Nancy Bailey expresses her astonishment that corporations and universities continue to fund TFA even though there is no evidence for its efficacy. By sending inexperienced teacher aides to replace veteran teachers, they are harming children and degrading the profession.
Open her post to see the long list of gold plated donors. Would they also fund Airline Pilots for America? No, that matters. Why ruin education by demeaning real teachers? Bailey proposes a name change: Teaching Aides for America.
The reality is that TFA supplies the temp labor force for non-union schools, specifically, charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can understand that corporations and foundations that want to destroy public education support TFA. I cannot understand the support of institutions of higher education and state departments of education. In the case of higher education, the article explains that some universities depend on TFA to place students, and some universities are even hosting TFA. This practice seems rather shady particularly if the university offers a legitimate program in education. There is a perception problem in giving credence to fake, degraded training. State departments of education should be prohibited from endorsing TFA as they are the very people that write the certification requirements for the state. State DOEs should not be agents of degrading and undermining the teaching profession. This is an insane conflict of interest.
Finally someone is talking about what we in schools and universities have been seeing for years. TFA is a way for the rich white students to climb the career ladder on the backs of poor children and at the expense of other, less wealthy teacher candidates. They do not make good teachers because they do not have enough training or even the desire to be teachers. They are overwhelmed in the classroom and do not stay long enough to learn how to teach in a way that helps children actually learn. They blame the children and families instead of themselves. And then they move on to better paying jobs, leaving children without education and demanding teachers below them raise test scores. As if test scores are the real evidence of learning.
TFA represents colonialist thinking. It assumes white young people can “save” poor minority students. In reality they further exploit those same students by offering a second class, authoritarian form of instruction from fake “teachers” that have little training. The black community should be insulted from TFA and the corporate assumptions about poor minority students. In truth what they are selling is a cheap, separate and unequal education for those corporations deem worthy of “saving.”
I see Wells Fargo on there. So, rip off the public so you can then use those profits to even further rip off the public, helping to fund TFA’s bogus ideas. Wow! A page out of corporate America’s shameful playbook.
The Indianapolis Public School System. has between $100,000 and $250,000 to spend, on a charity that is funded by the wealthy, like the Walton’s and the Arnold’s (Enron exec., hedge fund guy and anti-public pension activist)?
It’s not universities that support TFA and friends. It’s admins and a very small subset of profs. At my university, some admins and a small group of profs secretly wanted to establish a teacher training program on campus that would have been supported by the university completely, would have competed with the univ’s very own ed department and it would have been operated by Relay. They even stated it in the prospectus that they expected this new program to destroy the univ’s standard teacher training program and would have cannibalized the majors from other departments.
“They even stated it in the prospectus”
Interestingly, the prospectus was prepared by no other company than the Bridgespan Group. I let you find out whose business they have been representing.
Here another article from Nancy I particularly like. The comments contribute further material.
Thank you, Mate. I wrote a book 10 years ago called EduSpeak and it desperately needs updating. I will ask Nancy for help.
I went back and took another look just now at Nancy’s blog. You’re right….the article on edu-jargon is really good. Actually, Nancy’s whole website is wonderful…..all that stuff about defending kindergarteners from the onslaught of common core b.s. I remember several years ago when my friends who teach early ed. were telling me about the nutcase stuff that was coming out of Albany. I almost fell out of my chair. “Unpack the standards” Yeah, right. And, pack up childhood at the same time.
P.S. I saw a comment on Nancy’s blog from Bob Shepherd a couple years ago. When was the last time Bob was on here? I always enjoy his writing.
It also collects plenty of government tax dollars as well. Sickening. How do we make it stop?
A campaign, similar to the one conducted against ALEC, is necessary. The latest wins against ALEC, involved AARP and Enterprise leaving the fold. ALEC’s opponents have had a string of successes.
ALEC should lose its tax exempt status. It lobbies and is political.
Efficacy? Do you really think an educated public is what corporations seek?
Aetna is the healthcare provider for the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. Why are they supporting TFA? I’ll ask STRS.
Not surprisingly, the following are donors to TFA- Walton Foundation, John and Laura Arnold Foundation (anti-public pension activist/Enron manager/hedge funder), Koch Industries, Lumina Foundation, Apollo Education Group, University of Phoenix, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund (Gates gave NSVF-$22 mil.), Microsoft.
Remember what Dubya Bush said about the “soft racism of low expectations”.
This here’s the Microsoft racism of low expectations.
For teaching.