Archives for category: Teach for America
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NC Loses Another NBCT Teacher

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2014 //
22

Governor Pat McCrory and the Legislature in North Carolina are doing their best to get rid of the state’s’s star teachers, and they are succeeding.

The state is losing large numbers of experienced teachers, because of low salaries. Teachers’ salaries have been flat for six years and are now 46th in the nation.

This National Board Certified Teacher quit, and she wrote a letter to the governor to explain why.

A 13-year veteran, Melissa Taylor wrote:

“To Whom It May Concern,

It is with great sadness that I submit my written notification of resignation from my teaching position with Wake County Public School Systems effective 3/14/14. I have found it more and more difficult to pay my bills every month and continue to fall further and further into debt, not to mention the feeling of absolute disrespect that I feel every time a new “expectation” is mandated for our classrooms while all of our resources are being taken away. I had no choice but to search for a job that will allow me to provide for my family and to pay back the thousands of dollars in college loans that I took to be a teacher. I find the condition of our education system in NC to be heartbreaking. It seems that our leaders and law makers have completely forgotten what is the most important thing here, the kids! We are failing our students, our teachers and our future. Please accept this letter as my official resignation from Wake County Public Schools.

Sincerely,

Melissa Taylor, M.Ed, NBCT”

Do you think Governor McCrory cares? Or will he gladly full her job with a TFA who will leave before vesting for a pension?

Categories North Carolina, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Jersey Jazzman Dissents from Cami Anderson’s Paean to Herself

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2014 //
29

In a post called “This Is You Brain on TFA,” Jersey Jazzman scrutinizes an article written by Cami Anderson about her moral courage.

He writes:

“I often get the sense that something happens to the brains of people who do their two years or less at Teach For America and then, rather than continue to teach, go on to “stay in education” as “leaders.” Maybe their self-granted halos are a little too tight.”

Cami Anderson is the superintendent of Newark, appointed by Chris Christie. Her “One Newark” plan will lead to the layoff of hundreds of veteran teachers, most of whom will likely be black. They are likely to be replaced by TFA, whose friends at Goldman Sachs are building new housing for them called “Teachers’ Village” so that the young TFA teachers will have good housing in Newark and live with their peers.

Jersey Jazzman wonders describes what Anderson has done in Newark:

“Apparently, the following acts are exemplars of moral courage:

“Requesting that the state overturn a recent tenure law that was negotiated in good faith by the Newark Teachers Union — a law that seems to be working out well across the rest of the state.

“Implementing a school restructuring plan that disproportionately targets teachers of color, even though there is scant little evidence that plan will do a thing to help student achievement.

“Walking out on a mother because you, and you alone, have decided what is and is not appropriate speech for people who are advocating for their children.

“Suspending principals for daring to exercise their first amendment rights.

“Throwing PTO presidents out of schools and suspending staff because you don’t like what they say on the phone when they’re in the bathroom.

“Reneging on teacher compensation deals that were suspicious to begin with.

“Taking a bow at the biggest speech of the year for your boss, who has said explicitly he does not care about the opinions of those citizens of Newark who dare to disagree with him.

“According to them both, not heeding the summons of the chair of the state’s most important legislative committee on schools, and not answering the emails of the elected representative of your school board.

“All of these acts are so selfless, so noble, so righteous indeed that they deserve a public self-lauding — one where the author can tell us all about her lonely, arduous crusade at her extremely elite college to get more money for her crew team so she could fly to her meets rather than drive.”

To follow the links, read the post:

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/03/this-is-your-brain-on-tfa.html#sthash.3ooqJtld.dpuf

Categories New Jersey, Teach for America

College Student: How TFA Used Me and Disappointed Me

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2014 //
24

Emma Gulley is a student at one of America’s finest colleges, Bryn Mawr.

She was intrigued by the mystique of Teach for America, and she agreed to represent TFA on campus.

But the more she worked for them, the more she realized that she was not fulfilling her dream of “giving back” and “social justice,” but servicing a powerful and ambitious organization.

