Tell me what you know about Teach for America

[proud2BlibKansan]

I will admit I have a negative reaction to any program like this that assumes ANYONE can teach and all they need is a week or so of training in the summer and then you can put them in a classroom.

But I do like the idea of recruiting new teachers. I am proud enough of my profession to appreciate efforts to bring in new fresh faces with more energy than us old farts have.

My district signed a contract with Teach for America. They hired 50 teachers this year and another 50 next year. They each commit to 2 years.

In the meantime, it was announced last week that due to budget cuts, at least 100 teachers will be laid off. That would be mostly first and second year teachers, all graduates of 4 year teacher education programs. The Teach for America teachers get to stay because of the contract Teach for America has with the district.

Strikes me as pretty unfair. We have several beginning teachers in our building who will be laid off. They are all very good teachers and a couple of them are outstanding.

So what do you other teachers think?

[Merlot]

1. Ok, I know absolutly nothing about teachers, Teach for America, or teaching

But reading this, is sounds like lower paid, less educated persons were brought in, and better educated (union?) persons were let go.

Is this a union issue? Is it discriminatory? It doesn't sound good to me.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Yes that is about right

I don't understand why my union is not up in arms over this. :shrug:

[21st century fox]

5. From what I understand, the TFA teachers get the same pay

as a teacher w/a BA in Education.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. That's still around? I have no personal...

experience with the program, but back when it started I saw what looked like a bunch of arrogant kids saying they were brighter and better than experienced teachers so they would save our education system. I'm not going to get into whether or not teacher's programs deserve the bad rap I've heard they have, but I suspect they aren't as bad as Teach for America made them out to be, and just because some kid made the dean's list in math or english doesn't necessarily make a good teacher.

What it looks like we're seeing is temp workers displacing full-time workers-- not so much different from what's been happening in other industries, but here for no good reason except to keep Teach for America in business.

[LWolf]

4. My take:

TFA, and anything like it, is a calculated weapon against teaching. It demeans teaching into something that anyone can do, thus further eroding it as a profession, further eroding teachers' voices in education policy, and furthering the efforts to privatize.

Keeping TFA "teachers" while laying off REAL teachers is simply concrete evidence for "my take" as shared above.

I hope your union, and your teachers and your community, take a strong stance in this instance.

Of course, the "community" has been encouraged to view teachers as overpaid and incompetent, and to suspect teachers' unions, so you have some work cut out for you there.

[21st century fox]

7. As I have stated in a previous post, I am not an educator

so I cannot speak to specifics. However, I believe that these programs were created at the beginning of the new millinium, when there wasn't the glut of teaching jobs that seems to now be the case. Many of these jobs are in inner city environs, which are hard to fill and have some incompetent teachers. Also, I have been following a program in Chicago spearheaded by Arnie Duncan called Renaisannce 2010, where they turn around failing schools. One of the facets of this method is that the entire teaching staff is replaced with new blood. Some of these fast-track teachers are very successful in other areas and may be able to be natural teachers in hard-to-staff subjects like math and science.

[LWolf]

8. If you want people to teach in any particular region,

invite them in by offering infrastructure, funding, and support at least equal to what they can find elsewhere. That's pretty simple.

The reality, the invisible elephant in the room, is that every social problem suffered in "inner city" environments would be relieved by abolishing poverty.

Not everyone sees Duncan's tenure in Chicago as positive. Here are a few snips and links; bolding is mine:

<snip>

So it is important to describe the agenda in which Duncan is complicit. Two powerful, interconnected forces drive education policy in the city: 1) Mayor Daley, who was given official authority over CPS by the Illinois State Legislature in 1995 and who appoints the CEO and the Board of Education, and 2) powerful financial and corporate interests, particularly the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago whose reports and direct intervention shape current policy. As Pauline documented in her book, High Stakes Education, the mayor and Civic Committee are operating from a larger blueprint to make Chicago a "world-class city" of global finance and business services, real estate development, and tourism, and education is part of this plan. Quality schools (and attractive housing) are essential to draw high-paid, creative workers for business and finance. Schools are also anchors in gentrifying communities and signals to investors of the market potential of new development sites. For Chicago's working-class and low-income communities, particularly those of color, this has meant gentrification and displacement, including of thousands of public housing residents. As in other U.S. cities, Chicago has also handed over public services (public housing, schools, public infrastructure) to the market and privatized them, and public education has been in the forefront. Although not the architect, Duncan has shown himself to be the central messenger, manager, and staunch defender of corporate involvement in, and privatization of, public schools, closing schools in low-income neighborhoods of color with little community input, limiting local democratic control, undermining the teachers union, and promoting competitive merit pay for teachers..................................................Let's separate myth from reality. The myth is that Chicago has created a new, innovative way to improve education—Renaissance 2010. The heroes in this myth are Mayor Daley, who introduced Renaissance 2010 in June 2004 at a Commercial Club event, and Arne Duncan, who oversaw its implementation and was its chief spokesperson. Renaissance 2010 was touted as the future of education in Chicago, with a plan to close 60 schools and open 100 new, state-of-the-art, 21st-century schools. These schools would be either small, charter, or contract schools. Renaissance 2010 was (and is) marketed as an opportunity to bring in new partners with creative approaches to education. That's the myth.

