting my tenth year.
They always spin it that teachers are bad, TFA is good. The argument for keeping TFAs in the class longer than 2 years doesn’t work for TFA because it would put TFA out of business. Wendy likes the revolving door; it shuttles fresh meat to her husband’s charters year after year, all on the public’s dime, and at the expense of the public schools and perhaps the very children Kipp serves (from what I’ve read). I would NEVER have sent my kid to Kipp, no matter the cost or lack of cost.
It is also disgusting how TFA “awards” masters degrees and get the states to certify the TFA “teachers” based on their stint with TFA, all the while undermining the traditional teachers in the same states.
teachers are bad – TFA is good
teachers are bad – TFA is good
teachers are bad – TFA is good
fake masters degrees – where have we heard this recently ?
I like Forte-Brown’s comment that she “needs a veteran, qualified teacher in every classroom.”
And she thinks TFA gives her that? Is she crazy? Did she fail Logic 101?
TFA ensures that are never, ever qualified veteran teachers in any classroom.
She likely never had Logic 101 because there is too much psychology and very little philosophy at the foot of being “educated” anymore.
The people I have always found to be the wisest thinkers were philosophy majors. We need more of that.
I will add, though, that I think among some African American viewpoints there is the fear of age old prejudice that is mollified in theory, particularly in the south, that TFA recruits are less likely to carry deep seated racial prejudice that can hinder the schooling experience of minority students. Among affluent and ambitious traditionally white institutions in NC, being black in that context is still considered an institution. NC is not color blind. I find that a transplant who is transient, well educated and charged with a very specific task of impacting students in a profound way within a short period of time would seem attractive to a population who has a history of being disenfranchised.
It’s about trust. But what minorities who want to put their trust in the corporate reform movement don’t realize, I suppose, is that the reward might be fleeting. And what we give up (states employing their own citizens to educate their young rather than a corporate chain of uninvested corporate bound temps) will hurt everyone up the road, black, white and everything else.
But I do understand their temptation to trust it more. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been different had I been a black preacher’s daughter from NC instead of a white one (actually I probably would have had a better singing career), but I am certain there are struggles I would have had that being white exempted me from. And from there I can understand the appeal of having a young teacher come in from another place, rather than someone who grew up in my same town, who has possibly assigned a position of status to me in their mind, and will perpetuate the notion of blacks as second class citizens (that is likely the fear). However, that fear is based on wild presumption and the TFA cure-all even more so.
My point being: the TFA conundrum seems obvious to many. But if you consider possible frustrations from imposed community expectations based on race, you can kind of get where they are coming from, at least from an emotional standpoint. Which is why the issue must be discussed from all angles and the emotional appeal kept in check.
Minorities who have possibly faced racial prejudice may very well develop a crush on the notion of TFA teachers changing the playing field much the way a little girl who has not yet blossomed into a woman might develop a crush on a male teacher. But if TFA teachers don’t own property or have investment in the communities where they work, they probably really won’t change anything in that playing field at least in the immediate sense. But we do have to ask ourselves how much of our future is determined by our mind sets and how much is determined by who owns enterprise and what they are looking for in hiring.
Oops. Exempt. Not exempted. (Can’t blame autocorrect for that one). Need more coffee.
Slowly but steadily, schools are learning about the truth of TFAers.
I wanted to comment. I do not live in Durham but am a past employee in a public school district. I cant help but feel that this decision comes strongly from those who are strong teacher union personnel. I know in my state and district most experienced personnel generally did not choose to teach in the poor schools. They might start there but generally switched schools as soon as they get tenure and experience.. Perhaps making it harder to get tenure or having teachers contracted to stay in schools for at least 4 years might help this situation. I just wonder if these suggestions were put forward how would the teachers vote. I know in my state the unions would vote it down. I know the TFA program may not be perfect but I do know that the program is very competitive and draws from the best schools where applicants have done a huge amount of volunteer work and internships before being chosen for the program. They are also very enthusiastic and hard working.-these qualities are needed in schools where students do not have a lot of options due to poverty or other challenges. Just some thoughts for those of you bashing this program.
Are young TFA teachers better qualified//more enthusiastic/harder workers than fresh graduates who majored in education and did student teaching prior to graduation? If both will leave the poor school after two years, I would prefer to take my chances with someone who graduated from college with the intention of making teaching their career.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
There is no need for TFA now, and possibly never was. It has morphed into a pipeline for Wendy’s husband’s charters and the like, and begs me to ask which came first chicken/egg. They are smart SOBs, certainly. They have figured out how to profit on tax payer dollars and donations; even getting donations from the Government via my hard-earned taxes. It sickens me to no end.
Nothing good has come from TFA. Time for it to fold. A non-profit that awards its administrators $200,000/$400,000 annually, and has assets in the millions and millions is plain shameful.
TFA has allowed itself to become complicit with the reform agenda – if it didn’t have that ideology to begin with. I absolutely abhor how the reformers can start up non-profits and pull enormous salaries, rather than doing a real job that benefits the public. They have been pawns for the millionaires, or vice versa. Either way, they have done great detriment to tax payers and students. Its madness, and it needs to stop.
but again. . .in a culture where minorities have every reason not to trust the folks of the dominant race in a southern town (where it might be white) who might have become teachers and come back to their home towns to teach, there is an appeal (whether or not there should be) of charters and TFAs. Now, I do think corporations use that appeal to manipulate. . .but talking about that appeal is important.
Realistic points, for sure.
Hope you read mine too.
How can it be a problem to have more help in the classroom? How can it be a problem to pay $3,000 for someone who works full-time? A TFA person can do a lot to help some students get more one-on-one attention. We have a drop out problem in Durham. Can’t the presence of TFA’ers mean that some classes have fewer students? Couldn’t it mean that some are working within classrooms to create room for more differentiated teaching? I don’t see how this is the problem.
Long-term, TFA has another beneficial effect: it brings more of the best and brightest into a career in teaching. The filter to get into TFA is itself a positive: you have to be willing to work even if the pay isn’t great. TFA is drawing from people that come committed and motivated. Besides, TFA tends to be active in districts that are on the whole less blessed with resources.
The only way TFA can survive long term is if it changes it’s mission. They have an organizational structure built up that could be transformatively
transformed into one that send the bright young people into Americas poorest areas to provide job and parenting training and remedial ed. It would be tougher than working with kids since the adults wouldn’t put up with nonsense, but I’m sure TFA can find some extra gritty people with high expectations to step up to the challenge, bright eyed graduates who want to see and fight poverty at the front of the front lines.