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Guest Blog: Rachel Levy Questions Why Richmond, VA, Hired TFA

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2013 //
21

Editor’s note:  While Diane is on a somewhat reduced blogging schedule, she has invited members of the Education Bloggers Network, a consortium of people who blog about education issues on the national, state or local level to contribute to her blog.  If you are a blogger who supports public education and would like to join the Education Bloggers Network, contact Jonathan Pelto Jonpelto@gmail.com.

This guest blog is written by Rachel Levy

With a vote of 5-2 (with two members absent) the Richmond School Board has decided to contract with Teach for Americato hire up to 30 teachers. I’ve already written in great detail about how the Teach for America model is problematic hereand then here and about why TFA is not right for the K-12 public school students of Virginia here, so I won’t repeat what I said there.

In the meantime, here is the reporting out of RPS leadership:

“It’s another tool in our recruitment tool box,” said Kristen Larson, 4th District, who voted in favor of the program during a School Board work session Monday. “We know we have a hard time hiring, and we need to look at all paths.”

In Richmond, they will fill as-yet-determined hard-to-staff positions. 

The school system typically has to fill 200 to 300 teacher positions a year, but in recent years it has had a hard time finding enough qualified candidates. This school year began with about three dozen positions open. Some have been filled by long-term substitutes while others remain unfilled.

“We have a lot of work to do in how we attract and retain teachers,” said School Board Chairman Jeffrey Bourne, 3rd District. “Teach for America is injecting some creativity and some new thinking into the hiring process. 

“I don’t think this is an ‘either/or’ situation. It’s an all of the above. There’s room here for different approaches.”

This is very disappointing, especially after the RPS School Board has seemed to be on the right track in so many other ways. They are trying to strengthen and diversify opportunities for Richmond children while staying under the umbrella of the public, democratic system and while involving leaders with expertise in education. Unfortunately, in this case a majority of the School Board has decided come out from under the umbrella and fork over $150,000 ($5,000 per corps member = $150,000) to TFA to hire inexperienced and untrained people to be teachers.

However, this is not surprising since TFA’s chief lobbyist in Richmond has been diligently working the RPS School Boardas well as Governor McDonnell’s administration for quite a while. Furthermore, at least one School Board member in particular has been eager to hire TFA. And I don’t live in Richmond proper and can’t say how many residents have protested the idea of having TFA corps members teaching in Richmond. Perhaps parents have stood up and asked for them.

I do question, however, the nature of their recruitment problem and the extent to which TFA can aid that or ameliorate their retention problems. RPS should really find out how and why they have a recruitment and retention problem first and then propose solutions. If your car is not working for some reason, bringing in a rental car for a few weeks is not going to fix it. If the School Board  wants help with retention, TFA is not the organization to turn to. TFA leadership states unabashedly that they are fine with their corps members only staying two or three years, that getting them exposure to challenging classrooms is step one on a ladder to working in the education reform industry. And according to TFA watchdog and former corps member Gary Rubinstein, about 10% of TFAers don’t even make it through their very first year of teaching.

There also have been questions raised about the process by which this decision has been made. According to RPS parent and Alliance for Progressive Values member Kirsten Gray, there was no public hearing on the matter, almost no effort to publicize the matter, no review of research on TFA’s effectiveness or lack thereof, and no evidence that there is a shortage and no positions open on the website. However also according to Gray, TFA was voted in with an amendment that caps the TFAers to 10% of the hard to staff schools and the amendment also requires the Richmond School Board to come up with a policy on how to use and place corps members. The way I see it, that’s at least one way to pilot TFA and to minimize potential damage at least. But two School Board members, Kristen Larson and Glen Sturtevant, voted against the amendment and perhaps they’ll work to remove it.

Finally, I also have my own personal experience to share which makes me question if there’s a true shortage and how TFA will help with RPS’s human resources issues. In Spring 2011, I was at a social function and I happened to be seated at the same table with a very high ranking RPS administrator. When I mentioned that I was a Social Studies and ESOL teacher and that I would be applying to area school systems including RPS, they told me the market was fairly tight and that my best bet, if anything, was to apply for an ESOL positions. I did, in fact, apply to RPS later that spring. However, I never heard anything back, not even to receive an e-mail confirming my application had been received, until September 19th when I got an e-mail letting me know they might need an ESOL teacher. Well, by then, I had already taken another job (and I had been contacted by two other area school systems with no shortages)–it was nearly a month after school had started. 

