Gary Rubinstein was among the earliest members of Teach for America. He taught in Houston in the early 1990s and remained active as a trainer and mentor for many years. But five years ago, at the 20th anniversary, something snapped and he lost the faith. He started a blog and turned into a critic, some would say a nemesis, because he knew the organization and its star players.
Despite te his reputation as a critic, Gary decided to attend the 25th anniversary party. He wanted to see what was happening.
He found a large change in the rhetoric. Five years ago, the tone was arrogant, teacher-bashing, and union-bashing. This year, the talk was collaboration, even a smidgeon of humility.
He couldn’t tell if the new line was real or fake.
Follow his journey as he interacts with the faded stars of yesterday: Kevin Huffman, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and others. The Madame Tussaud’s of school reform. The boulevard of broken dreams.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I find this very revealing.
Five years ago many of us started fighting back against TFA. It was the summer of the SOS March, Rally and Convention in Washington DC where an anti TFA panel and workshop was offered and very well attended.
We started educating the public and even TFA corps members about the Hype and Hurt of TFA. More important people than I, like Barbara Veltri and David Berlin wrote pieces. Former corps members besides Gary, like John Bilby stood up and said, I quit and why.
Former TFA corps members organized and spoke at forums and conferences along with people like me.
Many of us started doing more than criticizing. We offered ways for TFA to be more collaborative… if we couldn’t get rid of it.
We proposed ways for TFA to work with universities and districts that would lead to the decline in corps member numbers because we wanted people who wanted to become career teachers and be far better prepared for their jobs.
Of course the change in the economy has had a great deal to do with those decreasing numbers. We cant take much credit.
The problem is they are still producing “leaders’ by the droves who have far too much influence in policy making, both in government and out. i am afraid this “softening’ of their language is a ploy to allow them to continue to do that and reform education the ways the ways they and their allies want.
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OOOPs. How could I leave out Julian Vasquez Heilig.
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TFA has continually lied about everything it does; why on earth should we believe anything they say now?
Their vapid, tone of “humility” and “diversity” is just as false and insipid as their lies about how “We know what works,” while they were busy blaming teachers a few short years ago.
Notice also that TFA has not spoken of changing its primary purpose, which is not to train young people to be teachers – that was never its intention – to to identify, train and groom ed reform leadership cadre, for the purpose of handing public education to the Overclass.
There’s no reforming this organization; it’s lies continue to need exposure, and it’s policies repudiated
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Just as an outside observer the tone in ed reform has definitely changed. The whole reason I got interested was the tone in Ohio in 2009-10. I was shocked by it. I don’t think it’s true that people here blame labor unions and teachers and public schools for all the ills of society, and that was DEFINITELY the theme.
Go back and read any of the stuff that came out during that period, all the thousands of op eds and Morning Joe screeds and Education Nation – CLEARLY politically-motivated attacks- and tell me this wasn’t an attack on public sector employers and public schools. It was. It was everywhere. Education Nation was rank propaganda. I was appalled to see governors endorsing it. I knew DC was gone, completely ad utterly captured, but governors attacking their own teachers and public schools? What the hell? Aren’t we paying these people to IMPROVE public schools?
I don’t know why they toned it down, but I suspect it was a response to critics. Thank God there were critics, is all I can say. It’s a shame none of them came from the ed reform “movement”, since this is supposedly a “debate”. It’s a shame none of them stepped up when it mattered and all dissent was forbidden.
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“To Fly Away”
TFA: To Fly Away
Under radar, every day
Gary Rubinstein exposed
So TFA has stealth imposed
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People don’t have to listen to Gary Rubinstein to believe ed reform has changed their approach. The US Department of Education is currently engaged in an effort to repair the damage they did re:public perceptions on the obsession with test scores.
They know this stuff is unpopular. If they didn’t know they wouldn’t be launching political campaigns to persuade parents that ed reform is somehow positive and beneficial instead of grim and joyless and punishing.
If they didn’t blow it on testing, then why is the President launching Facebook campaigns to persuade people his administration isn’t obsessed with technocratic notions of “market based” reforms?
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Here is another article about apparent change of heart—or at least rhetoric—in charter kingdom. This is about the no excuses method
http://hechingerreport.org/the-end-of-no-excuses-education-reform/
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How appropriate that, according to the link you supplied, the head of this charter chain started out as a functionary for welfare-to-work programs that were designed to force poor parents into poverty-wage work.
I guess he just decided to be an entrepreneur in a different side of the business of getting rich off the poor.
As for the so-called reformers altering their marketing in reaction to the deservedly bad press that Skinner Box boot camp charter schools have gotten, their patronization, condescension and colonizer mentality are still evident, no matter how many “anti-racism” workshops they attend.
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How many current Donors Choose executives attended?
Is there a comprehensive list of event sponsors that could be posted here? Since the government funds TFA, would the list be part of a Sunshine Law requirement?
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Linda, I will ask Gary and get back to you. Usually, TFA posts its sponsors on the website or the program. Quite impressive.
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