Gary Rubinstein, a critical friend of Teach for America, noticed something strange on Twitter: he saw tweets from Educatuon Week that boasted of TFA successes. Seemed strange. After a bit of digging, he realized that the tweets were actually sponsored advertisements, paid for by TFA.
Who is at fault here? TFA for paying for plugs? Or Education Week, for renting out its name and brand?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ed Week sold out a long time ago. Along with many of our organizations, papers, journals, and unions.
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EdWeek gets funding from Gates and Walton
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I’ve been disappointed in a lot at Education Week–there are some great columnists and bloggers on their roster, but the corporate viewpoint has morphed into a “reformer friendly” one over time. It’s very sad.
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Dag! Did I miss the TFA tweet about DC having the largest achievement gap on record- EVER! https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-dc-schools-the-racial-gap-is-a-chasm-not-a-crack/2016/01/01/7cfc33e6-afe9-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html
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Greatschools.org does the same thing with PARCC, SBAC, SAT, ACT and other test scores fed into a convoluted school rating system. Any for-profit or non- profit can pay a fee for a license fee to have visitors to the website directed to the pitch offered by these pay-to-play advertisers. The offsprings of this operation is called greatkids.org. Both websites are funded by Gates, Walton, and about twenty other foundations who want anything but public schools. Both websites are fronts for commercial operations. One of the senior EdWeek editors is among many media-savvy people recruited to help manage the Gates Foundation propaganda machine.
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i find it so distasteful when a so-called “non-profit” uses tax dollars or donations to promote themselves.
It smacks of a desperation that you see with ALL braggarts. Whenever I see a kid bragging obsessively about how great he is, I always feel bad because the kid is obviously insecure about his own failings and is trying to cover it up by boasting. If the braggart is a very rich kid, and his parents give him unlimited funds, and he rewards his “friends” with fancy gifts and invitations to vacation with him, the braggart is almost always enabled. If his parents give enough money and it’s a private school, the braggart will often be enabled. But deep down, everyone also knows the braggart’s accomplishment are exactly as deep as his parents’ pocketbook.
That’s TFA. That’s Success Academy. That’s Donald Trump.
If they didn’t have billionaires behind them (or in the case of Trump, his own money), their obsessive bragging would be ignored or seen for exactly what it is — embarrassing nonsense.
Come to think of it, that IS what Trump’s bragging was thought of for years. The bragging is just as nonsensical as it ever was, but the desire of the media and other people to be “friends” with him has multiplied tremendously.
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“Reform” is full of hype, spin, self promotion, selective use of misinformation, and, of course, as Laura states, a propaganda machine. It is getting harder for them to peddle their assertions as actual research and facts are telling the truth.
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But this is business as usual in the private sector business world. Misleading through PR and ADs is common. It’s done to fool consumers enough to get into their wallet and/or credit cards. For instance, I told a neighbor who owns a small business what was happening in this corporate war to profit off of public education dollars, and he shrugged and said, “nothing unusual there. That’s business as usual.”
For more information on this acceptable form of fooling consumers, I suggest reading “The 9 Most Misleading Product Claims” from 24/7 Wall Street.
It can be difficult for consumers to distinguish false advertising claims from true ones, especially when they are made by credible-sounding advocates. When companies with enormous spending power are behind such claims, increasing profits is often prioritized over providing consumers with accurate information.”
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/05/20/the-9-most-misleading-product-claims/
What TFA is doing with their false promises, hollow boasts, lies and misleading ads is nothing new. Why do you think Consumer Reports exists?
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm
And for corrupt and lying politicians, we have several Fact Checking sites. Guess who the new leading emperor or lies and false calms is in the political sector — hint, it has been alleged that he has little hands?
From PolitiFact.com we have “2015 Lie of the Year: the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump”
“It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/21/2015-lie-year-donald-trump-campaign-misstatements/
And from Politico.com, “Trumps Week of Errors, Exaggerations and Flat-out Falsehoods”
Politico reports that Trump makes one misstatement (you know, a lie, error or exaggeration) every five minutes on average.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/trump-fact-check-errors-exaggerations-falsehoods-213730
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TFA mystifies me in that it would not be that difficult for them to take the feedback from multiple sources and create a better and stronger teacher prep program. Perhaps a teacher residency program which is a year long certification where they participate in classes and working with a master teacher or something similar where TFA members would receive adequate training to be successful. This can’t be more difficult than trying to endlessly spin their program which so clearly doesn’t work as it is currently implemented. They appear to have a lot of resources and support, but I think they’ve pretty much always had a five week training and then put unprepared idealistic young people into classrooms to flounder.
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Sarah, that’s because TFA is not about training teachers, but rather is about identifying, grooming and training “leaders” who will take up the cause of making Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton’s, et.al. even richer than they already are.
Wendy Kopp has openly stated as much in her books; teaching is the last thing these frauds are concerned with.
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If that’s what they want then why bother with the corps at all? It just seems like such an idiotic organization on so many levels. I can’t figure out why anyone wants to join and why they get so much money. I am so sick of folks profiting from children who live in poverty.
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How, I wonder, is this not fraud?
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Is this MY TAX DOLLARS at work? Is TFA spending my money advertising? I want my money back. All of it. I want TFA to fold and repay me and apologize to the children it has offended, tormented, and done disservice to.
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Was it not labeled as paid content? How much does EdWeek charge for fake articles?
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