Mercedes Schneider writes here about a program in New Orleans to recruit new charter teachers. In the all-charter district, the teachers seem to be dropping like flies. Almost 40% of its teachers have less than three years experience.
The program at Xavier University issues a certification for life, but here is the catch: the certification is valid only in New Orleans!
On September 09, 2019, the Hechinger Report published an article entitled, “A New Teacher Vows to Help in a Classroom Full of Need: ‘Under the Right Conditions, They’d Be Stars.’”
The article features a teaching intern who is part of the Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency, an alternative teacher certification program specifically aimed at recruiting individuals who already hold a bachelors degree in another area to agree to teach three years beyond an initial “residency year” at an assigned New Orleans charter school in exchange for roughly $29K in residency-year financial assistance toward earning a masters degree in education.
From the site’s “about” page:
Who we are
The Residency is a first-of-its-kind partnership not only in New Orleans, but nationally.
- Partners. Xavier University of Louisiana, New Schools for New Orleans, and charter school networks across New Orleans. Our school partners for the 2019-20 school year include Arise Schools, Audubon Schools, Crescent City Schools, Elan Academy, FirstLine Schools, Foundation Preparatory Charter School, KIPP New Orleans Schools, Lake Forest Charter, Morris Jeff Community School, and ReNew Schools. We are continuing to add school partners for the upcoming school year and beyond.
And from the “what to expect” page:
Residency Year 1
The Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency merges the best of Xavier University of Louisiana’s teacher preparations practices with the work of five of New Orleans’ leading charter school networks. During the residency year, a cohort of 30 residents enroll as full-time graduate school students, while also apprentice teaching at schools in the NCFTR network. Residents attend graduate school classes as they work alongside a mentor teacher in a classroom throughout the week. They build confidence through practice and reflection, and over the course of the year, they gradually take on greater responsibility in the classroom.
Employment in Years 2-4
After year 1, the NCFTR team works with teachers and schools to ensure that the transition into year 2 is smooth. Residents who successfully complete the residency year move into classrooms of their own as full-time teachers of record. While working to complete their remaining Master’s Degree coursework, they apply the skills and knowledge they have built in order to take on the responsibilities of lead teaching. They continue to access the network of support that they have built with their residency year cohort.
…
Residents commit to teach for three consecutive years immediately following the residency year. After Year 1, Residents are highly likely to remain in the same school or CMO for their additional three-year commitment. Participants who leave a NCFTR partner school before their four-year commitment ends may be responsible for paying back a portion of funds received in their residency year.
My favorite line in the Hechinger Report article that Schneider cites is this one: Though it was just her first year of teaching, Molière, 49, was already an expert at motivating students, who raised their hands high in the air and vied for her attention, then beamed when they got it.
Presumably the teacher had begun work only a week or two ago (the start of the school year), but she was already an expert!
Only in New Orleans are teachers considered “experts” in this first few weeks on the job.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
With a cohort of 30 people in each year of the program, I wonder how many drop-outs there are, and how much money any dropout owes to the charter school if the leave-taking is in year 1, 2, 3, or 4.
The program is designed to make inbreeding of teachers the norm for charter schools, no independent judgment. Major support for each cohort comes peers who are amateurs not from experienced teachers. There is more here not disclosed, for example payments to the “mentor teachers” what happens to a chronically underperforming mentee, and whether any faculty who offer the graduate coursework are mentors or just online providers of course content.
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This scheme sounds like a program to entice black teachers back into the New Orleans schools. It also sounds like a scheme to deprofessionalize and undermine union membership among teachers in the state. It reminds me of an indentured servant stint since those in the program would be forced to remain for at least four years in order to go elsewhere in the state. These teachers would not have the same level of training as those that graduated from typical university programs. Perhaps the state figures it would produce a pipeline of minority teachers that will work for less money that would be likely placed in minority, majority districts in the state. The irony is that this city fired all its black teachers post Katrina, and now they realize that there is value in having teachers that look like many of the students. Overall, this plan sounds like a way to institutionalize separate and unequal treatment for minority teachers and students.
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She seems to be a compassionate person who is working in a system that doesn’t care whether or not children fail.
The average teacher used to have 15 years experience. Now beginners are ‘leaders’ and they work with class sizes of 30 children. Since these are poverty level children, the class sizes are too large.
“And even though state and local education officials agreed to provide federally required special-ed assessment and support to New Orleans students after a 2014 lawsuit, many needs are still unmet: By the GNOF report’s calculations, there are only enough resources in the city to support one-fifth of the students who need it.”
New Orleans is NOT a leader for education in any sense of the word. Real education takes money and experienced teachers.
And New Orleans’ new teachers have a high attrition rate — 28 percent, twice as high as other comparable cities and increasing steeply since 2010…Teachers often feel unprepared and burn out quickly,” the study says.
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No surprise that Reformers targeted New Orleans for their Residency pilot. The universities are cashing in on student data and what better way to access it then to use fly by night no-nothing residents who will happily support any ed tech or Ed assessment research funded by the reformers and pushed out by the universities, College Board / ACT style. Data is their gold mine!
This is the new model being worked out by reformers may use public funds in residence light areas, createing permanent residency housing on public school land (or gentry land in exhange for a benefit ). This housing will be filled by transient TFA’s and AmeriCorp non-educators who will push ed tech so the funders of TFA’s and Americorp can profit off their “good” deed$.
Look locally at you district’s Facilities and Finance committees. That is where the work is being done.
If you want to slow the rate of Ed Tech in the classrooms, look at your Special Ed committee. It might be stacked and used as the reason for putting more ed tech into gen ed.
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“Presumably the teacher had begun work only a week or two ago (the start of the school year), but she was already an expert!”
Teaching: any warm body can do it as long as there are scripted Common [sic] Core [sic] lessons and plenty of standardized test practice books!!!! Heck, perhaps this is the solution to our homeless problem!
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