Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post discovered one of our favorite bloggers at the 25th anniversary party of TFA.
Mild-mannered Gary Rubinstein kept his Superman outfit hidden as he threaded through the throng of reformers past and present. Michelle Rhee was there for a rare sighting, as was Eva Moskowitz for a not-rare sighting.
Gary is there to tell the truth. Tough job.
“Rubinstein said he will call out any examples of spinning or exaggeration he sees. One example – Rubinstein tweeted a photo of a graphic that was displayed at one workshop that showed the District of Columbia as the urban district with the largest gains in math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 2011 to 2015. Rubinstein tweeted that D.C.’s scores were so low that even after the gains, it still was the worst performing of the major urban districts.
“D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson was a Teach for America Corps member in New York in 1992.
“I’m here to disrupt this,” said Rubinstein, 46, as he walked largely unnoticed around the cavernous Walter W. Washington Convention Center.
“Rubinstein says TFA exaggerates the success of its program and alumni while at the same time overemphasizing the role of teachers, contributing to a political climate that blames educators for the academic struggles of low-income children.
“TFA is so allied with this education reform, this ‘Waiting for Superman’ narrative, that it ignores other factors,” said Rubinstein, referring to the 2010 documentary that was critical of traditional public schools, and featured Rhee as she challenged tenure and other union protections for teachers. The film portrayed non-unionized charter schools as a salvation, and followed families as they tried to win admission through a lottery.
“The truth is, schools need more resources,” Rubinstein said. “If there’s a high poverty school, it needs way more resources – potentially break-the-bank resources. It needs smaller class sizes. I’m talking four (students) to one (teacher). But TFA doesn’t talk about that.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gary is a fine detective. Stay hidden when you must.
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Break the bank resources—imagine if the US spent the same kind of money on its schools that it did and does for its wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the world war on terror.
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What are you Lloyd, a commie pinko effete impudent hate America make love not war pot smoking socialist hippie???
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No, I’m someone who was born into a family living in poverty. Both of my parents were high school drop outs during the Great Depression and to survive went to work for poverty wages at age 14. My dad was an alcoholic, chain smoker and a gambler. My mother was repeatedly a born again Christian and then a Jehovah Witness—I was 12 when she made that giant leap.
I was born with severe dyslexia and a virus that attempted to kill me for most of my youth. The verdict was that I would never learn to read or write, and I admit that I was a horrible student K -12. In the age of high stakes tests that rank and punish, I would never wish a K-12 student like I was on any teacher.
My mother literally beat literacy into me with a wire coat hanger because by the time I was seven, my older brother, who was illiterate his entire life until he died at 64, was already in prison at the time for being involved in an armed robbery. Mom feared I would follow him to prison if I didn’t learn to read. My brother was 12 years older than me. Before he died, he’d spend 15 years in prison. He was an alcoholic, a chain smoker and sometimes a drug user.
After high school, cured of that virus that wanted to eat my heart, I joined the Marines to escape the environment I grew up in—since I kept all my body parts, that decision was one of the best I ever made.
Today I’m a former U.S. Marine who fought in Vietnam for my country. I came home with a bade case of PTSD and immediate started to drink myself to death. I came realty close too, but I changed my mind in 1982 and stopped drinking. I haven’t been drunk since.
When I was honorably discharged after risking my life multiple times while fighting for my country, I went to college on the GI Bill, the only member of my immediate family to do so. Out of college, I ended up working in mid management in the private sector for several years. Along the way, I decided to go back to college and earn a teaching credential and I ended up teaching in public schools for thirty years where the child poverty rate started at 70% and went up from there.
Motivated to learn, I taught myself how to study in college and graduated five years after starting with a BA in journalism on the Dean’s Honor Role.
The first grade school I taught in had razor wire strung along the eves to stop the local street gangs from climbing on the roofs and chopping their way through to loot the school of all of its valuables. The principle for the first intermediate school where I taught a few years after that first grade school warned his staff to never leave the school campus on foot and walk into the local community because we might vanish and never been seen again. When I reached the local high school as a teacher, I witnessed drive-by shootings from my classroom doorway and was threatened by gang members almost annually.