There is a completely different reality on the ground. For affected communities who have longed for change, Renaissance 2010 has been traumatic, largely ineffective, and destabilizing to communities owed a significant "education debt" (to quote Gloria Ladson-Billings) due to decades of being underserved.
.......................................................

In a democratic society, instruments of engagement allow citizen voice in decision-making processes. In Chicago education, that instrument is Local School Councils (LSCs). The most powerful parent, community, and teacher, local-school, decision-making structures in the country, LSCs' responsibilities include hiring principals, monitoring budgets, and developing school improvement plans. With support, LSCs have demonstrated that they are effective models of local school decision-making. A 2005 Designs for Change study of 144 of the most successful neighborhood schools in Chicago serving primarily low-income students listed effective LSCs as a key reason for success. Despite this and other evidence documenting LSC effectiveness, CPS, under Duncan, has worked tirelessly to weaken LSCs by whittling away at their authority.

Much more from this one article at:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_03/arne233.shtml

Here's another source less than impressed with Duncan's tenure in Chicago:

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=122

<snip>

But the Board of Education’s own website shows that the claim is false. "Turnaround" is the corporate phrase that Duncan is using this year to describe the reconstitution process, since research has shown across the USA that reconstitution has failed to improve inner city schools. During the 2007-2008 school year, the Chicago Board of Education established an "Office of School Turnaround" under a $150,000 per year "Chief Turnaround Officer."

The Alice in Wonderland Facts Used for "Turnaround"

But the main reason for forcing "turnaround" on the four elementary schools is false.

None of them send the majority of their students into the supposedly "failing" high schools.

[21st century fox]

9. I hear you...I know a female teacher (Black, too, which is even more rare)

who was a victim of this 2010 venture. CPS has a majority minority population of students (only little more than 10% are White), so Black teachers are obviously needed. She had been teaching for 8 years, too. It's a shame and I also believe that, like NCLB, it threatens the teacher's union. But the POTUS named Duncan for the Dept. of Ed, and he has also advocated for merit pay, so we cannot just look at one culprit.

[LWolf]

10. It's never been any secret that Obama is not a friend to

public education or educators. He said so himself; when asked in a FOX interview, what were some things he thought republicans had better ideas on than Democrats, he trotted out public education, and admitted that his ideas "get him in trouble with teachers."

An accurate statement, to say the least, lol.

The appointment of Duncan is logical, then, and just provides evidence for my assertion that he is NOT the friend of education or educators.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Oh shit

My district has a 'turnaround plan' they just wrote because the state made them do it.

[LWolf]

13. Yes.

That's the way it works.

I'm sorry. :(

[21st century fox]

6. I am not yet a teacher, but I looked into several programs which are similar

to this. I have heard some conflicting views, including "real" teachers who resent the presence of these fast-track ones. I finally decided (after not getting into a couple of programs I really wanted), to just get my Master's. I want to be really prepared before getting thrown in a lion's den.

[ulysses]

11. I worked with a couple of TFA guys at my old school.

They worked their asses off. I have the same reservations about TFA that you do - the idea seems to be that teaching is something you can do for a few years before you start your career - but I came into public ed through an alternative cert program, too. :)

[Iris]

14. Some recruiters sell it by saying how good it looks on a law school application?

[LuckyLib]

15. Exactly. Padding your law school application on the backs of poor Black and Latino kids in urban

schools. There is a very high rate of attrition with these folks -- two years (some leave after a year)and out, contributing to the very instability in these schools that adversely affects student learning. Many who join at hit between the eyes with the difficult of teaching: just because you yourself sat in classroom for many years and "apprenticed" in that setting as a learner does not mean you have the temperament or skill or drive to work in the complex world of schools. One friend of mine calls it "Teach for Fuckin' America" -- the shortcut rather than recruiting outstanding candidates from good teacher colleges and paying them well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Good analysis

:)