It Shouldn't Exist

Since there is NO teacher shortage anywhere in the country, TFA should not exist, let alone the federal government be involved with it in any way whatsoever.

There should be a moratorium on applicants to teacher education programs. When you have as many applicants chasing so few jobs as Seattle did five years ago, and things haven't changed at all, you don't NEED to be recruiting outside of teaching for teachers.

The big problem is with distribution of qualified teachers and licensure laws making it damned near impossible in some states for out-of-state teachers to become certified.

All TFA is comes down to union busting.

CCSD Teachers Are Screwed Again

It appears their "reformist" board has approved to hire 150 MORE Scabs for America "teachers" next year on top of the bunch already infesting the school district.

There was some opposition to the scheme, but you know what they say about how "money talks."

I fully expect TFA to start worming its way to northern Nevada to Washoe County School District.

If you are a teacher in Nevada--in fact, in just about any state in the union--do not make any long-term financial commitments. The economic elites are waging open warfare on anybody in the public sector because they want that cash cow in the public sector to further enrich themselves. TFA is actually unconstitutional because children in low-income areas are saddled with unqualified, inferior "teachers" who will only stay a couple of years after only five weeks of training while children in more affluent areas have fully certified, qualified teachers. The article, by the way, has some clever spin. Few of these TFA "teachers" stay as teachers but in "education" as privatizer hacks. One of the aims of Wendy Kopp's outfit is create administrators and think-tank types to peddle the privatizer line and kill the public system from within.

TFA was originally started as a way to find emergency-credentialed teachers in areas where there was a teacher "shortage." However, there is no need for this outfit today other than it is nothing but a scab operation. There is NO shortage of teachers today, and in fact there never has been a shortage of teachers. TFA is being used by the "reformers" to destroy unions (not that Nevada has any real teachers' unions), and to deskill the profession of teaching. Since public education is one of the foundations of American democracy, people should be worried to death about this.

The first thing that should be done nationally is to cut this organization off from AmeriCorps. That would get rid of a big supply of applicants, since most of them do it to get forgiveness on at least some of their student loans.

Shut TFA Down

There is no reason for it to exist--it is nothing but a parasitical organization designed to make its "investors" even more rich and at taxpayer expense.

People who have gone the route of going into teaching in midlife KNOW how treacherous it is given the rampant age discrimination that goes on in public education. People also have to realize that once they hit fifty especially, their health insurance premiums go way, way up, and that’s another incentive for districts to ditch you.

They will ditch you on the most bogus of allegations to save a few bucks. I have been there. Why deliberately become a temp only to be canned in a year or two when you can just stay in your perfectly stable job?

There is NO teacher shortage anywhere in the United States. TFA needs to be shut down.

We Always Knew Scabs for America Was Political

It's just that it has gotten more and more blatant over the years, and it is being helped with billionaire dollars:

TFA is now embedding select alumni in congressional offices and in high-ranking jobs in major school districts, including New York City and D.C. It’s providing start-up cash to alumni to launch “game-changing” advocacy groups and business ventures. Its political arm, meanwhile, is recruiting veteran tacticians to identify key levers of power in cities such as Houston — then help alumni seize them.

“We don’t have a choice” but to raise up more alumni as leaders, or “in 20 years, we’ll just wake up and find… we have made only incremental progress,” said Elisa Villanueva Beard, co-CEO of Teach for America. “We’ve got to be aggressive.”

That prospect alarms Arnold Fege, an advocate for low-income children. When TFA alumni gain political clout, they often push to expand TFA’s role in their communities, a cycle that has fueled TFA’s rapid growth in recent years.“ To have this financial juggernaut trying to place more people in positions of power… it’s a concern,” said Fege, president of Public Advocacy for Kids. “They’re a special interest. And their interest is in making sure of the survival of their organization.”

You can liken it to Stalinist infiltration.

This despite the fact the "reformers" are wrong about EVERYTHING regarding public education.

Glad to Read This

Good for this writer who refuses to write letters of recommendation for Scabs for America unless they are among the few who are education majors.

