This study appears in the Education Policy Analysis Archives. Written by Michelle Gautreaux and Sandra Delgado of the University of British Columbia in Canada, it describes the origins of Teach for All, the international wing of TFA, which destroys the teaching profession and unions wherever it goes.
Here is the abstract:
“This article employs narrative analysis to examine how the media in 12 different countries characterize the Teach for All (TFA) teacher. Examining mass media narratives in these 12 countries illustrates that there are some remarkable commonalities in the narratives and character portraits co-constructed and propagated by the media. At the core of these narratives is the notion of a problem in education. This problem justifies the creation and emergence of a character, commonly constructed in opposition to traditionally certified teachers, who embodies the characteristics and attributes of the contemporary neoliberal subject. This article discusses the implications of this character’s widespread representation; namely, how does the character construction influence the broader public perception about education and how is it contributing to the (re)imagination of the role of the teacher?”
Where did Wendy Kopp get the idea for Teach for All? At a meeting sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative. She suddenly realized she could bring her money-making plan to the rest of the world, appearing to do good while obliterating the teaching profession and unions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on DelawareFirstState and commented:
Study: Portrait of a “Teach for All” (TFA International) Teacher
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Sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative. Need more be said? Trump is no better, but Hillary is no friend to teachers/education either. Never was.
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Education is big business. Teaching, smeaching.
[start]
In 2011, TFA founder Wendy Kopp spoke on a Seattle radio station, saying that people often misunderstand the function of TFA. “We’re a leadership development organization, not a teaching organization,” she said. “I think if you don’t understand that, of course it’s easy to tear the whole thing apart.”
[end]
Link: https://www.thenation.com/article/teachers-are-losing-their-jobs-teach-americas-expanding-whats-wrong/
National. International. Just scaling up.
$tudent $ucce$$.
😎
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They have already infiltrated education organizations.
Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, was among the first cadres of TFA. One of his first moves was to hire Jeff Good another TFA from his position at California Teachers Association. They’ve added other TFA people to UTLA staff. UTLA will spend about $1 million to re-elect TFA’s Steve Zimmer to the board of education of the LAUSD.
UTLA and LAUSD have eliminated about 5,000 veteran teachers.
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Excellent study. Thanks for the link. The same basic narrative extends well beyond TFA. The narrative structure of the “we can save you poor people” depends on creating s a stereotyped view of “traditional public education” as a massive failure, including public governance of public education. TFA and other variants of the “we can rescue you” scenario are aided by the international testing business where rankings of nations, provinces, states, and schools provide “evidence” of failure.
TFA is relentlessly focused on raising test scores as if that is both the necessary and sufficient proof of concept for global expansion. The financial backers and fans of digital delivery systems of “basic content” in competency-based modules are likely to erode TFA’s operations, especially because the “best and brightest” are the program designers, not people with a graduate degree and quickie training for a classroom of wiggly kids with their own minds.
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It all works pretty much the same as with Wendy Kopp’s original organization Teach for America. Her new incarnation Teach for All just does this on an international stage.
For example, in the TFA-orchestratied media coverage and promotional materials, the traditionally trained teachers are the “villains” or “antagonists” or “foils” — blamed for all that’s wrong with education — against which the Teach for All saviors — “hero” or “protagonist” — must do battle and defeat:
(from p. 15-16 in the study hyperlinked in the article ABOVE)
“Traditionally Certified Teacher As Antagonist:
“Whereas the teacher’s relation with students is presented as a relation between supporting characters and protagonist, the relationships between the TFA teachers and veteran teachers or traditionally certified teachers is characterized as a relationship between a main character and a foil character.
“According to Jahn (2005):
” ‘Foil characters are the ones who help to highlight certain features of a major character, usually through contrast.” (Section N.7.8.). In many of the articles, the relationship between veteran (non-TFA teacher) and TFA teachers is a relationship of either explicit or subtle/soft contrast that can also be understood as antagonism, which becomes apparent through the opinions and testimony of different voices in the narrative.
“This was not universal across our data, however, and in a few articles, the TFA teachers were presented as supporting or working alongside veteran or traditionally certified teachers in a non-antagonistic way (see for example Samela, 2012, Ortiz 2016, or Malaga 2010).
“Nevertheless, there was still a noticeable antagonism in most of the articles. The articles that employed rather explicit antagonism were less than the number of articles that employed implicit antagonism. Below are examples of the ways in which explicit antagonism was found in the narratives:
— “I’d rather have a good teacher for two or three years than have a mediocre teacher for 10,” Grier said. (Mellon, 2014, para. 24, emphasis added)
— “What good does it do to do a good job with the kids, only so that in the next class, they have a teacher that does a poor job?” (Muñoz & Reyes, 2010, para. 2, emphasis added)
“In both of these examples, the veteran and traditionally certified teachers are presented in opposition.”
Next, the article shows the topsy-turvy bizarro worldview of TFA in which TFA argues that ditching your students after two years for an easier and/or higher paying job outside education demonstrates a noble choice, but staying around longer is a sign of ignobility or “mediocrity” that damages students’ educational outcomes.
Thus, to improve education, one must expand TFA, and undermine the traditional veteran teachers alongside whom those TFA teachers work.
Again, most of the time, they don’t explicitly says any of this, but instead use “discursive techniiques” to “suggest” or “imply” it, so that “the reader makes the final connection.”
(As Goebells said, “The best propaganda doesn’t blatantly lie to people. It subtly tricks people into lying to themselves.”)
“Furthermore, in the first excerpt, the fact that TFA teachers are required to stay in the classroom for only two years is justified and used as a way to make an explicitly antagonistic reference to veteran teachers who are labeled as mediocre.
“The second excerpt assumes that other, non-TFA teachers, are not doing a good job teaching and taken further, can be used as a way to justify the expansion of TFA in a particular school, region, or country, as the TFA teachers are the ones who are presented as doing a good job.
“However, in most of the cases in the media narratives, the journalists or teachers do not explicitly reference the antagonistic relation between the TFA character and traditionally certified teachers. Rather, they employ a variety of discursive techniques to suggest and imply doubt in veteran teachers’ teaching ability.
“The reader is left to make the final connection.
“The following excerpts illustrate this point:
— “Our priority is to deliver robust standards and high quality teaching to all, whatever their background. To do this we must attract highly talented people into education, because the quality of teachers has a greater influence on children’s achievement than any other aspect of their education.” (Kirkup, 2010, para. 5, emphasis added).
— ” … principals are welcoming it as a way of getting high-calibre graduates into schools without their having to spend another year at university…It was a positive step to get non-traditional teachers in the door (Shuttleworth, 2012, para. 3 and para. 12, emphasis added).
— “David, wearing a tie, quiet and with an admirable professionalism, explains that the ‘greatest impact of this program (TFA) is changing the lives of many people; of young people who had never had the opportunity to have a person who not only impart them class, but who will be specialized in training them and to be perseverant.’ ” (Molina, 2015, para. 5, authors’ translation, emphasis added)
“To demonstrate the implicit antagonism found in many of the articles, we analyze two examples in more detail.
“In the Kirkup (2010) article, the testimony by Mr. Gove (who was the former education secretary in the UK) employs phrases such as ‘attract highly talented people into education’, which suggests that highly talented people are not part of the current teaching staff in the country (if so, there would be no need to attract a particular kind of “new”, “different” or “better” type of teacher).
“The other example that helps to illustrate our point is the excerpt from Muñoz and Reyes, which is more explicit in its blame on veteran and traditionally certified teachers.”
(Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 24 No. 110 16)
“The assumption is that the majority of teachers do not teach well and that the few that do are Enseña Chile teachers.
“Furthermore, the author reinforced this idea through the use of statistics, claiming ‘the self-esteem of students with teachers from Enseña Chile is 9.1% superior than the ones who did not receive intervention. The same happened with self-efficacy, where they have 5.8% more… ‘ (Munoz & Reyes, 2012, para. 7).
“The journalist’s use of statistics to argue the effectiveness of the TFA teacher over traditionally certified teachers reinforces the widespread notion that ‘objective’ measurements and statistics communicate what is important or valuable/” (Mathison, 2004, p. 165)
I’m reading the whole thing. It’s quite a page-turner.
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Very interesting & readable study. I wish the Discussion section had been 3 times as long. They discussed, as Jack notes above, the not-so-subtle implication that veteran teachers are chopped liver, it’s all about the newbies. They also pointed out the premise that ‘schools are failing’ in ‘marginalized’ areas of society.
I would have liked to hear how it is possible that any 21-y.o. Bachelor’s w/ little to no work experience (regardless of the caliber of his university) can be described as a leader/ manager/ perseverent/ sacrificing/ able to leap tall buildings etc. (on what evidence? Good grades at an Ivy League? The fact that he mercifully took zero ed courses? Got six wks training seminar instead of a semester or year mentored practice teaching?).
I found it humorous that the “TFA-character” is described above all as a leader/ excellent communicator from the get-go (learned that in undergrad I guess)– while at the same time [in another part of a typical MSM article] is someone who learns to BECOME a leader/ excellent communicator THROUGH TEACHING — after which he can step off that stone with those skills worth plenty of $ in the business world.
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Kim Smith/Bill Gates- a common thread. Smith is a founding team member of (1) TFA. She founded (2) New Schools Venture Fund ($22 mil. in Gates funding), which has the “marching orders…to develop diverse charter school organizations to produce different brands on a large scale”. Smith co-founded (3) Bellwether (Gates funding), which describes schools as “human capital pipelines”. And (4) Smith founded Aspen Pahara Institute, with Gates funding. Until this summer, David Koch was on Aspen’s board.
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Very disturbing. Thank you for bringing this our attention. Gives new meaning to “ugly American.”
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Great study! I’m so tired of the word “leadership.” What does it really mean? And how do you “create” leaders? Is that even a desirable goal? I particularly appreciated the analysis in this study of how the students are merely objects situated in a context whose primary purpose is to be the fodder for developing “leadership skills” of TFAers. The experience of the TFA is clearly more important than the experience of the students. Who is really benefitting in this relationship?
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