Teach for America is very successful at fund-raising. It has a very impressive board of directors, chaired by Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and one-time Republican nominee for governor of California. Another board member is Tennessee billionaire Bill Haslam, who most recently was governor of that state and a strong proponent of vouchers. And Greg Penner, a member (by marriage) of the anti-union, pro-charter Walton family serves on the board.
ProPublica posted TFA’s 990 forms filed with the IRS, and you can see for yourself how very, very successful TFA is. It has assets of about $360 million. Its CEO is paid $451,807.
TFA is a very successful business.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TFA’s hierarchy- billionaires richly reward them for bankrupting Main Street.
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TFA is a destination for billionaire’s dark money. It enjoys non-profit status so billionaires get tax breaks for contributing. They largely function as lobbying organization that promotes privatization. Since lobbying is political, I wonder why TFA enjoys non-profit status.
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Presumably, Gates’ lobbying (the newly announced version) should receive scrutiny… venture profit opportunity OR social good philanthropy. They are not the same.
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ALEC has charitable status even though its prime activity is drafting legislation to get rid of government.
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TFA is not accountable.
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“If our billionaires aren’t paying their fair share of federal taxes, who is? You are –either in increased taxes or higher fees, tuition payments, tolls, state and local taxes, or in declining public services.”
When billionaires use tax aversion strategies, the loss of funds get passed to the rest of us. In other words we are helping subsidize TFA so they can undermine our public schools. https://inequality.org/great-divide/5-tax-secrets-americas-billionaires/
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Jack. Be patient.
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I can’t get over how crazy it is that public schools act as a training ground for people who then go on to work AGAINST public schools.
You’re welcome! Glad we could provide our students and schools for the benefit of the “movement”!
And we pay them for it! We pay for it in federal taxes and then we pay them again when they take temp jobs in our schools. There is simply no serious consideration of the value or worth of existing public schools in ed reform. They’re seen as a springboard to promote the other schools and privatized systems ed reformers prefer. They are always, always dead last. Our students exist only as potential charter or private school students- a potential “market”.
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Big red flags in the 990 form:
There are 21 independent contractors who are paid over $100,000. Deloitte Consulting LLP was paid almost $2 MILLION dollars in a single year. For what?
Only the top 5 independent contractors are listed, with the 5th highest earning over $400,000. That means that as much as $400,000 each was paid to another 16 unidentified “independent consultants”.
I notice that founder Wendy Kopp still received over $136,000 in a single year. For what? She claims she worked 10 hours/week for the organization.
Also, it is beyond normal that a non-profit is insisting that so many of its top officials work anywhere from 60 – 65 hours each and every week. It is hard to believe that those employees work from 8am to 8pm straight each and every week PLUS another 5 hours on the weekend. I wonder who audits these financial forms and certifies them as absolutely accurate under penalty of perjury. It couldn’t be anyone connected with Deloitte, right?
Teachers are often doing prep work at home for their job, but TFA would never allow that a union teacher works 65 hours a week because of the work they do at home to prepare for their teaching job. And yet it is very odd that the CEO insist that she is working 12 hours each day 5 days a week plus 5 hours on weekends and should be recognized and financially rewarded for this.
Or does TFA have some special agreement so that their top executives can claim that the work they do when they are not at their office (home with their kids?) can be billed to a grant so their billionaires donors can get their tax deductions?
Does TFA count all the work that teachers do grading at home as their work? Or do only the TFA high staff get to claim they work 65 hours a day when I very much doubt that they are in TFA offices every day from 8am to 8pm (or from 9am to 9pm) plus another 5 hours each and every weekend.
The hypocrisy of the TFA top executives is truly astonishing. Shame on them. They claim they work 12 hours a day and 5 hours on weekend but insist that greedy teachers who make 25% of what TFA executives earn should only count the hours that they are actually in the school building and all the things they do outside the office to prepare for their job is not allowed to be counted.
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