Archives for category: Teach for America
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Julian Vasquez Heilig: This Post Contains CENSORED Content!

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2016 //
18

Last week, I began posting the series of critical podcasts about Teach for America created by Julian Vasquez Heilig and Jameson Brewer, which they called “Truth for America.”

 

To my surprise, I began to hear from readers that the posts had been blocked on YouTube. I stopped posting the podcasts and let my friend Julian know that they were blocked.

 

What I did not realize was there was a pattern of cyber hacking directed at these podcasts when they were posted on Julian’s blog, “Cloaking Inequity.”

 

I knew nothing of this background. Julian Vasquez Heilig explains here the curious attacks on his podcasts and the cyberattacks that have repeatedly caused them to be blocked on YouTube.

 

After negotiations that involved a lawyer on the board of the Network of Public Education, Bertis Downs, YouTube has given assurances that the podcasts are no longer blocked.

 

Thus, I will now post the Truth for America podcasts as I originally planned to do: one a day, beginning with the next post.

 

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Teach for America

TFA Facing Hard Times

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2016 //
18

In a post recently, this blog broke the news that Teach for America was retrenching, laying off staff, eliminating the diversity department, and cutting high-level administrators.

 

The reason: recruitments are down. The leadership says they suffer from competition with an improved economy, and why teach when you can land a high paying job in the private sector? The fact is that TFA is getting a lot of criticism, especially from its alumni. A number of them have gone public, complaining that they were unprepared for their assignments or that they saw TFA as a union-busting corporation.

 

TFA appeals to youthful idealism, but what is idealistic about union-busting? What is idealistic about offering to teach needy children when you are ill-prepared? Can you “save” them when you don’t know what you are doing?

Categories Teach for America

PBS: Advice for White Teachers Who Teach in the ‘Hood

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2016 //
40

Kenya Downs interviews Professor Christopher Emdin of Teachers College, Columbia University, about his new book, called “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too.” 

 

Downs writes:

 

“There’s a teacher right now in urban America who’s going to teach for exactly two years and he’s going to leave believing that these young people can’t be saved,” says Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “So he’s going to find another career as a lawyer, get a job in the Department of Education or start a charter school network, all based on a notion about these urban youth that is flawed. And we’re going to end up in the same cycle of dysfunction that we have right now. Something’s got to give.”

 

Emdin, who is also the university’s associate director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education, has had enough of what he calls a pervasive narrative in urban education: a savior complex that gives mostly white teachers in minority and urban communities a false sense of saving kids.

 

“The narrative itself, it exotic-izes youth and positions them as automatically broken,” he says. “It falsely positions the teacher, oftentimes a white teacher, as hero.”

 

He criticizes the “white hero teacher” concept as an archaic approach that sets up teachers to fail and further marginalizes poor and minority children in urban centers. In “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too,” his new book released this month, Emdin draws parallels between current urban educational models and Native American schools of the past that measured success by how well students adapted to forced assimilation. Instead, he calls for a new approach to urban education that trains teachers to value the unique realities of minority children, incorporating their culture into classroom instruction. I talked with him about the book and why he says the stakes are too high to continue with the status quo.

 

Emdin says:

 

I think framing this hero teacher narrative, particularly for folks who are not from these communities, is problematic. The model of a hero going to save this savage other is a piece of a narrative that we can trace back to colonialism; it isn’t just relegated to teaching and learning. It’s a historical narrative and that’s why it still exists because, in many ways, it is part of the bones of America. It is part of the structure of this country. And unless we come to grips with the fact that even in our collective American history that’s problematic, we’re going to keep reinforcing it. Not only are we setting the kids up to fail and the educators up to fail, but most importantly, we are creating a societal model that positions young people as unable to be saved.

 

I always ask my teachers why do they want to teach and I can tell by their responses how closely the white savior narrative is imbued in who they are or who they want to be. I always say, if you’re coming into a place to save somebody then you’ve already lost because young people don’t need saving. They have brilliance, it’s just on their own terms. Once we get the narrative shifted then every teacher can be effective, including white folks who teach in the hood.

 

Downs asks “What are the risks of continuing urban education as is?”

 

Emdin replies:

 

The repercussions are around us every day from criminal justice to engagement with the political process, to higher incarceration rates and low graduation rates. The outcomes are right in our faces today. I’m not absolving communities from blame or parents from blame. But we know that schools that have more zero tolerance policies, youth are more likely to get involved with the criminal justice system. We know that schools that have these hyper rigorous approaches to pedagogy, youth are less likely to take advanced placement classes. So the place where the magic should happen is inside the classroom.