This is the story of her disillusionment. It appeared on Gary Rubinstein’s blog.

She writes:

“I was introduced to TFA as a college freshman, I interned for them for two years, and, had they had it “their way,” I would have interned for them for another year before teaching for two years and then being hired as a recruitment manager. The cycle from recruited to recruiter would be complete. I do feel that I was briefly inducted into a cult, and escaped to tell the tale, which is more than I can say for any other CCC I have ever met.”

Categories Teach for America

EduShyster: Newly Released Documents Show Links Between Charters and TFA

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2014 //
13

EduShyster and co-author Chad Sommer reveal the contents of newly released documents that show the close relationship between Teach for America and charters (90% of which are non-union).

Sommer is an alum of TFA, class of 2011

TFA are inexperienced and inexpensive. They are an essential part of the charter business model.

They write:

Emails sent by the Broad Foundation, a leading advocate of market-based education reform and charter expansion, and acquired through a freedom of information request, reveal that many charter management organizations consider TFA presence in a region a necessary prerequisite for opening new schools. According to the documents, charter management organizations including Rocketship, KIPP, Noble, LEARN and Uncommon Schools all indicated that a supply of TFA teachers was a general pre-condition for expanding into a new region. The emails, which detail the Broad Foundation’s failed efforts to lure high-performing charter operators to Detroit, were released as part of a trove of thousands of documents requested as part of an investigation into Michigan’s embattled Education Achievement Authority.

Greetings from the charter state
In New Jersey, where controversial charter expansion plans have been unveiled in Newark and Camden, TFA is likely to play a key role in providing *local talent* to staff new schools. Cami Anderson’s One Newark education reform plan is predicated on 40% of Newark public schools becoming privately managed charter schools by the 2016-2017 school year. Meanwhile in Camden, yet another TFA-alum-turned-state-appointed-superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, has begun introducing local residents to the charter operators that will soon be *turning around* their public schools, but without naming the schools to be turned around. [Note: effective in the fall of 2014, TFA corps members in Newark, Camden and Trenton will all be managed under a single entity: TFA New Jersey].

The handover of public schools to private management would not be possible without the availability of the reserve army of eager and unquestioning TFA, who are willing to work long hours and won’t stay around long enough to ask for a pension.

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Teach for America

Peter Greene Knocks the Highly Qualified Teacher Talk Outta the Park

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
63

Peter Greene has a ball with the U.S. Department of Education’s latest fantasy plan: Every child has a civil right to a “highly qualified teacher.”

Who is a “highly qualified teacher”? Any teacher who can raise test scores or anyone who belongs to Teach for America and leaves before the third year of test scores are reported.

It is all super but here is the laugh-out-loud deconstruction of Duncan-style logic:

“Discussion of teaching as a civil right often circles back around to the assertion that poor students have more lousy teachers than non-poor students. This assertion rests primarily on a model of circular reasoning. Follow along.

“A) Teachers are judged low-performing because their students score poorly on tests.

“B) Students low test scores are explained by the fact that they have low-performing teachers.

“Or, framed another way, this argument defines a low-quality teacher as any teacher whose students don’t do well on standardized tests. The assumption is that teachers are the only single solitary explanation for student standardized test scores. Nothing else affects those scores. Only teacher behavior explains the low scores. That’s it.

“Ergo, the best runners are runners who run down hills. Runners who are running uphill are slow runners, and must be replaced by those good runners– the ones we find running downhill. Or, the wettest dogs are the ones who are out in the rain, while the driest ones are the ones indoors. So if we take the indoor dogs outside, we will have drier dogs in the yard. While it rains.

“As long as we define low-quality teachers as those who teach low-achieving students (who we know will mostly be the children of poor folk), low-achieving students will always be taught by low-quality teachers. It’s the perfect education crisis, one that can never, ever be solved.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. Department of Education

Edushyster: When the Excellence Brigade Came To Minneapolis

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
43

On February 6, Michelle Rhee preferred to speak to the Minneapolis business leadership instead of debating me.

