Teach for America has received huge sums from Walton and other anti-union foundations on the assumption that they would be the teachers in nom-unioncharters. But what happens when they work in a union district like Oakland? This AP article by journalist Sally Ho says that TFA warns its corps members to cross the picket line or risk losing Americorps funds that lure them into TFA. The young people who are tempted to join TFA should be aware that they will be expected to act as scabs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s common here and we are supposed to think that’s ok. Not of fan of that organization at all.
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Threats like this that come through organizations like TFA on orders from their masters, the billionaire oligarchs, should not be allowed to exist in the United States. When labor unions first organized, there was violence and bloodshed and maybe its time for organized labor to consider ramping up the pressure on the billionaire autocrats that think they are American royalty. Make them rethink what they are doing …
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Those who can – lead.
Those who can’t – lead charters
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I’m sure some, if not most, TFAers are well-intentioned and want to positively contribute to their society. It is just abominable to see them manipulated and used as pawns to undermine middle-class union protections. The greedhead deformers have no bottom, there’s no new low they won’t stoop to (like POTUS) in order to disrupt, debase and dismantle the public education system to which so many who frequent this site have devoted their time and labors. These privateer pigs play hardball and don’t care what harm is done in their relentless assault on decency and humanism.
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I must say that visiting this site and hearing comments like yours is reassuring, that there are people who are in strong disagreement to the goals of the billionaires.
I am glad to see that teachers are getting up and fighting, for there was a time when it was a question if they were going to continue taking what was being dished out to them; or if they would fight. It might even be possible to reverse some of what has been done to public school system. There is hope.
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Callisto-
TFA’ers aren’t well-intentioned. TFA is a springboard for their advancement after a brief stint in the classroom. Look at how many are picking up paychecks at the Center for American Progress, an organization funded by Gates that the media label as “liberal” while it advocates for privatized education. There’s nothing redeeming about CAP, nor its board chair, Tom Daschle, who founded the Bipartisan Policy Center to achieve privatization in whatever sectors its clients want. BPC recently got into higher ed policy, sponsored by Gates and Arnold.
BPC is pushing the former Kaplan, now Purdue Global university model to further the Gates’ attack on the common good.
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TFAs are unlikely to be around beyond their two year “contracts.”
A study of novice teacher turnover in North Carolina found that 91% of TFAs were gone after three years…In-state, traditionally prepared teachers are most likely to move among schools but least likely to leave teaching, including during the school year. The imagined dedication of TFAs appears to be limited by the promise of money for hanging in…no real committment to teaching needed.
America Educational Research Journal. Leaving School Early: An Examination of Novice Teachers’ Within- and End-of-Year Turnover Christopher Redding, Gary T. Henry First Published August 12, 2018
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In “The Teacher Wars” by Dana Goldstein, the author compares the results of different methods of teacher training/education.
On page 250 in the paperback, Goldstein writes, “Nationwide, urban teacher residencies have an 87 percent retention rate at four years, compared to the loss of nearly half of all new urban teachers over a similar period of time, and two-thirds of TFA teachers.”
An urban residency is often a one year, full-time program that includes a full-time recidency in a master teachers classroom in a public school in addition to the classes needed to become a certificated teacher.
I know because in 1975-76 that is how I earned my teaching credential and probably why I stayed in teaching for thirty years tp 2005, in spite of the war that President Teflon Ray-Gun declared against public education and public school teachers in 1983 with the release of his lying, misleading, manipulating “A Nation at Risk” report.
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I have said this before but will repeat it in response to the91% attrition rate of TFA in NC.
When the Tea Party won Control of the NC General Assembly in 2010, they took the $6 million that fundedthe anC Teaching Fellows Program and gave it to TFA. THE NC Teaching Fellows Program was a six-year preparation for teachers at the U of NC. Young people planned a career as professional teachers.
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I remember an NEA-RA convention where an anti-TFA item was being discissued.
One female teacher, who had just taught her first year in the class, got up and asked,
“So let me get this straight! They temp-teach for two years — going in knowing full well that that it’ll be two years and they’re gone — and get all their student loans forgiven, while I’m dedicating myself to do this for the next 40 years — because teaching is where my heart is — and I don’t get a penny of my own student loans forgiven?
“Just what the-Hell is this incentivizing and rewarding, and what the-Hell is this dis-incentivizing and punishing?”
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So true!
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Like so many well inteneded or innovative ideas in education , they get bastardized by the privatizers, politicians (both sides of the aisle) looking to fix things in their 18 month election cycle, and corporate leaders (a phrase that once was not an oxymoron).
I’m rereading Al Shanker’s biography. Charter schools when they were more than a “well-intended” but rather a solid plan for those closest to children to be flexible and innovate.
Teach For America was the GenX version of the baby boomer’s Peace Corps. Mission focused graduates providing short time (year or 2) additional help, more adults in the room, opportunities for groups and tutoring.
Diane, is it fair to say you signed on with the feds in the spirit of high standards and expectations for every student to achieve before they went all NCLB high-stakes testing on us?
What charters, TFA, national standards, virtual/online learning…heck even Goals 2000 had in common was to complement and build on the promise of public education and professionalism.
But they also were “disruptions” for the right and rich to seize on and redefine. Charters became means for profit. TFA was cheap labor never intended to be full time time teachers.
(thought I sent this previously)
Those who can lead.
Those who can’t lead charters.
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So true. And those looking for fast money own charters.
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Good grief. This is sick.
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According to an article in Yahoo News today,
“It [TFA} says 34 percent of its alumni remain teachers, with a significant number working in charter schools.”
I don’t know what “remain in teaching” means–that they continue for some time, a year or whatever, after their two years is up? But I do know that if 34 percent remain, that means that 66 percent–two thirds–go on to something else after having taken, for two years, a job that might actually have gone to a trained teacher.
But Ed Deformers don’t think that professional teachers are needed. They think that teachers can be replaced by warm bodies who act as proctors while the kids do “[de]personalized learning” on computers.
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The folks who run Ed Deform are billionaire businessmen and women. They care about costs. They know that the costs of schools are all in facilities and faculty. So, they oppose investing in teachers–paying enough to attract highly knowledgeable professionals and make it worthwhile for them to remain in the profession. Cheaper, they think, to put all the prole children on computers and hire some low-wage warm bodies to act as proctors. YOU WILL NEVER FIND THAT HAPPENING IN THE SCHOOLS THAT THEIR KIDS ATTEND.
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91% attrition rate – that says it all. Does the AFT and NEA have an official line on TFA? I’ve only known one person who was in TFA. She is a great person who cares deeply about education. She worked at a charter (in the news lately for its principal shoving a student) and finally escaped her horrible working conditions and now works in the public system. I wonder if TFA leaders steer their recruits clear of all of these issues (union busting, privatization etc…). Are they, through sin of omission, fooling well-meaning idealistic young people or do graduates join TFA with full knowledge and “buy in”?
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TFA’ers buy-in to get patronage from the wealthy. TFA’ers further the exploitation of the vulnerable by moving from the classroom to administrative positions in think tanks and the types of non-profits that the billionaires fund and/or foster.
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Here in Indianapolis they were all sent an email at the beginning of the year threatening the same thing and telling them not to join our union. This was the first year that this type of email had been sent and in the past we were always told that they could join but did not pay the political action committee fee of the dues. I had many interested potential members until that email was sent out. Fearmongering and union busting at its best.
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