 

It’s not a tale of doom and gloom. I’m simply saying this is why it’s bad but there’s a way forward. And the way forward doesn’t cost a million dollars! It doesn’t require you to give an iPad to every kid in the school district or a $3 million grant. It’s free! Teaching differently is free. Going into the communities and finding out how to do things better is free, man! It’s not an issue of finance or an issue of wealth. It’s an issue of identifying that what we’ve been doing before just ain’t working.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Race, Students, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Dennis Ian Explains TFA: Do You Get the Joke?

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2016 //
18

Our reader Dennis Ian gives his analysis of the role of Teach for America. TFA is an April Fool’s joke on American education. It claims that its inexperienced and idealistic recruits can transform lives and provide an excellent education in only two years of teaching. It claims that its five weeks of training in summer camp prepare its recruits to “perform” even better than experienced teachers. It perpetuates the myth that test scores are the most important outcome of schooling. It sneers at mentions of poverty, since those who are concerned about poverty are allegedly making “excuses.” It is a huge corporate entity with annual revenues in excess of $300 million, whose executives are paid six figure salaries, as befits executives of a major corporation. It gives the political and corporate leaders of our society the illusory belief that amateurs are better than veterans if the former went to an Ivy League or top-tier college. All of this is a trick played on the children and teachers of America, for the benefit of TFA’s staff. We have yet to see any school district where TFA has closed the achievement gap among different groups of children. In her last book, TFA’s founder Wendy Kopp pointed to New York City, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. as models for TFA success. But the achievement gaps have not closed in any of those districts, nor should anyone consider them models for American education.

 

 

Dennis Ian writes:

 

 

Teach for America … little more than camp counselors without the pine trees on their shirts.

 

 

Imagine for a moment the instant promotion of butchers to surgeons … or deck builders to bridge engineers. Imagine Cub Scout troop leaders as military generals … or menu makers as the next classic authors.

 

 

There’s something so odd about teaching … and it’s seldom mentioned. Everyone thinks they can teach. Everyone.

 

 

Just because you taught your child to knot his sneakers in record time doesn’t make you the next Mr. Chips. Everyone is so seduced by Hollywood and tv-land that they actually think they could sail right into a classroom and every kid would sing the theme song “To Sir, with Love”. And the world would cry because of their greatness.

 

 

Like any job, teaching is layered with misconceptions. Everyone fantasizes about professional baseball players … swatting home runs and earning millions for making the highlight reels. No one mentions the family separation, the travel fatigue, roadie food, a different bed every few days, autograph hounds, packing and unpacking, missing family stuff, separation from wives and children … and then the usual redundancy of any job. All we see is the glamour.

 

 

That’s true for teaching, too. Everyone seems to see that “To Sir, With Love” guy winning over the thuggery class and becoming a revered legend overnight. Or that Mr. Chips who seems to sweat wisdom … because he’s so over-supplied with it. If that were the case, I would have hung in the position until I was a hundred. But it’s not.

 

 

Teaching is lots of stuff few imagine … and lots of hours even fewer acknowledge. It’s not a job you get very good at very quickly either … even with the best preparation. It’s not all knowledge either … it’s technique and personality and polishing a persona and perfecting a delivery … as well as knowing your subject inside out … and keeping current in the ever changing field.

 

 

It’s about intuition. And listening to that intuition. It’s about love … all sorts of love.

 

 

There’s easy love …for those kids that just joy you day-in-and-day-out. They’re great students, great kids … with great personalities and great everything.

 

 

Then there’s that hard love … for the kid with the green snot and the girl with the matted hair … and unpleasant aroma. Or for the boy who’s an accomplished bully at age 13 … and thinks this is his lot in life. Then there’s the broken child … who seems already to have quit life. And the loud, annoying sort … who’s probably masking a world of hurt. What about the invisibles? … the kids who practice invisibility because their daily ambition is to go unrecognized and un-included … for whatever dark reason. Prying them out of their darkness can take months … if it ever really happens.

 

 

There’s lots more to describe, but it’s unnecessary. What is necessary is to imagine engaging all of these kids in the right way day after day … and then seeing to it that they make educational progress as well. Making sure they’re prepared for the next level … the next challenges. Oh … and you lug all of this stuff around in your head and your heart … all the time.

 

 

And then, just to make this all even more interesting, weave in the mundane that actually captures most of your time … never-ending grading that snatches away your Sundays, faculty and department meetings, parent confabs, planning, gathering things you need and resources you want. Colleague exchanges and innovative thinking. Blend in some school politics and the usual work-place agita … and maybe some deep intrigue at times. Oh, and don’t forget your family … those folks you bump into when you’re half dressed. They want a piece of you, too.