It goes to the simple issue of competence:

There is a movement rising in every city of this country that seeks true education reform—not the kind funded by billionaires, corporations, and hedge funds, and organized around their values. This movement consists of public school parents and students, veteran teachers, and ex-TFA corps members. It also consists of a national network of college students, such as those in Students United for Public Education, who talk about the damage TFA is inflicting on communities and public schools. These groups and others also acknowledge the relationship between the corporatization of higher education and the vast impact of corporate reform on our youngest and most needy children. It is these children who are harmed by the never-ending cycle of under-trained, uncertified, first- and second-year teachers that now populates disadvantaged schools, and by the data-obsessed approach to education that is enabled by these inexperienced teachers.

Every year, TFA installs thousands of unprepared 22-year-olds, the majority of whom are from economically and culturally privileged backgrounds, into disadvantaged public schools. They are given a class of their own after only five to six weeks of training and a scant number of hours co-teaching summer school (in a different city, frequently in a different subject, and with students in a different age group than the one they end up teaching in the fall). College and university faculty allow these well-meaning young people to become pawns in a massive game to deprofessionalize teaching. TFA may look good on their resumés and allow them to attain social capital for their bright futures in consulting firms, law schools, and graduate schools. But in exchange for this social capital, our students have to take part in essentially privatizing public schools.

Even if you go through a traditional education program, you are NEVER fully prepared for what lies ahead in a public school. It's very high stress, and especially if you work in the lower grades, you are sick a lot of the time (contrary to what some teachers have told me, you NEVER build up an immunity to these sicknesses). Worst of all is if you get stuck with a batshit crazy or an incompetent or ruthless principal who can make your life hell.

Going through a scab program is no training at all and an insult to the teaching profession.

What in the Hell Did She Expect?

This person was another one brainwashed by Scabs for America to think she was better than those stupid teachers who went through traditional education programs because their low SAT scores didn't qualify them for anything else in college. She was soon to find out she didn't know shit when she actually got thrown into a teaching job.

Hell, if you manage to avoid a batshit crazy principal and survive to even have a career in this field, you will find you NEVER become perfect at teaching; teaching, after all, is a lifelong skill. It's just that the longer you are in it, the better you get at it.

Just like any other job.

It's not something you are "born with," contrary to Scabs for America propaganda.

Children Get the Short End of the Stick

thanks to the growing cancer of Scabs for America being used in more charter schools and school districts in order to undermine public school teachers' jobs, pay, and benefits.

These temps are mostly lousy "teachers" because teachers can't become great until they have had many years in, if they are allowed to stay that long, and often teachers aren't allowed to stay in the field long unless they have family connections.

This cancer is really about affecting policy in the movement to destroy public education in the United States. They are training robots to infiltrate school district administration as well as being state and federal policymakers.

The organization is NOT needed given the massive glut of fully trained teachers nationwide, and it needs to be abolished.

Nationally, TFA’s mission has evolved from filling teacher shortages in underserved areas to hiring out recruits based on their teaching effectiveness (an endlessly debated subject) and building “a growing movement of leaders.” Its growth parallels its entrenchment in the movement to replace district schools with charter schools and peg teachers’ jobs to their students’ standardized test scores. Not only does it get tens of millions in funding from corporations and foundations that promote this style of reform, but its alumni are founders, leaders or board members of more than 40 charter, advocacy and training groups. In 2007, its partner 501(c)4, Leadership for Educational Equity, was formed to help fund and train alumni to enter political office and other positions of leadership; its resources and biggest names slant toward market-oriented reform.

Scandalous.

Get Rid of TFA

There is no reason for the outfit to exist except to rip off taxpayer money. There is no shortage of teachers anywhere in the country, and the whole idea of temporaries infiltrating "at-risk" schools is racist and classist.

One way to get rid of it is to pressure the federal government to no longer allow it to be part of the AmeriCorps program.


From the article:

The Chicago summit builds on the gamut of student, teacher, and community resistance to TFA-aligned reform, including recent, successful pushback against TFA itself. In May, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton vetoed $1.5 million in funding for the organization, citing TFA’s already-loaded coffers. Three weeks later, the state’s Board of Teaching voted to deny TFA a group-based licensing variance, an extra hurdle for corps members to be allowed to teach. In April, prominent alumni played a key role in getting the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to tighten the training requirements for teachers of English language learners—which will directly impact corps members.