Now, I’m no super star of a teacher but I do have a B.A. from a highly-ranked liberal arts college, I have a master’s degree in education, and a current Virginia license. I am dual-certified including in a hard-to-staff area, I have strong references, and several years of teaching experience, including five in ESOL in Virginia. I wonder how many other people with qualifications such as mine have applied to RPS in recent years. The problem there is not lack of “creativity” or lack of qualified applicants; it’s lack of competence, disorder, and a lack of, um, hiring. TFA’s presence won’t change that. 

Those concerned about the impending contract between TFA and RPS should ask for information and for more transparency about the contracting process. They should also ask that citizens get the same access to public officials that TFA has had. They should also ask for a hearing where evidence both of the shortage and rationale behind hiring TFA would be presented. Finally, they should sign this petition which states opposition RPS’s contracting with TFA (and make sure you read the comments there, too). 

This blog has been cross-posted from: http://allthingsedu.blogspot.com/2013/11/tfa-comes-to-rva.html

Categories Teach for America TFA, Virginia

Surgeons United Who Care for America?

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2013 //
22

Charles Parrish of Wayne State University submitted the following proposal:

 

 

Surgeons United who Care for America (SUCA*)

 

This is to announce the establishment of a new approach to surgery in the United States: Surgeons for America (SUCA). Following in the high-heeled footprints of Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp, we will employ the model of Teach for America (TFA). That model involves the recruiting bright young graduates of our best colleges and universities, providing them with 5 or 6 weeks of training, and then sending them out to provide high-value surgical operations for patients at low cost. They will replace older surgeons who have become set in their ways and have lost the ignorant, enthusiastic arrogance of youth. We prefer to recruit young people with bachelor degrees in the sciences or business, but we will consider candidates from the humanities on a case-by-case basis. Our particular concern in the selection process for candidates from the humanities is whether they have, or can quickly develop, a callous sense of indifference to patient pain and outcomes.

 

Part of both our 5 and 6 week courses in surgery, is a one-week course in the finances of Charter Surgery Urgent Care Clinics. All our trainees learn how to do such things as purchase a building through a newly formed for-profit firm and then to lease it back to the Charter Surgery Urgent Care Clinic, which is of course as 501(c) 3 non-profit organization. The SUCA surgeons should be officers of both the for-profit and non-profit organization in order to maximize their income and get the maximum tax advantages. All materials for use by the clinic (furniture, tables, computer, stirrups for gynecological exams, operating instruments, etc.) can be leased or bought outright from the for-profit firm.

 

As a small concession to experience (of which we are usually contemptuous), there will be a different between the training in the two tracks. Those who enroll in the 5-week program will be only qualified to perform certain simpler operations (vasectomies, D&Cs, appendix, Gall bladder and similar organ removals, skin and other simple cancer operations, penile and breast implants, etc.). Those who go through the 6-week course will be qualified for all operations, from brain cancer to hangnails. Those in the 5-week course will use the textbook Surgery for Dummies. The 6-week course will use Advanced Surgery for Dummies.

 

After three years as a Surgeon for America, a SUCA graduate will be encouraged to move on into their life career with warm memories of their youthful experience as a surgeon and with a dandy new citation in their curriculum vitae. We do not want these young surgeons to become stale (as so many of the older, experienced surgeons they are replacing are). Many of these young surgeons will go into hedge fund management or other Wall Street professions. Their experience as a surgeon trained to develop moral ambiguity and indifference to the to the pain they inflict through their novice approach to surgical procedures prepares them particularly for such professions.

 

SUCA was initiated by a grant from the Gates Foundation from funds freed up when Bill finally grew bored with funding charter schools and getting no results and being excoriated by Diane Ravich.

 

*Pronounced “Suck-A”, as in: “You are a suckaa.”

 

 

Categories Humor, Teach for America TFA

Julian Vasquez Heilig on TFA’s Rise to Power

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2013 //
8

Julian Vasquez Heilig has conducted peer-reviewed research on TFA over several years.

He is astonished that it has been converted into a political power machine, which makes it even more powerful.