 

 

I’m certain that five week preparation period offered by the Teach for America leadership is gonna arm those greenhorn teachers to the max.

 

 

But here’s the REALLY UGLY underbelly of Teach for America … and the ill-prepared idealists they let loose on lots of youngsters: the schools that take them on are almost always the poorest of the poor … and the children most in need of real teachers … with real preparation … ready to change lives and manage all that such an effort entails.

 

 

Teach for America is a feel-good disaster. It does nothing for the students or the profession except perpetuate the myth that anyone can teach.

 

 

Denis Ian

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein Reports on TFA’s 25th Anniversary Bash

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2016 //
10

Gary Rubinstein was among the earliest members of Teach for America. He taught in Houston in the early 1990s and remained active as a trainer and mentor for many years. But five years ago, at the 20th anniversary, something snapped and he lost the faith. He started a blog and turned into a critic, some would say a nemesis, because he knew the organization and its star players.

 

Despite te his reputation as a critic, Gary decided to attend the 25th anniversary party. He wanted to see what was happening.

 

He found a large change in the rhetoric. Five years ago, the tone was arrogant, teacher-bashing, and union-bashing. This year, the talk was collaboration, even a smidgeon of humility.

 

He couldn’t tell if the new line was real or fake.

 

Follow his journey as he interacts with the faded stars of yesterday: Kevin Huffman, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and others. The Madame Tussaud’s of school reform. The boulevard of broken dreams.

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America

Mercedes Schneider on TFA’s Internal Troubles

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2016 //
9

As reported earlier here, Teach for America–the corporate teacher recruitment program–is having internal problems that it won’t admit in public. Heads are rolling. The diversity department was eliminated. Yet public relations for a major corporation like TFA require an offensive strategy. Mercedes Schneider has studied the PR strategy and describes it here. She reviews a report by Bellwether Partners (where Secretary of Education John King’s wife works), advising TFA on its image problems. Its biggest PR problem, it seems, is the TFA alumni who criticize the organization for its arrogance, its indifference to replacing experienced teachers, its inflated claims of success, and its constant self-promotion. They have figured out that no matter how many TFA are recruited, they cannot end the poverty that their students suffer, nor do they close the achievement gaps rooted in poverty.

 

A funny story that Mercedes uncovered:

 

According to the report, TFA just didn’t see hefty resistance coming on social media.

 

That’s just foolish. TFA is a teacher temp agency that then tries to place its former temps in strategic and powerful positions in order to advocate for test-score-driven ed reform. Of course many people will not approve, and that disapproval could be strongly expressed on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

 

Perhaps in its arrogance, TFA did not believe anyone could effectively confront them in the media. But it happened. And, as the Bellwether report notes, the comedy continues. Consider this excerpt:

 

“The volume and vitriol of the attacks caught Teach For America off guard. …The advent of social media exacerbated these challenges. While some of Teach For America’s critics, such as education historian Diane Ravitch, were highly adept in using social media to amplify their messages, Teach For America was slow to adopt a social media strategy. “We had lost touch with how this younger group of people were engaging with the world,” notes [former TFA staffer] Aimee Eubanks Davis.”

 

“This younger group of people”?? Diane Ravitch is 77 years old.

 

Makes one wonder just how far out of touch TFA is with reality beyond itself.

 

It seems TFA just believed that younger people would not read Ravitch. But apparently, they do. (Ironic how she blew the whistle on the current TFA downsizing.) Whereas TFA might label her criticism as “vitriol,” it seems that they recognize that their recruits consider her as being among the “reputable voices” criticizing TFA’s temp-teacher lifeblood.

 

 

Schneider’s post is a long read, but well worth your time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Teach for America

EduShyster: TFA’s Perplexing Diversity Dilemma

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2016 //
25

In this post, EduShyster interviews Teach for America alumna-turned-academic Terrenda White. She joined TFA in the early 2000s. CNN followed her around during her first year of teaching, presumably to show how successful this new thing called TFA was. Now she studies TFA’s diversity problem. While TFA claims to have increased the diversity of those within its ranks, it also causes a decrease in the number of teachers of color by displacing them.

 

White says:

 

While TFA may be improving their diversity numbers, that improvement has coincided with a drastic decline in the number of teachers of color, and Black teachers in particular, in the very cities where TFA has expanded. I don’t see them making a connection between their own diversity goals and the hits that teachers of color have taken as a result of policies to which TFA is connected: school closures where teachers of color disproportionately work, charter school expansion, teacher layoffs as schools are turned around. We have to talk about whether and how those policies have benefited TFA to expand in a way that they’re not ready to publicly acknowledge….

