Gary Rubinstein, a former member of Teach for America, now a career math teacher in Stuyvesant High School in New York City, has become one of the most formidable critics of TFA, albeit a critical friend.
Here he describes a new book, Teach for America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out, which consists of chapters by disillusioned TFA, including himself, describing their experiences.
He was stunned to learn that TFA responded to the book, before its release, by saying that “only” 20 people contributed chapters, out of the 50,000 satisfied TFA alumni.
I guess you might say the same about any critical book: Rachel Carson was only one person out of millions of satisfied users of DDT. Ralph Nader was only one person complaining about unsafe automobiles. Jane Jacobs was only one person griping about what high-rise projects were doing to her city. Jacob Riis was only one person complaining about the living conditions of poor people. On and on.
We should all wait for a book written by at least 30,000 people.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TFA is a backwards idea. We should be sending the most experienced teachers to low SES schools.
TFA is a bad bandaid solution of a failure to correct a structural problem in public schools. Extra funding and extra incentive is needed at low SES schools to equalize teaching experience within districts.
Yes, I agree 100%…we should have a “national corps” of highly paid teachers to take over low SES schools and help train new teachers. Part of the problem that experienced teachers like myself are committed to teaching in one district. I cannot afford EVER to leave except for when I retire. I have 27 plus years in my district and plan to teach at least 30 years to 33 years. Only then can I go to another school and I plan on teaching at least part time in an inner city Catholic school. Some schools have sabbaticals and these could be used for some teachers but the problem is no experienced teacher could ever risk losing his or her job to go BACKWARDS in his or her career. TFA of course is almost worse than nothing. Most teacher see it as a 5th Column and an nefarious organization used to attack teachers and public education.
Some TFA candidates go on to be private school teachers or even public school teachers later but most quit and never return. Expecting a “militia” of sem-trained inexperienced youth to do the job of trained and experienced teachers is like expecting a militia of girl and boy scouts to invade Normandy instead of the 101st Airborne and the Rangers. No modern society can hope to be competitive without universal free public education. There is a place for private education even homeschooling just like there is a place for adult education. But no advanced society can serious consider the abandonment of the project of having comprehensive schools k-12 for all students. So the basis of voucherism and the TFA is idiotic and totally lacking in civic virtue.
couldn’t it be characterized as a staffing agency that got into perpetuating itself? What do other staffing agencies do (like Express Personnel Services and stuff) as far as impacting employers? Do they try to “get a corner” on things? I wonder. It could help put TFA into perspective—-I think all the noble talk they have adopted has created a conversation that is beside the point of what they really are—a staffing agency.
Involved mom, I think your point is good. TFA is essentially a staffing agency that has branded itself as “The best and the brightest”, investing serious money and energy into marketing this image.
They have also become a tool in the hands of reformers that want to dilute the teachers unions, and deprofessionalize teaching in general.
Jonathan: with all due respect, I think TFA could charitably be called a jobs program for adults, many of whom have “entitlement mentalities.”
What about the kids? Yeah, what about the kids…
It’s all about the best and and the brightest—self-selected.
Could this be another example of the “self-esteem” movement gone zany?
😎
Wonderful analogies I guess you might say the same about any critical book: Rachel Carson was only one person out of millions of satisfied users of DDT. Ralph Nader was only one person complaining about unsafe automobiles. Jane Jacobs was only one person griping about what high-rise projects were doing to her city. Jacob Riis was only one person complaining about the living conditions of poor people. On and on.
“millions of satisfied users of DDT. ‘
What about all the satisfied eagles? did anyone think to ask them?
I didn’t think so.
Please don’t waste your money on the “Counter Narratives” TFA book. I did, and so I can say this…
I’ve read the book. While some of those talking are being factual and making sense, a number of them are like cult members who were brainwashed into a cult, and now are hoping (and praying?) that the cult lives up to their original illusions. There are several strong narratives in the book, but they are almost outweighed by the silly “If only…” stuff from the people who sound like jilted lovers. Only a handful of the narrators expose the fact that TFA was rotten from the beginning with an arrogant disdain for regular classroom teachers and a fetish about identifying the “best and the brightest” by virtue of, apparently, SAT and ACT scores and Ivy League pedigrees. They then dumped themselves into our schools like the missionaries (I was constantly reminded of the “missionary tea” in To Kill a Mockingbird) who arrived to save the natives from us natives. Some of us critiqued Wendy Kopp’s bullshit from the very beginning, although at first it was hard to believe that the ruling class was going to pour millions of dollars and relentless adulation on Kopp’s head for her sheer arrogance and white supremacist versions of reality. I’ll be reviewing the book at substancenews.net later this week, but please don’t buy it.
My favorite narrative is from Sue Garza’s son, who exposes how TFAers in Chicago steered him into an anti-union charter school and then threatened him when he spoke out. As some readers here know, Sue is now alderman of Chicago’s 10th Ward after having worked decades at Jane Addams Elementary School on the far South Side of Chicago. Garza’s story is one of the last, and by that time I was so angry at some of the nonsense that was being shared in these “counter narratives” that I almost threw the book away. I’m glad I stayed for that story…
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
In some respect, TFA is even worse than Japan’s JET program in that the former has absolutely NO RESPECT for teachers and public education–while most folks in the latter know they are not in a position to steal teachers’ job–which is illegal– in the classroom.
Perhaps another analogy…..There is a shortage of highly skilled doctors in some areas, so let’s go get the best students from top schools (it doesn’t matter what they majored in) and just send them in to be doctors – and do surgery too. I am sure that would work just about as well. Any volunteers for the DFA?
Touche!
Institutional would include all the universities gathering the Ed Data that gets fed out to private partners, would it now?
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/psychologists.htm#tab-6
Some interesting quotient data here. In particular, the ratio quotient by state.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291066.htm#nat
And in our School District today, we have Thrively.
“We’ve spent the past year and a half working with two of California’s seven board-certified pediatric Neuropsychologists to develop a strength assessment test, which allows us to build a strength profile for each kid online. Once we get that strength profile, we match them to a whole world of extracurricular and educational opportunities suited to their strengths”
Parents are required to sign a permission form for their kid to participate. This tells me the district’s intent is to share that data.
http://www.socaltech.com/how_thrively_wants_to_help_your_child_reach_their_full_potential/s-0053722.html