But fortunately, I got a first-hand report from someone who attended the event and explained who spoke and what they said.

Rhee, as is her custom, advised the audience that the path to excellence begins with eliminating tenure or due process for all teachers. That way, they can be fired immediately, for any reason, with no hearing. I wondered if anyone in the audience asked for examples of states or districts that have no due process for teachers and have achieved outstanding results.

There was, of course, a lot of talk about data, data, data. Big data will solve all problems since children are interchangeable widgets.

The last speaker, Kati Haycock, warned that low-income students were assigned far too many inexperienced teachers. The reporter wondered if she was talking about TFA, which is a dominant force in Minneapolis.

Categories Minnesota, Rhee, Michelle, Teach for America, Teacher Tenure

#resistTFA Tops Twitter Trend

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2014 //
15

The student-led movement to defend the teaching profession is off to a fast start:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contacts:

Stephanie Rivera
Rutgers University
1.732.485.0508 srrivera92@gmail.com

Hannah Nguyen
University of Southern California
1.408.644.9717 hbnguyen@usc.edu

#ResistTFA (Resist Teach For America) Hashtag Tops Twitter Trend List

February 18 – Chicago, IL – The hashtag, #ResistTFA (Resist Teach For America), topped the Twitter trend list in the United States beginning around 9pm EST on February 17, 2014, and remained there well into the night. For much of the evening, #ResistTFA was more popular on Twitter than “Olympics”, #JimmyFallon, and #TheTonightShow on the night of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show debut.

Students United for Public Education (SUPE), a grassroots, student-led organization founded by Stephanie Rivera, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education Student & Urban Teaching Fellow, and Hannah Nguyen, University of Southern California Student and SUPE Chapter Leader, organized the #ResistTFA “Twitter Chat” Monday evening as part of SUPE’s “Students Resisting Teach For America” national campaign. The goal of the event was to initiate a public debate around critical issues related to Teach For America’s impact on public education. Teach For America is a controversial nonprofit organization that places high-achieving college graduates in low-income school districts across the country to teach for a minimum of two years after receiving just five weeks of summer training. The timing of the #ResistTFA “Twitter Chat” was selected to coincide with Teach For America’s final 2014 application deadline.

Participants in the #ResistTFA “Twitter Chat” included students, former TFA participants, teachers and education professionals, parents, and concerned citizens. Topics of discussion primarily focused on:

· TFA’s five week training program deemed insufficient to prepare novice teachers to teach in some of America’s most challenging schools
· The lack of commitment TFA teachers have to the communities they are assigned to (the majority leave teaching within 2-3 years)
· The concern that TFA teachers may see their teaching experience as just a stepping stone to other careers
· TFA’s partnerships with privately managed charter schools and the impact that has on teachers unions and the teaching profession

A joint statement from SUPE co-founders Rivera and Nguyen asserts, “The overwhelming response to the #ResistTFA hashtag proves that there is an enormous concern among students, teachers, parents and citizens across the country regarding Teach For America’s disproportionate influence on public education. We are encouraged to see this massive outpouring on Twitter, and we look forward to continuing this important discussion about Teach For America on campuses across the country.”

About SUPE

Students United for Public Education (SUPE) evolved out of the work of college students involved in defending public education from its attackers. In particular, SUPE was founded to fill a void in the movement for public education — before SUPE, there was no national student organization devoted solely to this cause. Under the guise of “closing the achievement gap” and “school choice,” for-profit corporations and their political representatives have sought to privatize and sell off public education. SUPE understands that a profit motive cannot guarantee a good education. Instead, only a robust and well-supported public education system — along with the courage and will to directly confront problems of racial and economic inequality — can provide a quality education for all.

