This is a shocker.
Gary Rubenstein reports that the state of Texas pays Teach for America $5.5 million a year for 400 recruits.
This is a sweet deal for TFA but a bad deal for Texas taxpayers.
He writes:
”TFA provides the state with a report that makes it seem like they are doing a lot with this money, but considering that they recruit about 400 corps members into Texas and only 85% of them even finish their two year commitment, this is a big waste of money. This is about $15,000 per recruit, and that doesn’t include whatever finders fees the districts themselves pay.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Texas got scammed by TFA. Paying $15,000 for each teacher and at $3,000 to $5,000 dollars finders feed for an untrained teacher that will stay for about three years makes no sense. As I have stated before, Texas has its own path for teacher certification including an alternate route for college graduates that did not take education courses in college.
When I was in college, Pennsylvania was facing a teacher shortage. My university had a program that allowed me to get a BA while completing the necessary course work to be a certified French teacher in the Commonwealth. I had a couple of semesters in which the university allowed me to carry 21 credits. I had to meet all the requirements in the education program including student teaching. When I finished, I was ready to teach. There are ways to attract people to teaching without “dumbing down” the training. States can also offer loan forgiveness and other incentives to attract teachers to urban schools. States need to attract people that seek a career in teaching, not a short term gig.
Few TFA stay for three years. Most stay for two and are gone.
and we seldom get to see the statistics connected to a sad number of kids who don’t even make it through their first year
Is my understanding correct that this $18-$20k per teacher is in addition to the entry-level salary paid by the district? Yikes! According to online stats for 2013-2017, TX hired an ave of 42k new teachers a year – so the $ currently going into TFA pocket for 2-yr temps is only bumping new hires by 1%. What if they established a competition for a state scholarship: $18-$20k off senior yr tuition to highly-qualified certified new teachers entering pubsch contracts, payable upon completion of 2 yrs employment? That might raise entry into the field by 1%/yr.
Ever wondered why some people are such critiques of Teach for America? What’s so bad about a group that recruits bright, eager young Ivy League graduates to teach in some of our country’s most challenging school systems? Isn’t TfA just the educational equivalent of the Peace Corps? Why is that a bad thing?
“Gary Rubenstein reports that the state of Texas pays Teach for America $5.5 million a year for 400 recruits.
This is a sweet deal for TFA but a bad deal for Texas taxpayers.
He writes:
”TFA provides the state with a report that makes it seem like they are doing a lot with this money, but considering that they recruit about 400 corps members into Texas and only 85% of them even finish their two year commitment, this is a big waste of money. This is about $15,000 per recruit, and that doesn’t include whatever finders fees the districts themselves pay.”
That’s $5.5 million of state tax dollars that goes directly to TfA, and not towards teachers in the state’s classrooms. For “teachers” who, by design, generally don’t stay for longer than 2 years. And whose only “background” in education before entering the classroom, where they will work with kids who would really benefit from stability and consistency, was a 5-week summer “boot camp” run by other similarly-trained former TfA recruits.
No wonder Betsy DeVos loves Teach for America: it’s basically a Ponzi Scheme, just like AMWAY. The only difference is that Teach for America uses our tax dollars.
TFA is another gimmick, quick fix, floated by clueless politicians. It has morphed into a money making behemoth. Young people are catching on to the exploitative aspects of the program. Plus, the job market is better for young people today. It remains as a lobbying group that buys political influence to secure cash filled contracts for TFA.
I just don’t think TFA should have allowed themselves to become completely captured by the “ed reform movement”, which is a very specific (and ideological) set of ideas grounded in “market based solutions”.
If they want to be federally funded they should represent a whole spectrum of ideas about education, and they don’t.
Why are we publicly funding the exact same agenda as that promoted by Walton or Gates or Zuckerberg? It’s an echo chamber. Ed reform already created a privately funded echo chamber. We need a publicly funded one too? Why is the public paying for this? We’re paying for a pipeline of ed reformers, who then fan out across the country and promote the very specific policies ed reformers agree with? Walton and Gates should fund it themselves.
It’s actually compounded by the fact that they all do their ed reform internship in public schools, so not only are we paying for the “movement” at the federal level, we’re also paying for it at the local level.
At the very least there should be two or more federally funded groups that place teachers. TFA can be the ed reform group and other groups could have a different outlook, NOT based upon Jeb Bush’s education agenda.
As it is we only get one set of ideas and one approach, the approach ed reform endorses. They’re the only people who get funding.
It’s amusing because this is the OPPOSITE of “market based”. They fund and offer only one product to the public- the ed reform “market based” agenda. There’s never any questioning of the basic tenets, in fact, they present it as the ONLY possible approach. Anyone who veers is immediately labeled “protecting the status quo” and given a selfish motive.
It’s amazing to watch if one reads ed reformers. In the last 5 years they went from “public education advocates” to people who all promote Betsy DeVos’ really radical position that any publicly-funded entity is now “public”, by decree of Betsy DeVos.
If you’re in a movement that redefines commonly accepted definitions of WORDS with no discussion or debate you should probably question that movement and ask yourself how you got to the point where you have to write a new dictionary to promote your agenda to the public.
DeVos points to Goldwater as the “father” of ed reform. Goldwater never tried to flim flam the public into believing private schools are public schools by changing the definition of the word “public” in this ludicrous way. He was less radical than that.
How did they end up so far out? None of them object to this? We’ll all just start referring to private entities as “public” now? Do they see any problems down the road with this new definition? Can I apply it outside of ed reform? What happens if I do?