 

What happened in New Orleans, for example, is a microcosm of this larger issue where you have a blunt policy that we know resulted in the displacement of teachers of color, followed by TFA’s expansion in that region. I’ve never heard TFA talk about or address that issue. Or take Chicago, where the number of Black teachers has been cut in half as schools have been closed or turned around. In the lawsuits that teachers filed against the Chicago Board of Education, they used a lot of social science research and tracked that if a school was low performing and was located on the north or the west side and had a higher percentage of white teachers, that school was less likely to be closed. As the teachers pointed out, this wasn’t just about closing low-performing schools, but closing low-performing schools in communities of color, and particularly those schools that had a higher percentage of teachers of color. What bothers me is that we have a national rhetoric about wanting diversity when at the same time we’re actually manufacturing the lack of diversity in the way in which we craft our policies. And we mete them out in a racially discriminatory way. So in many ways we’re creating the problem we say we want to fix….

 

For TFA, the managerialism and the technocratic approach excludes a serious discussion about these larger, systemic problems: poverty, segregation and unequal funding. When I was a TFA corps member, I really believed that if I just had perfect lesson plans, then these larger problems wouldn’t matter. The technocratic approach is just about test scores and making them go up, and it’s disconnected from these larger questions. How do we involve parents, and do they have any say in what a good school is? Are they a part of these turnaround models? Do they get any kind of voice? I think the whole community-based model of schooling is very much being lost to a top-down managerial approach.

 

This is another fascinating interview from EduShyster that introduces us to a young scholar who will have a large impact on the future of teaching and on how TFA is perceived by the public.

Categories Education Reform, Poverty, Race, Teach for America

Insider: Big Trouble Inside TFA

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2016 //
39

I received the following article from a current high-level administrative employee at Teach for America. The organization is undergoing a major shake-up. He wanted us to know what was happening behind the scenes. He must remain anonymous, for obvious reasons.

 

 

***

March 17, 2016

Turmoil at Teach For America: Rounds of layoffs, leadership exodus imminent

 

Teach For America (TFA) is laying off employees from its national and regional staff.

CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard announced on February 29 that 250 TFA staff positions will be eliminated, calling the cuts “painful” in an internal TFA employee webcast. She said 100 new positions will also be created, leaving the net job loss at 150.

 

Despite the flashy celebration at TFA’s 25th Anniversary Summit held in Washington D.C. last month, TFA did not meet its recruiting target for the second year in a row.

 

2015 was the first time in its history that TFA laid off employees, and now it’s happening again.

 

But something appears to be different this time around. It’s not just the rank and file staff employees who are getting the ax, like they did in Spring 2015. This year it goes all the way up to the C-suite.

 

Sources say several senior leaders are “voluntarily” resigning amid alleged rumors of mismanagement and questionable business practices by the nonprofit organization.

Notifications went out two weeks ago to the first round of laid-off employees.

 

Unlike last year’s layoffs, when impacted employees were given notice several months in advance, this year TFA accelerated the termination process by breaking it into two separate rounds of layoffs. Employees who were given notice this week will be released on a memorable date, April 15 (Tax Day).

 

A second round of layoff looms, and survivors of the first round may still have cause for concern. The first round is supposed to be “mostly” national staff while the second round is “mostly” regional staff.

 

Employees who are part of the second round of layoffs will be released at the end of the fiscal year 2016, on May 27.

 

In addition to the staff layoffs and job restructuring, Villanueva Beard told TFA employees that the Office of The Chief Diversity Officer (OCDO) will be eliminated in September. Despite TFA’s self-professed commitment to diversity (it’s one of the organization’s core values), the decision to eliminate the OCDO comes only months after the new chief diversity officer was announced on TeachForAmerica.org.

 

The chief marketing officer, along with the executive vice president of TFA’s Public Affairs Team are also allegedly “voluntarily” resigning, although that wasn’t shared in the webcast two weeks ago.

 

The exiting executive vice president, Massie Ritsch, is CEO Villanueva Beard’s right-hand man, and he’s well-liked by TFA employees. Prior to joining TFA in January 2015, this former senior member of the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) worked under ex-Education Secretary Arne Duncan for many years. He directed communications for the DoE, just as he’s been doing for Villanueva Beard at TFA.

The U.S. Department of Education has given TFA hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants since 2008. Government funding comprised 38% of TFA’s budget in 2015, totaling $69.7 million dollars that year alone, according to TFA’s 2015 annual report*.

 

 

*Note: scroll to bottom of the linked web page for actual report, which is a PDF.