SUPE is a community based organization because we know that public schools are the heart of every community. In other words, SUPE understands that in order for our goals to be reached, we must work with, not only K-12 students, but parents, teachers, and community members as a whole. We are not here to tell any community or students what to do. Rather, we want to work with communities to find what their needs are, and have them lead the way in the struggle as we work as equals to organize the change they believe is best. Find out more about Students United for Public Education at: http://supe.k12newsnetwork.com.

About Students Resisting Teach For America

Students Resisting Teach For America is a national, student-led campaign by Students United For Public Education. Although TFA presents itself as a non-partisan, data-driven philanthropy, it is in fact a sophisticated and efficiently run political organization. We therefore oppose TFA as an organization on political grounds. We resist TFA because we believe that its approach to education is not only immediately harmful to the students, schools, and families that it affects, but also that it actively promotes a vision of both education and society more broadly that furthers inequality and degrades holistic learning. Find out more about Students Resisting Teach For America at: http://studentsresistingtfa.k12newsnetwork.com.

E-mail: SUPEcontact@gmail.com
Twitter: @supenational
Facebook: facebook.com/StudentsUnitedForPublicEducation
Website: http://supe.k12newsnetwork.com

Categories Resistance, Students, Teach for America

NC Governor McCrory Pledges Pay Raise for New Teachers Only

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
26

I participated in the major North Carolina Emerging Issues forum, where Governor Pat McCrory promised a pay increase to teachers in their first five years of teaching, but nothing for experienced teachers. Some veteran teachers will earn the same as teachers in thir fifth year. This went over like a dead balloon. Some observers speculated that it was a bonus for Teach for Merica, which won a $5-6 million contract fom the far-right McGrory administration at the same time that the nationally recognized North Carolina Teaching Fellows program was eliminated.

As salaries go up for new teachers, they stagnate for experienced teachers, who have not had a raise since 2008.

Before I spoke, I was preceded by a Teacher Town Hall, a panel of teachers who quit, mostly because they were disgusted by low pay, which seemed like disrespect. One teacher, who moved to Maryland, said she was earning $20,000 more.

NC has a major brain drain. Senior teachers are leaving because of low pay and lack of autonomy.

Apparently, that is what the Governor and legislature want. New teachers, low wages, high turnover. And that is called “reform.”

Categories North Carolina, Teach for America

Reader: Wendy Kopp on the Origins of TFA

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2014 //
62

The reader called “Democracy” posted this comment and a link to a YouTube video from 2012. I was unable to open the video, perhaps you can, but the comments on the video were still live.

The comment reads:

“Wendy Kopp: “there was a front page article in Fortune Magazine saying that corporate America was going to take on education reform. So, there were so many elements that made the timing for this perfect. The other things is, I say this all the time, my greatest asset was my inexperience, my complete naïveté. I was convinced that this both had to happen and could happen, that it had to start on a significant scale right from the start and really, no one was going to talk me out of this, like people would tell me how crazy this was and I would just not really hear it, and I think that was truly one of my biggest assets. The other thing is that I think this particular idea was one that just very quickly magnetized just thousands of people, really, who really identified with the values on which it was built and just thought it made sense, you know, from college students who did in fact, you know, 2500 recent college graduates, you know, in four months responded to a grassroots recruitment campaign which at the time was flyers under doors, you know? The folks in corporate America who were quoted in that article actually came through with seed grants and ultimately with significant support, so, you know, in the first year alone, corporations and foundations donated $2.5 million to make it possible, and there was tremendous support in the education community as well…”

“Uh-huh.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLWb_gDIFNk”

Categories Teach for America

Arizona: 25 Néw Charters to Open in Phoenix

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2014 //
13

Twenty-five new charter schools will open in Phoenix, targeting low-income Latino students. The project is funded mainly by the Walton Foundation. The schools will rely on Teach for America recruits.

The story in the NY Times notes that charter schools in Arizona get more public funding than public schools and charter schools get lower test scores.

This is privatization for the sake of privatization, taking advantage of a chance to break public education with low-wage workers and promises.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Teach for America, Walton Foundation
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