gotsnowgotslush
skates like Eck
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2007
- Posts
- 25,720
Teach for America
Became an institution...
Teach for America" charges public school districts $3,000 to $5,000 per instructor per year. Teachers don't get that money, business owners do
Districts pay thousands in fees to TFA for each corps member in addition to their salaries—at the expense of the existing teacher workforce. Chicago, for example, is closing 48 schools and laying off 850 teachers and staff while welcoming 350 (Teach for America) corps members.”
“Teach For America claims that it does not come in and take positions from incumbent members. That is a lie. They are doing it in Boston…Their arrogance is appalling.” Cersonsky and blogger EduSchyster have meticulously documented TFA’s connections to dozens of charter schools as well as education reform advocacy organizations that focus on standardized testing and privatization instead of grassroots community involvement and student voices. In doing so, TFA is working directly against the interests of teachers, students, and communities alike.
Not a pretty sight
Chicago, where I participated in TFA, the organization maintains its own extremely close partnerships with privately managed charter schools. Their relationships are so close, in fact, that earlier this year, after the Chicago Public School systemclosed forty-nine traditional, unionized public schools, claiming the schools were “underutilized,” it was revealed that TFA was working behind the sceneswith a number of privately-managed, non-union charter school operators to open fifty-two new charter schools in Chicago over the next five years.
TFA is lowering wages, reducing benefits and worsening the working conditions of teachers. It is increasingly clear that the mission of the corporate class is to destroy teachers unions and remake the teaching profession into a temporary, low paying job.
Take a fresh, well educated, highly intelligent student, use them harshly,, burn them out, and throw them out. Pay them nothing, offer no support for their future.
Cheap, plentiful, and endless replacements.
http://www.alternet.org/education/ho...low-paying-job
Witness to TFA, top to bottom
" I, of course, started asking myself and others where the other $4 million or so was going. Some of it needs to pay for our incoming corps members to attend summer institute for their 5 week training. However, the rest was going to support the national Teach For America infrastructure, which includes many, many unnecessary management layers. When I saw how much money our region needed to raise that was not directly benefiting our corps members and their students, I became increasingly disillusioned with the organization."
This inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism made me start to see that Teach For America had turned into more of a public relations campaign than an organization truly committed to closing the achievement gap. Unfortunately, the organization seemed to care more about public perception of what the organization was doing than about what the organization was actually doing to improve education for low-income students throughout the United States.
Just like businesses and governments often show what they value by where they spend their money, so does Teach For America. When I saw where the money was really going, which was to a lot of national teams, national staff members, and national infrastructure, that was not providing much support to our region and was definitely not translating into improved educational outcomes for students, my opinion of the organization fell drastically.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.6655adbe8d3e
Became an institution...
Teach for America" charges public school districts $3,000 to $5,000 per instructor per year. Teachers don't get that money, business owners do
Districts pay thousands in fees to TFA for each corps member in addition to their salaries—at the expense of the existing teacher workforce. Chicago, for example, is closing 48 schools and laying off 850 teachers and staff while welcoming 350 (Teach for America) corps members.”
“Teach For America claims that it does not come in and take positions from incumbent members. That is a lie. They are doing it in Boston…Their arrogance is appalling.” Cersonsky and blogger EduSchyster have meticulously documented TFA’s connections to dozens of charter schools as well as education reform advocacy organizations that focus on standardized testing and privatization instead of grassroots community involvement and student voices. In doing so, TFA is working directly against the interests of teachers, students, and communities alike.
Not a pretty sight
Chicago, where I participated in TFA, the organization maintains its own extremely close partnerships with privately managed charter schools. Their relationships are so close, in fact, that earlier this year, after the Chicago Public School systemclosed forty-nine traditional, unionized public schools, claiming the schools were “underutilized,” it was revealed that TFA was working behind the sceneswith a number of privately-managed, non-union charter school operators to open fifty-two new charter schools in Chicago over the next five years.
TFA is lowering wages, reducing benefits and worsening the working conditions of teachers. It is increasingly clear that the mission of the corporate class is to destroy teachers unions and remake the teaching profession into a temporary, low paying job.
Take a fresh, well educated, highly intelligent student, use them harshly,, burn them out, and throw them out. Pay them nothing, offer no support for their future.
Cheap, plentiful, and endless replacements.
http://www.alternet.org/education/ho...low-paying-job
Witness to TFA, top to bottom
" I, of course, started asking myself and others where the other $4 million or so was going. Some of it needs to pay for our incoming corps members to attend summer institute for their 5 week training. However, the rest was going to support the national Teach For America infrastructure, which includes many, many unnecessary management layers. When I saw how much money our region needed to raise that was not directly benefiting our corps members and their students, I became increasingly disillusioned with the organization."
This inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism made me start to see that Teach For America had turned into more of a public relations campaign than an organization truly committed to closing the achievement gap. Unfortunately, the organization seemed to care more about public perception of what the organization was doing than about what the organization was actually doing to improve education for low-income students throughout the United States.
Just like businesses and governments often show what they value by where they spend their money, so does Teach For America. When I saw where the money was really going, which was to a lot of national teams, national staff members, and national infrastructure, that was not providing much support to our region and was definitely not translating into improved educational outcomes for students, my opinion of the organization fell drastically.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.6655adbe8d3e
