The title isn’t right. In this post, Mercedes Schneider refers to a post by Gary Rubinstein, in which Gary speculated whether Teach for America might evolve into a different kind of organization, something closer to its original idea of placing young teachers where there were shortages, rather than boasting that they are better than anyone else, including experienced teachers.

Mercedes says the likelihood of TFA abandoning its currently lucrative role is as likely as donkeys flying.

She writes:

Trying to extract “reform” from TFA is not possible. TFA is corporate reform, and TFA without corporate reform leaves only legitimately trained, career-intended, non-ladder-climbing, dedicated teachers.

Ironically, trying to conceal the inadequacy of her product is also leading to the undoing of TFA. However, one issue is clear about Wendy Kopp: She operates from a corporate mindset. She intends to make TFA ever-bigger, ever more influential.

She then reviews TFA’s 990 forms, which every nonprofit files with the IRS every year.

The goal of TFA became one of advancing the privatization of public education, of offering market-model-indoctrinated, rotating staffing to not only traditional districts, but to market-model charter schools– and of supplanting traditional public education administration with TFA alums zealous about advancing the TFA brand. I live in a state– Louisiana– in which a former TFAer-gone-TFA-exec was politically placed into the position of state superintendent– John White– and he and one TFA executive-as-state board-member– Kira Orange-Jones– have made it their business to feed TFA a million-dollar contract that includes paying TFA a temp fee of up to $9,000 per TFA recruit.

In addition, she reports on some hefty salaries.

It is a good business. But it is not at all good for the teaching profession since it promotes the idea that teachers don’t need professional preparation. Anyone with a high SAT score can do it. For two years anyway. Except that it is not true. And continuing to push this claim encourages legislatures to lower standards for entry into teaching. And encourages Congress to insert amendments that interns (TFA) can be counted as “highly qualified teachers.”

Why did Matt Kramer step down as co-director of Teach for Anerica? He was making $400,000 a year. On the other hand, he had never taught.

Gary Rubinstein, TFA 1991, is one of the closest watchers of the organization. He makes some educated guesses. He predicts that the other co-director won’t be around long.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Wendy Kopp returns to salvage the organization, which pulls in a cool $300 million a year.

Gary Rubinstein, a former member of Teach for America, now a career math teacher in Stuyvesant High School in New York City, has become one of the most formidable critics of TFA, albeit a critical friend.

Here he describes a new book, Teach for America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out, which consists of chapters by disillusioned TFA, including himself, describing their experiences.

He was stunned to learn that TFA responded to the book, before its release, by saying that “only” 20 people contributed chapters, out of the 50,000 satisfied TFA alumni.

I guess you might say the same about any critical book: Rachel Carson was only one person out of millions of satisfied users of DDT. Ralph Nader was only one person complaining about unsafe automobiles. Jane Jacobs was only one person griping about what high-rise projects were doing to her city. Jacob Riis was only one person complaining about the living conditions of poor people. On and on.

We should all wait for a book written by at least 30,000 people.

Patricia Schaeffer, a consultant to philanthropies, reviews Teach for America’s 25 years of promises and concludes that they have not been fulfilled. To draw thousands of bright young people into the classroom for a commitment of only two years, having only five weeks training, is not sufficient to close the achievement gap or to change American education in any significant way.

The many studies of TFA’s “effectiveness” conflict about whether its recruits raise scores more or less than other new teachers. No one, however, has ever demonstrated that TFA has closed the achievement gap anywhere. Or ever will.

Schaeffer writes:

“America has a love-hate relationship with Teach for America. What began as the dream of one idealistic undergraduate in the late 80s is now, some 26 years later, an internationally recognized behemoth in the education reform movement, with more than $200 million (yes, you read that correctly) in investments as of last year.

“A recent book, edited by T. Jameson Brewer and Kathleen deMarrais, titled ‘Teach for America Counter-Narratives’ is the latest to put the organization under scrutiny. In an article this week in the ‘Las Vegas Review-Journal,’ Washington Post columnist Esther J. Cepeda writes about the “explosive and jaw-dropping” stories written by 20 of TFA’s alumni, which she says “eviscerate the myth of TFA’s unmitigated success.” Her takeaway is that the book should be a cautionary tale to those studying the education reform movement. The stories reveal the smoke and mirrors (“money and great marketing,” in her words) that TFA uses to recruit the best and brightest while convincing their donors and other partners that they are moving the needle on outcomes.

“According to its most recent tax return, TFA has total assets of close to half a billion dollars and revenues of more than $330 million, of which about 90 percent comes from government grants and contributions from corporations, foundations and individuals. An organization of this size and stature has an obligation to its constituents to demonstrate its success, and TFA has accumulated years of research findings about its programming, expansion and scale-up efforts. Marty Levine and Ruth McCambridge asked on this site several weeks ago whether Teach for America’s results justify its pillar status.

“In 2013, Mathematica Policy Research concluded a federally-funded controlled study of TFA. Comparing TFA secondary math teachers across eight states with a control group of math teachers in the same schools, the study found that, on average, students in TFA classrooms gained the equivalent of an additional 2.6 months of school, as evidenced by end-of-year math assessments. However, two years later, a subsequent Mathematica evaluation was unable to replicate those results.

“While the later study concluded that TFA teachers in early primary grades produced roughly 1.3 months of extra reading gains, that good news was overshadowed by the more troubling evidence that an overwhelming majority of TFA staff (87 percent) reported that they did not plan to spend the rest of their career as a classroom teacher or, for that matter, in any education-related career.”