You Bet It is Racist and Classist

Of course I am referring to that scam scab operation, Teach for America.

There's no proof that TFA's missionaries improve ghetto schools. The truth is it takes years to become a competent teacher. TFA's purpose is to change the teacher workforce to temps not connected to students, their families or communities as a prelude to privatization. The last thing a school privatizer wants is a school full of qualified, experienced teachers deeply connected to the communities they serve with a tradition of collective action (that's what a union -- a real union – is) and who know how to run the joint themselves.

In perspective, it was Teach For America that gave us Michelle Rhee, as well as the current DC schools chancellor Henderson, who used to be Rhee's boss at TFA.

Selectively sabotaging the education of black children, dispersing experienced workforces of organized black teachers connected to their communities sounds like an indisputably racist policy on its face. Chicago teachers sued in federal court on that point and won. Apparently Teach For America needs somebody to stamp the anti-racist ghetto passes of it missionary workforce as they pass through the ghetto, so they've put an “anti-racism” educator and trainer on retainer.

Etc.

If you want to watch the live stream of the George Zimmerman trial, it is here among many places.

I am very, very, very slowly trying to catch up on this trial. I am still two days' behind.

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I don't know if it is for naught, but many faculty and students at the University of Minnesota are up in arms over TFA.
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This is from three years ago, but it still holds true now and all over the country: A principal who simply doesn't like you can kill your career with any kind of "unsatisfactory" rating or put you on a "plan of assistance." I had one mentally unstable principal who wrote me up on a bunch of bullshit while having had a history of cheating on his wife and banging subordinates, and the last one didn't do anything about it but kicked me to the curb to cover her ass.

To this day, I have no work at all in any field in any kind of stable employment.

I am currently applying for a training program for people over 55, which at least would start getting me a regular income. I can't rely on substitute teaching to fill the bill.

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He's King Midas in reverse: Everything he touches turns to shit.

Temp for America Didn't Win This Time

The two million bucks Nevada's governor Brian Sandoval had earmarked for Teach for America will instead be used for the Millenium Scholarship fund.

There are already some TFAs in the Clark County School District, but that money would have increased the privatizer outfit's presence more.

Gardner added the governor agreed with Assembly lawmakers early Tuesday to dedicate the $2 million for the Millennium Scholarship fund instead of Teach for America, a nationwide program that trains and sends recent college graduates to teach in low-income schools.

Two other education bills passed the Legislature on Tuesday.

One would aim to reduce class sizes in K-12 schools and the other would set up a new oversight scheme for the state's charter schools. They both passed.

Too bad Oregon doesn't take note and put through a class-size reduction program.

There are primary classes locally that have 25 to 30 students, FAR more than they should have.

Scab for America is Coming to Nevada

thanks to Governor Sandoval wanting to waste taxpayer money on scab labor that is only to undermine what few protections teachers there even have.

The person writing the column is a member of the scab outfit that delights in trashing career educators while stealing taxpayer money in the process.

*--I should note TFA has been in Clark County for a number of years, but now it appears it will be polluting the state in a big way.

There Never HAS Been a "Teacher Shortage"

in the entire history of the United States, but in reality there was a maldistribution of teachers thanks to the patchwork of certification laws made worse by NCLB. There were gluts of teachers in states like Oregon while there were shortages of teachers in urban areas and in the southern United States. What "shortage" there appeared to be was entirely artificial. That is why the "mission" of Teach for America was faulty to begin with and nothing short of evil now.

Where in the hell did this Wendy Kopp come up with such a racist idea that kids from the inner cities shouldn't have fully certified, VETERAN teachers while those in the suburbs and wealthier districts should? What made this fool think that teaching was not a craft but it just "magically" happens to people who think that because they went to Ivy League schools they can "teach" kids without ANY preparation in knowing how to teach and employing classroom management? What made her think to begin with?

It was all about the bucks with her. For kids, it's a violation of their rights to equal education. TFA needs to be done away with.

TFA & HQ

While the court found TFAs not to be qualified under NCLB, current trainees made "highly qualified" through congressional action will be considered HQ. However, when June rolls around next year, these trainees will be consider not HQ absent congressional action.