I taught from 1975 – 2005, and I earned my teasing credential through a full time, year long urban residency under the guidance of a master teacher in her classroom in the same poverty ridden, gang threatened school district where I would be hired to teach full time.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I went to work 30 hours a week washing dishes in a coffee shop nights and weekends when I was 15. I did go to school days but didn’t do much but sit in the back and read historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy. My mother’s efforts to torture me to learn how to read worked.
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Thanks for spelling it out, Lloyd. My whole career I have had to deflect accusations of being an elitist, of never having questioned White privilege, of mistreating students because I am white, of being bi-polar when I am bilingual, the list goes on. How can anyone think that because I have pale skin I am rich, that my timex is a Rolex, that I don’t understand what it’s like to have troubles? My family was the just like Don Draper’s Madmen, drunk and crazy and self-absorbed. I went to college on loans and was told to find a husband and get out at 18. I worked for a free year, did all the college, survived the status of bottom of the food chain for over 20 years. TFA mindset is racist, classist, and combative in the encounters I have had with these types. If one of these ever did look at what their opponents publish they probably would not be able to believe it.
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I think Duane was being ironic, Lloyd, without any harm intended towards you.
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I thought Duane was being ironic too but my reply wasn’t ironic. I decided to stick to cold hard facts for those who might not see the irony in Duane’s words.
There is a stereo type out there for us alleged liberals and progressives that is mostly wrong.
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I want to know why he did not throw his drink on Rhee,s face. She should be pblicly shamed for the rest of her days.
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Thanks, Diane and Gary Rubenstein. Wow … TFA IS Propaganda to the MAX. But I have to tell you that I did laugh out loud because of how you described the event.
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An interesting thing about Eva and TFA. All the TFA Corps Members working in Success Academy charter schools work as secondary co-teachers, working in support to a teacher with a few years of Success Academy teachers— basically as teacher assistants or teacher aides.
This is in contrast to the capacity in which TFA Corps Members working when at traditional public schools — they work solo from Day One, even though they have never taught a day in their lives.
This is Eva effectively admitting that TFA Corps Members, with their scant five weeks of training, are not qualified to work as teachers without some sort of apprenticeship period … when teaching in Success Academy charter schools, that is.
With public schools, however, it’s perfectly okay to sic these TFA amateurs on unsuspecting students, especially when they are used to replace veteran teachers, acting as scabs to weaken unions.
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Jack: good catch!
😎
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Actually, Gary caught that, as he regularly mentions this contradiction when Eva and her Success Academy schools are brought up.
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I sometimes envision a book called “The Best of Diane’s Blog” and this particular post would certainly be included. It’s all here -notably people who are great teachers, doing the ‘tough job of telling the truth’. Facts, fantastic writing and real courage. Classic.
Potential TFA members…..I’ve been teaching for 28 years. You want to learn something about your chosen profession, you want to be inspired, you want to really help kids? Start here. It’s a rare day when I don’t learn something important about education on this site. Our kids deserve the best and THIS is the real stuff.
Thanks especially to you, Gary Rubinstein. Keep on disrupting!
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“Maytag for America”
TFA’s a spin machine
A Maytag teacher dryer
“Greatest thing you’ve ever seen”
Claims their latest flyer
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We are focusing on progress for our kids and communities instead of engaging in a back and forth that, at the end of the day, is a distraction from the real issues,”
I read a bit on the ed reform side and this is a constant theme. It’s just so obviously a way to control the terms and boundaries of any debate that I’m surprised they get away with it so consistently.
They can’t have a “debate” and announce at the outset what the “real issues” are- that’s not a debate- it’s an agenda. The whole basis of Rubinstein’s criticism is that they aren’t addressing the “real” issues.
I see this again and again and again in ed reform. It’s not even that they won’t debate. They won’t even allow for the possibility that anyone else has “real” issues. It’s just such a blatant (and common) power play I’m surprised it isn’t recognized.
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What manipulative school privatizers do is use the false construct: “Are you for the kids or for the adults? Are you going to put kids’ interests first, or adult interests first?”
I could name ten times off the top of my head where they used this specious line of thought:
In his first interview after leaving LAUSD in disgrace, John Deasy claimed everything he did was prioritizing kids ahead of adults. I also spoke with someone who works and UTLA’s contract negotiating committee.
Just after becoming LAUSD superintendent, John Deasy was across the table, and openly told the UTLA negotiating them, that if he had the power, he’d wipe out all step raises — or intermittent raises based on years served, with larger pay bumps at the five-year intervals — and instead base pay on student test scores. When asked why, he replied,”Step raises are about putting adult interests ahead of children’s interests.”
