You read that right. Kansas is a state that has cut taxes and cut its education budget repeatedly and whose teachers are paid poorly. It is under court order to finance its schools adequately. You may recall that former Governor Sam Brownback imposed a far-right policy of cutting taxes to “grow the economy” while starving the schools and other public services. The experiment failed. Trump appointed him the
“Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.”
So now, because of low salaries, Kansas has teacher shortages. The remedy? A lavish contract with TFA to bring in temp teachers.
The Kansas Legislature agreed to pay education nonprofit Teach For America more than $500,000 this year for a pilot program to recruit 12 teachers to the state.
But the national organization only recruited three teachers for the state in 2018. All of them were placed in Kansas City, Kansas, where the local school district pays their salaries and benefits on top of another $3,000 per teacher per year to Teach For America.
Meanwhile, the state is still on the hook to pay the nonprofit $270,000 for training and recruiting teachers with no guarantee they will work in Kansas schools.
Mischel Miller, director of teacher licensure and accreditation at the Kansas State Department of Education, said the contract was intended to help fill a teacher shortage in the state.
“Our intention,” Miller said in an interview, “is that those dollars would be used for Kansas teachers.”
Yet the Kansas City, Kansas school district says it only hired three Teach For America instructors this year. Two other recruits started teaching in the district last year before Kansas hired the organization.
The state education department says Teach For America told the department it recruited all five of those teachers this year. The department is currently drafting a $270,000 contract to pay the organization.
A budget document from the Kansas Legislative Research Department dated Oct. 10 states, “Teachers will be paid a salary of $36,000.” But that money actually goes just to recruiting, training and placing each teacher.
That totals $180,000 from the state for recruiting five teachers, plus $80,000 to pay for the salary, benefits and travel expenses of a recruiter and $10,000 for one day of professional development. The rest of the money appropriated during the legislative session, totaling $250,000, will go back to the state’s general fund to be appropriated for the next fiscal year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wish I had no ethics or conscience like W. Kopp.
LikeLike
Not to mention the money that Kopp and her husband, the CEO of KIPP, receive each year. Close to $1 Million a year. Not bad.
LikeLiked by 2 people
and she is now considered to be an “educational expert….”
LikeLike
Rip offs at many levels, none helping students.
LikeLike
Omg. Sick.
LikeLike
The money on library books for under funded public schools.
LikeLike
Correction: The money would be better spent on library books for under funded public schools.
LikeLike
During Duncan’s time in DoEd, recruitment was the buzzword interspersed in federal grants, state regs, and now, in Pelosi & Schumer’s plan to increase federal education funding to states. Federal education grant applications require a plan to pay for teacher recruiting. His DoEd was run by TFAers as are every congressional & senatorial office, who benefit from those recruiting requirements.
As if funding more salespeople is the way to fill scarce teaching positions. Making public schools joyful, enriched places of learning is not on any plan put forth by reformers in both parties.
“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the new plan, which would give $50 billion to states and school districts over 10 years to pay for teacher raises and recruitment efforts.” https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/9/1811567/-Democrats-come-out-swinging-hard-proposing-funding-national-teacher-raises-by-taxing-the-rich
TFA has captured them all.
LikeLike
Why don’t teachers become a recruiter for Teach America? It pays $80k plus benefits! The reason teachers don’t want to teach issue also must factor in the student verbal abuse, threats, extreme student absenteeism, loads of other duties required of them, student outrageous phone use, and excessive student apathy, mountains of IEP creation of extra tests and lessons, inclusion of high achievers and low achieving students in a classroom for yet more instruction and planning not to mention interruptions in the daily schedule. Mix all that with the pervasive attitude that a student’s inability to raise test scores is all the teacher’s fault and parents who don’t care does and you have environment where nobody would want to work. Clean those issues up, and teacher salaries may not be quite the issue. After all we know the salary schedule when we are hired. Most teachers are weary of being the scape goat for all the ills of the public school systems while many put their lives on the line. The market is free for teachers to seek employment outside of a school system. Who wants to stay in a soup of dysfunction?
LikeLike