Unless there are certified teachers already in TFA, and apparently the organization doesn't disqualify those with an education background, the program shortchanges at-risk students because they are not getting the best-qualified, most experienced teachers, teachers they really need.

Article:

The court proceeded to dismiss the Renee v. Duncan case, however, on the grounds that Congress passed a measure in December 2010 temporarily qualifying the country’s approximately 100,000 teachers-in-training in alternate route programs as “highly qualified” through the 2012-13 school year. The court found that there was no relief presently owed to plaintiffs but held the issue was not moot and that, absent further Congressional action, alternate route trainees must once again be deemed not “highly qualified” after June of next year.

The decision is an acknowledgment that the Department wrongly allowed teachers in training to be concentrated in poor and minority schools across the country for the eight years between the Act’s passage and the temporary measure in 2010. It also makes clear that next year, absent additional Congressional action, these less-than-fully-prepared teachers must again be fairly spread across classrooms and that parents must be notified when their children receive instruction from these teachers.

“We think it was premature for the court to dismiss the case since the controlling law will render the Department’s regulation unlawful again in just a little over a year,” said plaintiffs’ lead counsel John Affeldt of civil rights law firm and advocacy organization Public Advocates Inc.. “Nonetheless, it’s very important to have the courts acknowledge that the Department acted unlawfully in treating these underprepared teachers as if they were fully prepared. We look forward to enforcing this precedent next year and to using it to inform the policy discussions in Congress going forward.”

I think that barring wholesale privatization of public education, TFA will be illegal to have in the schools because equal opportunity and protection for students.

Temp for America

In no other field of endeavor are experience and preparation seen as negatives. Only teaching. Our privatizers have found a way to gut pensions and save on state budgets, and that is to hire people with utterly no background in education and who will not even stay in the field.

The Sham of Teach for America Part One

The Ongoing Sham of Teach for America Part Two

As If We Need Another Piece

telling us Temp for America is just a bunch of hooey, but unfortunately dangerous hooey for those kids subjected to being "taught" by Ivy League geniuses without a clue about pedagogy, child development, or much of anything else.

As mentioned before, TFA was originally set up as a way to provide alternatively-trained teaching candidates in school districts that had shortages; i.e., inner-city schools primarily.

No such need exists today for alternatively certified teachers. There are no shortages anywhere in the country but instead there are massive gluts of unemployed, fully-trained teachers. Newly minted and traditionally-trained teachers are competing in an increasingly tough market with RIF'd experienced teachers, experienced teachers who relocated to other areas in search of jobs, teachers who have spent years subbing at poverty pay in some hope they will be "noticed" by some idiot administrator and be given a chance for a regular job, wrongfully fired teachers, and teachers who are relatives of current staff members who most likely get the few jobs available. Why in the hell should even MORE teachers, let alone pseudo-teachers, be flooding the market?

The answer, of course, is money. TFAs "serve" two or three years if they can stand it at bottom-of-the-barrel pay, and they never get vested in pensions. This helps undercut morale for professional staff, who are increasingly pressured to get out to make room for the newbies, who in turn will never be vested in retirement. If the vets are not bought out, they are forced out or fired on bogus charges, like yours truly. Unlike other occupations where people get fired, being a fired teacher is catastrophic, especially if the teacher is over 50.

It's all about saving money on pensions, and it is fucking cynical to screw over kids to save money.

Meanwhile, the kids in at-risk schools, who tend to be minorities, get screwed out of qualified staff. Of course it should be absolutely illegal to hire unqualified teachers under civil rights laws.

From the piece:

As several commenters at HuffPo pointed out, the assertion that TFA teachers are better than either new teachers or veteran teachers doesn’t really pass muster at ground level either. Why aren’t parents in the "leafy suburban" school districts crying out for those awesome TFA teachers? Knowing that this is anecdotal evidence, and so considering it as such, I can’t help but point out that new teachers in my school, with all the traditionally mandated training, student teaching, and for the most part Master’s Degrees and considerable other relevant experience, take a pounding in their first few years. One of the main reasons is precisely that they are new, and this job is really hard, and getting a degree and licensure is just the beginning of learning how to do it. And kids and parents know it.