Campbell Brown also does this in about every interview or speech she gives. In fact, she got applause for this on the Stephen Colbert show, which Colbert immediately busted her on, saying, “Now, you’re playing the ‘Good for Children’ card.”
Michelle Rhee’s organization—which she has since left—is called, naturally, “Students First.”
I could go on with countless examples.
Essentially, it’s …
“privatizing schools = putting kids first.”
“busting/weakening unions = putting kids first.”
“eliminating school boards = putting kids first.”
“ending democratic control of schools = putting kids first.
“putting totally inexperienced teachers in a class = putting kids first”
If you’re not for all of the former in the above equations, then you’re part of the failed status quo, or a defender of the failed status quo, the one that puts adults ahead of kids.
LAUSD School Board President called bullsh** on this during an interview with the JEWISH JOURNAL:
———————
JEWISH JOURNALL “It seems like a lot of the dialogue relating to LAUSD pits teacher against student. If something is good for students, it’s bad for teachers and vice versa.”
STEVE ZIMMER: “How it’s said in my world is whether you ‘have a kid agenda or an adult agenda.’ That is an incredibly deceptive political construct. Anybody who has spent their career in public school knows that’s a lie.
“When you’re supporting teachers, you’re supporting kids.
“When you create a better environment for learning, you’re supporting kids and everyone who works with them.
“That lie — ‘kids versus adults’ — that lie is a subterfuge about what part of the reform movement is about, which is eviscerating or lessening the influence of public sector unions. A lot of that is focused on teacher unions. Teacher unions are teachers. I’ve been very critical of my own union and the union I consider to be an ally. [But] there’s a difference between being critical of different policies of a labor union and believing that union should not exist.
“And a lot of money that fuels the charter and reform movement is by people who believe teacher unions should not exist.”
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Chiara and Jack: IMHO, some of the best comments ever posted on a thread on this blog.
The indissoluble connection between the two [in this order or reversed] is summed up in an old adage: a teacher’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions.
So many times the rheephormsters demonstrate by their deeds that when one is attacked so is the other. Notice how so many toxic mandates and policies that reflect both worst pedagogical AND business practices are standard rheephorm fare. For example, burn-and-churn of educators has a disruptive (hardly creative, but yes, predictable) effect on students as well, and the test-to-punish regimen of standardized tests stultifies and stunts both.
Always remembering that the shot callers and chief enablers and enforcers of corporate education reform spare THEIR OWN CHILDREN what they mandate for OTHER PEOPE’S CHILDREN.
One last point: y’all again remind us to beware of the loaded and coded language used by those wishing to inflict SES [SnyderEarleySyndrome] on the vast majority of school staffs, students, parents and communities. Can’t be avoided all the time, but it never hurts when possible, for example, to translate “achievement gap” into plain English as “test score gap.”
Administering and surviving the hazing ritual of high-stakes standardized tests is not the same as genuine teaching and learning.
Many thanks for your observations.
😎
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I don’t think this is good news for public schools. Probably doesn’t bode real well for the promised increase in the minimum wage either:
“Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart for 6 years and just received a $353,000 donation from the Walton family.”
I think it’s likely Clinton will follow Bush/Obama on privatizing public schools and their lack of support for existing public schools if she’s taking this much money from Wal Mart heirs. It’s going to one of those “leadership” PACs. Leadership PACs are the funds politicians start so they can dole out cash to other politicians. It’s reached the ridiculous point now were candidates bribe other candidates with this campaign cash.
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Teach for America … little more than camp counselors without the pine trees on their shirts.
Imagine for a moment the instant promotion of butchers to surgeons … or deck builders to bridge engineers. Imagine Cub Scout troop leaders as military generals … or menu makers as the next classic authors.
There’s something so odd about teaching … and it’s seldom mentioned. Everyone thinks they can teach. Everyone.
Just because you taught your child to knot his sneakers in record time doesn’t make you the next Mr. Chips. Everyone is so seduced by Hollywood and tv-land that they actually think they could sail right into a classroom and every kid would sing the theme song “To Sir, with Love”. And the world would cry because of their greatness.