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America

Katie Osgood: The Dangers of TFA Indoctrination

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
22

Katie Osgood teaches in Chicago. She has a wonderful blog, where she regularly posts common sense based on her experience and wisdom.

 

In this post, she says that Teach for America is not only a poor substitute for genuine teacher professional preparation, but is a dangerous indoctrination machine.

 

Case in point: A recent article by a kindergarten teacher who was very pleased that she had taught her students to love testing. As Ms. Katie read the article, she immediately guessed that the writer  must be TFA, and of course, she was right. (Be sure to read the comments!)

 

Let’s take an example. A few weeks back, there was a truly shocking commentary in our Chicago education magazine Catalyst Chicago that was titled How Bailey Reimer’s kindergartners came to love testing. Most educators who saw this piece were appalled. Look at the comments.

 

I know when I saw this piece, the very first thought I had was…she’s TFA. And lo and behold, she just completed her TFA stint. TFA’s influence on this young woman’s ideas were stark, obvious, undeniable. Now that indoctrination process is reinforced by other neoliberal organizations such as being placed in a charter school and then also being recruited into Teach Plus-a Gates funded faux teacher voice group. But that’s the thing with TFA, it’s often a one-two punch. TFA-in many areas-operates inside a nexus of neoliberal edreform ideology. TFAers are completely isolated from alternative view points even as they are beaten up by a ridiculously arduous summer training filled with unnecessary sleep deprivation and mental health harming stress. Then they are thrown-unprepared-into some of the most challenging workplaces in our country. There is quite literally no time to stop and think about the bigger picture and that is intentional.

 

When all you have ever heard is “testing data is necessary to teach”, then this statement makes sense:
“To get to a point where my students appreciate and understand testing, I had to first appreciate it myself. I love tests that give me relevant, timely information about how my students are doing, from how many letter names they know to how many words per minute they read.”
Suddenly, what “good teaching” is gets warped into the image of neoliberal ideology based on a bunch of “data-driven” drivel. Most teachers, especially veteran educators could never, ever say this line: “Of course, 5-year-olds don’t come to school automatically loving testing. As educators, it’s our job to build that appreciation and understanding.” No! No, it’s not. But we can see how it was TFA, combined with the charter school environment, that made this statement real for this teacher. This mindset is dangerous.

 

I believe there are number of reasons why this indoctrination process is so effective. 1) They use the time-tested method of breaking you down to build you up in the Bootcamp summer training. 2) The recruitment process onward is a series of indoctrination sessions. And perhaps most importantly 3) TFA’s claim of being the “best and brightest” means any other opposing viewpoint is immediately dismissed on the basis of not being TFA magic.

 

Right now stop and do a google search for “how to indoctrinate”. No seriously, do it. What pops up? Article after article describing how to lure folks into a group with promises and lies about the actual purpose of the organization, slowly strip down any autonomy or sense of self through boot camp like conditions, then carefully isolate and fill with desired ideas. This is exactly what TFA does. Exactly, like they copied the “indoctrination” playbook. Colleges of education don’t do this, unions don’t do this, but TFA uses the most blatantly cult-like process they can to get the desired effect.

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Teach for America

Why Randi Spoke at the TFA #25 Convention

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2016 //
71

Many readers were upset to learn that Randi Weingarten was speaking at the Teach for America 25th reunion at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C., last weekend.

 

Randi appeared on a panel with Howard Fuller, who advocates for charters and vouchers. Fuller founded the BAEO, the Black Alliance for Educational Options. He goes around the country promoting school choice to black leaders and communities. Many years ago, he was the superintendent in Milwaukee. When he became a choice advocate, he was funded by the rightwing Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and others.

 

Randi points out in her article that vouchers have been a failure in Milwaukee, but she wasn’t there to debate Fuller. She explains here why she decided to appear at the TFA event.

 

My purpose was not to debate Fuller; it was to have a conversation about a path forward, to end the ridiculous debate in reform circles that poverty and greater economic issues don’t matter, and to debunk the notion that individual teachers can do it all.

 

I caught some flack on Twitter and Facebook for even attending a TFA event. The AFT and TFA disagree on a number of fundamental issues regarding education. I believe that teacher preparation should reflect the complexity and importance of this work, and that a crash course simply doesn’t cut it — it’s not fair to corps members or their students. Further, I think that TFA’s model of inadequately prepared teachers and high turnover deprofessionalizes teaching by design. And it’s dead wrong when districts use austerity as the excuse to hire TFA recruits as replacements for experienced teachers.

 

Read on.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Milwaukee, School Choice, Teach for America, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »