This is a very brief video about Teach for America.
It demonstrates the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. It needs to be updated: a one minute video is worth a 10,000 word essay of the video is well done.
Salute the arrival of a brilliant new film production company. It won’t make anyone rich because it gives away its product for free.
It is the BadAss Teachers Association and Steven Singer, teacher and blogger.
Their first video is a winner. It runs for 1 minute and a few seconds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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Concise and well done.
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Fantastic video exposing the reality.
What is the ratio of Black TFA ‘ers who get management jobs in the ed. philanthropies, contrasted with the number of White TFA’ers who find employment in those organizations?
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Replacing qualified teachers by a band of teaching temps is not the way to improve outcomes for students. Students need stability. TFA is just another scheme to undermine unions.
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TFA appears to use their two-year-contracts as a lucrative business model: the TFA teacher factory keeps bringing in and spewing out short-term greenhorns who, under the endless harassment attached to our modern-day teacher blame game, will reliably quit once their contracts expire, making room for the next wave of naive conscripts….thus keeping that Big Money funded teacher factory up and running.
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Bingo! Give that commentator a Kewpie doll!
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A longitudinal study of pay for Black former TFA and White former TFA would add to information about race in America.
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There are arguments to be made but this is crap!
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Arthur, please explain why you don’t like the video.
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I know enough about TFA to know that this effort trivializes the people involved as well as the serious questions raised by the organization’s work. Don’t see how in any way this contributed to learning about the problem?
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Respectfully, I second the comment by dianeravitch.
Over the years on this blog, there have been occasional, but persistent, calls/pleas to make the case for genuine learning and teaching in a more compact, compelling and accessible manner. It goes something like this: sometimes central points can be lost when there is “too much” technical detail and information and argumentation.
I think the video addresses the need expressed above.
So I too would like further clarification.
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On June 4, 2017, the Ravitch blog had a post linking Non-Profit Quarterly’s article about SLAPP and a Rutgers Prof.
Organizations like the one identified in Non-Profit Quarterly, provide bio’s and photos of the management team/staff at their sites. Research could draw inferences about TFA background/demographics and jobs in the philanthropic sector. Findings published by charter advocacy groups and umbrella, charter organizations, would show….?
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Brief and to the point. So much of the reform movement is about union busting, maybe mostly about union busting.
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Sure as h_ll, it isn’t about the kids, community or the nation’s future prosperity.
(There is some profit-taking motivation added in.)
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The Center for American Progress is a liability for the Democratic Party. CAP’s VP of Education boasts in her bio about involvement in TFA.
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With all due respect to an above commentator on this thread, no one can trivialize/minimize TFA’s teaching mission [and those engaged in it] better than founder/creator Wendy Kopp—
[start]
TFA underscores the importance of its recruits’ success as teachers, frequently touting positive new statistics and research. But its corps members’ impact on low-income students is only the short-term, experiential part of the organization’s more important long-term mission: to build a force of leaders who will go on to influential public and private sector careers supporting TFA’s education reform initiatives.
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/
One quibble with the above: “education reform initiatives” should read [if truth in labeling were applied] “corporate education reform initiatives to garner as much $tudent $ucce$$ as possible.”
Of course, with a moniker like mine, what would I know?
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Aren’t the TFA and contractor school expansion inextricably linked?
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I don’t like this video at all, even though I think TFA is a lousy organization. I’ve worked with TFAers and found them to be honest, pro-union caring people with progressive social conscience. They are, however, minimally trained and overworked and unprepared. They literally have no idea what they are getting into, and many of them quit before the end of their first year.
I would not blame the individual TFAers for the failts of the organization as a union-busting force, and one that does its best to ensure that poor students, and students of color, get the least knowledgeable, least-experienced, and totally unqualified teachers. Rather than helping underprivileged kids, it ends up charging school districts a ton of money for putting a revolving set of clueless 20-somethings in front of classes that need the exact opposite: well-trained, experienced, well-supported and seasoned veteran educators.
This video instead blames the guile-less 20-something TFA recruits rather than the folks in charge. I think it should be withdrawn and fixed.
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