Like any job, teaching is layered with misconceptions. Everyone fantasizes about professional baseball players … swatting home runs and earning millions for making the highlight reels. No one mentions the family separation, the travel fatigue, roadie food, a different bed every few days, autograph hounds, packing and unpacking, missing family stuff, separation from wives and children … and then the usual redundancy of any job. All we see is the glamour.
That’s true for teaching, too. Everyone seems to see that “To Sir, With Love” guy winning over the thuggery class and becoming a revered legend overnight. Or that Mr. Chips who seems to sweat wisdom … because he’s so over-supplied with it. If that were the case, I would have hung in the position until I was a hundred. But it’s not.
Teaching is lots of stuff few imagine … and lots of hours even fewer acknowledge. It’s not a job you get very good at very quickly either … even with the best preparation. It’s not all knowledge either … it’s technique and personality and polishing a persona and perfecting a delivery … as well as knowing your subject inside out … and keeping current in the ever changing field.
It’s about intuition. And listening to that intuition. It’s about love … all sorts of love.
There’s easy love …for those kids that just joy you day-in-and-day-out. They’re great students, great kids … with great personalities and great everything.
Then there’s that hard love … for the kid with the green snot and the girl with the matted hair … and unpleasant aroma. Or for the boy who’s an accomplished bully at age 13 … and thinks this is his lot in life. Then there’s the broken child … who seems already to have quit life. And the loud, annoying sort … who’s probably masking a world of hurt. What about the invisibles? … the kids who practice invisibility because their daily ambition is to go unrecognized and un-included … for whatever dark reason. Prying them out of their darkness can take months … if it ever really happens.
There’s lots more to describe, but it’s unnecessary. What is necessary is to imagine engaging all of these kids in the right way day after day … and then seeing to it that they make educational progress as well. Making sure they’re prepared for the next level … the next challenges. Oh … and you lug all of this stuff around in your head and your heart … all the time.
And then, just to make this all even more interesting, weave in the mundane that actually captures most of your time … never-ending grading that snatches away your Sundays, faculty and department meetings, parent confabs, planning, gathering things you need and resources you want. Colleague exchanges and innovative thinking. Blend in some school politics and the usual work-place agita … and maybe some deep intrigue at times. Oh, and don’t forget your family … those folks you bump into when you’re half dressed. They want a piece of you, too.
II’m certain that five week preparation period offered by the Teach for America leadership is gonna arm those greenhorn teachers to the max? If that’s true, I’m only four or five hundred practice swings from the major leagues. When do I get my contract and uniform?
I’m not angry that people assume they can do my job. I’m used to it. But I’m not used to the Rhees and the Duncans and the Gates and the Kings and the Colemans … who never, ever actually rooted in a classroom … telling old masters and young talents how’s it’s done. I loathe the Know-It-Alls … and wish their day in the spotlight quickly comes to an end.
Denis Ian
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Jack
February 6, 2016 at 9:34 am
What manipulative school privatizers do is use the false construct: “Are you for the kids or for the adults? Are you going to put kids’ interests first, or adult interests first?”
I just think it’s really weird how they imagine this world split up into “adult interests” and “kid interests”. It’s nonsense. Kids live in a country, a community and a family. The idea that their interests are separate and apart from any kind of broader context is just nutty. They’re not an “interest group”. They’re us.
Even if I did see the world that way, where adults and children are somehow naturally at odds, why would I hand celebrity ed reformers the mantle of being on the “kid” side? I don’t accept that either.
Arne Duncan takes it to ridiculous lengths. Last week he said “the adults” are responsible for the situation re: Chicago Public Schools. Is this supposed to be profound and meaningful, this “the adults” phrase? Of course “the adults” are responsible. We all recognize children don’t run CPS or the City of Chicago. It’s a silly thing to say.
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But watch out if they do, and suddenly the mayor of Chicago is Gorgon!
https://www.google.com/search?q=and+the+children+shall+lead&rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS414US414&espv=2&biw=1220&bih=888&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjXgoOP_uPKAhVKyGMKHWvACzcQ_AUIBygC&dpr=1#imgrc=bAyZYER7I5iTjM%3A
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Just heard that Randi Weingarten will be speaking at the TFA conference. Can you spell C-A-P-I-T-U-L-A-T-E??
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Here’s a video with eerie parallels to TFA; in fact it neatly explains the entire paradigm:
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