Follow the money as TFA expands its base.

Categories Teach for America TFA

John Wilson: Top Ten Reasons Not to Contract with TFA

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2013 //
40

John Wilson explains on his blog on Education Week why states and districts should NOT contract with Teach for America.

He writes:

“Lately, I have been reading numbers of articles about Teach For America (TFA) written by former participants in the program as well as by researchers and investigative reporters. It appears that there is general consensus that TFA is not the answer to teacher shortages, closing achievement gaps, or eliminating poverty in this country. Most of the writers agree that the program is using public schools and poor children to develop a network of new leaders who will advance a corporate reform agenda. Great harm has been done in school districts and states where these new TFA leaders have emerged. Who bears the greatest portion of responsibility for what is happening?”

The young people are idealistic and eager to be of service to children and society. But recently there has been a startling number of admissions by former TFA that they were woefully unprepared for the challenges of teaching by their five weeks of training. Nonetheless, through their skillful networking, Congress dubbed them “highly qualified,” so these inexperienced newcomers could be placed in the classrooms of the nation’s neediest children. This serves the expansionist goals of the organization, but does a terrible disservice to the children, who actually need Highly Qualified Teachers, not newcomers.

Not only are they not “highly qualified teachers,” but the orgaization’s repeated claim that newcomers with little training are even better than experienced professionals weakens the very idea of professionalism.

Who would go to a doctor or lawyer or engineer who had “trained” for only five weeks

Categories Teach for America TFA

Sandra Korn, Harvard ’14, Says No to TFA

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
13

Sandra Korn, class of 2014 at Harvard, was invited to join TFA. She said no. She explains why here.

“For one, I am far from ready to enter a classroom on my own. Indeed, in my experience Harvard students have increasingly acknowledged that TFA drastically underprepares its recruits for the reality of teaching. But more importantly, TFA is not only sending young, idealistic, and inexperienced college grads into schools in neighborhoods different from where they’re from — it’s also working to destroy the American public education system. As a hopeful future teacher, that is not something I could ever conscionably put my name behind.”

Not only are young college graduates unprepared to teach, she writes, but they are being used to take jobs away from experienced teachers.

TFA’s association with privatization and standardized testing, she writes, is wrong. “In doing so, TFA is working directly against the interests of teachers, students, and communities alike. Neoliberal school reform is the true “educational injustice” here.”

Categories Teach for America TFA

As Poverty Grows, the Claims of “School Reform” Fade

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
34

Remember all the times that “reformers” like Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp, and Joel Klein have said that the answer to poverty is to “fix” schools first? Remember their claims that school reform (more testing, more charters, more inexperienced teachers, larger classes, more technology) would vanquish poverty? For the past decade, our society has followed their advice, pouring billions into the pockets of the testing industry, consultants, and technology companies, as well as Teach for America, the over-hyped charter industry, and the multi-billion search for a surefire metric to evaluate teachers.

But what if they are wrong? What if all those billions were wasted on their pet projects, ambitions, and hunches, while child poverty kept growing?

The latest study, reported by Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post, shows a staggering increase in child poverty across the nation. The majority of public school students in the South and the West now qualify for free or reduced price lunch. By federal standards, that means they are poor.

The United States has a greater proportion of children living in poverty than any other advanced nation in the world. We are #1 in child poverty. This is shameful.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked on the phenomenon of “feeding the horses to feed the sparrows.” In this case, the horses are the educational industrial complex. They are gobbling up federal, state, and local funding while children and families go hungry, lacking the medical care, economic security, and essential services they need. Instead of helping their families to become self-sufficient, we are fattening the testing industry. Instead of assuring that their schools have the guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, and librarians the children need, our states are stripping their schools to the bare walls. Instead of supplying the arts and physical education that children need to nourish body and soul, we let them eat tests.

Every dollar that fattens the educational industrial complex–not only the testing industry and the inexperienced, ill-trained Teach for America but the corporations now collecting hundreds of millions of dollars to tell schools what to do–is a dollar diverted from what should be done now to address directly the pressing needs of our nation’s most vulnerable children, whose numbers continue to escalate, demonstrating the utter futility and self-serving nature of what is currently and deceptively called “reform.”