It is extremely difficult work. You are on a constant treadmill as a teacher. You NEED the summers off to decompress because it takes a toll. You become sick all the time, especially if you teach elementary level, and you get bitched at by administrators who think you should come to school no matter how terrible a shape you are in. After all, districts, as I learned, don't have to abide by FMLA or ADA. If you teach elementary, you spend hours and hours preparing lessons; if you teach secondary level, you spend hours and hours grading papers because the paper work is much greater in the upper grades; if you teach special ed, you are buried under both mountains of paperwork AND preparation to teach kids "individually" according to their IEPs. Worst of all are the supervisors, called principals or administrators in education. Insanity and idiocy seem to be the requirements these days for these nitwits or tyrants without a clue instead of them having been master teachers nearing the ends of their careers.

No newbie is EVER going to be as good as a veteran teacher. It is insane to believe otherwise.

Cheap for America

is found to be quite "profitable" for the New Orleans school district.

Remember, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan once said Katrina was the best thing for education "reform" efforts.

Best for whom, Arne? Dingbat Duncan later apologized, but it was too little, too late.

Same is true for New Orleans:

As with so much else that defines the post-Katrina school system, the group's ubiquity in New Orleans sets the city apart, but also places it squarely at the center of national debate over the future of the teaching profession. With its profile in Louisiana growing, the same questions that have dogged the group since its founding are echoing loudly around the state.

Do its members ever stick around past their two-year teaching commitment? Are they really prepared for the grinding challenges of an inner-city classroom? And what makes TFA alumni, with only two or three years teaching experience and no formal degree in education, fit for the most important education jobs in the state?

Of course these people are unqualified and many unfit for the teaching profession. But hey, who cares about a bunch of African American kids, as the "public" schools in NOLA are comprised mostly of minorities anyway?

Where in the hell are the court challenges against this program which is obviously racist in its implementation?

I Am Surprised

TFA hasn't been outlawed in urban school districts around the country because it does promote putting in unqualified "teachers" in classrooms where these students actually need experienced, older, qualified teachers.

You don't hear the TFA propagandists say we should have these pseudo-teachers in rich suburbs. Not a chance.

It's about the inequality of education services, and TFA promotes it with the notion "anybody" can teach.

The day people make the same claim for doctors and lawyers is the day I will listen to TFA.

News, Etc.

A former Temp for America "teacher" tells the truth about the program.

The philosophy underlying TFA is that any damned fool can get into a classroom and "teach" and not need preparation to go into classrooms. Experience is not necessary, especially when dealing with poor children.

Naturally this program should be found illegal because poor children are being denied their constitutional right to equal education opportunities. Putting ill-prepared and unqualified people in these classrooms--especially at a time when there are tens of thousands of fully certified teachers out of work--is wrong.
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Jose Ochoa got himself coldcocked by an armed rooster and it cost him his life.

Ochoa and Steve Irwin: Two birds of a feather.

Texas of All Places

is looking at whether Temp for America is really a good way of wasting precious taxpayer money.

As if there really should be any debate about it.  Waste all of this money so some private outfit can farm out temps pretending to be "teachers" for a couple of years, helping to screw over Title I kids even more by districts not allowing them the veteran, experienced (read expensive)  teachers they truly need.  Then, if these "teachers" can stand the first two years, they ditch these "careers" to do something less stressful and for a lot more money.

But TFA serves a purpose to the educrats and the "reformers" who want to bust the already weak and often useless unions by making teachers "at-will" employees when education is a completely different field than private business, and schools can't be run on business models.  Teachers are already terrified of losing their careers because most of them work under incompetents and sociopaths called "principals" who basically do whatever the fuck they want with the knowledge their "superiors" will back them to the hilt, including abusing the legal system at taxpayer expense.  The power imbalance and rigging of the legal system for school districts' benefit would only get worse under "reforms" like allowing temps to "teach,"  with districts knowing they can just throw teachers out after a couple of years.  It's all to save money on "expensive" teachers, some with even master's degrees, now despised by "reformers."  Teachers would never become vested in public employee retirement in their states and in some states even get screwed out of part of their Social Security.

TFA is a scam designed to suck more money out of hard-pressed states and school districts and further destroy a profession to the point it is just a piece of shit McDonald's job.