Gary Rubinstein was a member of Teach for America who has become an articulate critic of the organization. He objects to the use of the term “failing school,” because he has worked in schools with dedicated staff that were labeled “failing” based on test scores alone. He notes that TFA has benefitted by the use of this term because it sets up for closure, allowing charter schools and TFA to ride to the rescue.

In perusing TFA news, he discovered that one of their training sites in Houston is a “failing school.” By Texas’ accountability standards, the school got a grade of D, and is #720 of 1,000 schools.

The principal is TFA too. No miracle there.

He advises:

“I’m not writing about this to trash this school. I want the corps members who are working there and who are admiring this school to understand, though, that the bogus rating system that makes Robinson ‘failing’ is the same kind of rating system that is being used by all the supporters of TFA who want to declare a large percent of schools, like Robinson, failing. It’s lies like this that have fueled the growth of TFA. Without this growth, most TFA CMs wouldn’t even be in the program right now as it would be a much smaller program than it is.

“I think this would make for a good discussion topic for the TFA corps member groups who work at this failing school. If you are one of those corps members, bring this up at one of the daily meetings and report back how the TFA staffers respond.”