Once these futile programs have collapsed, once they have been exposed as hollow (though lucrative) gestures, we will look back with sorrow at the lives wasted, the billions squandered, the incalculable damage to our children and our society.

Someday we will say, as we should be saying now, that we cannot tolerate the loss of so many young lives. We cannot continue to blame teachers, principals, and schools for our collective abandonment of so many children. We cannot allow, and should no longer permit, the income inequality that protects the billionaires while neglecting the growth of a massive underclass. The age of the Robber Barons has returned. Good for them, but bad, very bad, for America.

Categories Poverty, Students, Teach for America TFA, Testing

Schneider on DC IMPACT Study: Already Obsolete

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2013 //
41

Despite the glowing hyperbole in the media, Mercedes Schneider says there is nothing new in the results. The study is dated, there is missing data, the effects of the cheating scandal remain unknown, and the investigation of the cheating was turned over to an accounting firm with no experience in investigating cheating. Mercedes is not impressed.

Categories Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations

TFA Scores Big Win in Federal Debt Deal

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2013 //
27

One of the provisions of No Child Left Behind was a requirement that the neediest children would have “highly qualified teachers.” Most people would interpret that language to mean that poor kids would get teachers who are well-prepared and experienced.

But through its political connections on Capitol Hill, Teach for America managed to get a special exemption carved out for their corps members who have only five weeks of training. They too are “highly qualified.” When I met Senator Tom Harkin, the key member of the Senate Education committee, one of his top staff members was an alum of TFA. It seems that TFA has developed its lobbyists on Congressional staffs like Harkin’s.

As Valerie Strauss writes here, the new budget deal slipped in innocuous language that once again declared the inexperienced, ill-trained members of TFA to be “highly qualified.”

Meanwhile Julian Vasquez Heilig also noted that TFA was a big winner in the budget deal. And he points out: “Interesting fact for the day? Did you know that Pre-K is 1412% more effective than Teach For America?”

Categories Teach for America TFA

Professor: Do Not Write Recommendation Letters for TFA

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2013 //
30

This professor urges her colleagues not to write letters of recommendation for TFA. In this post, she explains why.

Ironically, she is a TFA alum, yet she thinks that TFA has become part of the neoliberal attack on the public sector.

She writes to her colleagues in higher education:

“I encourage each of you to stand with me in refusing to write letters of recommendation for students who are applying to TFA. With this collective action, we can begin to undo some of the damage on the millions of children whose lives are harmed not only by the never-ending cycle of first- and second-year teachers that now populates disadvantaged schools, but also by the militarized, corporate, and data-obsessed approach to education that this army of under-trained, inexperienced teachers enables. Equally importantly, we can communicate to our college students how they will be negatively impacted and possibly even psychologically damaged by this system. Our collective action might eventually cause TFA to have to rethink its insistence that an army of naive and un-trained recent college graduates can form the solution to education inequities in this country.”

There is much, much more about how these idealistic young people are used and misled. Read it.

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Indianapolis: Ground Zero for the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2013 //
12

Rod Ellcessor of the Indiana Education Association raises a question: what kind of “new Democrat” wants to eliminate unions and public schools? He writes:

“Diane, unfortunately, we are besieged by the Mind Trust in Indianapolis. Bill Gates’ money is one of the primary sources for the Mind Trust which allows TFA to be placed in the Schools in Indy. As the Director of the Indianapolis Education Association, we are fighting the war with the right wing agenda and the super majorities in our Legislature. As well, our Tea Party Governor is no better. The goal of the Mind Trust is to collapse our Indianapolis Public Schools. The Director of the Mind Trust is David Harris who headed the Charter Schools for the former Indy Mayor Bart Peterson, a “New Democrat.” We have had horrible results with the TFA teachers. In fact, IPS administration came to us not knowing what to do due to their dismal results and discipline. The TFA’s barely last two years and DO NOT join the Union. Indiana has to be ground zero with all of the Charter schools and unrestricted vouchers. As well, we have had our collective bargaining rights diminished to a point that we just meet and confer. Clearly, if we do not follow the advice of Robert Reich and get involved there will be nothing left of Public Education. Thank you for your national leadership and the latest book, “Reign of Error.” I am recommending it to everyone I know and make contact with.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Indiana, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Unions
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