Why I’m calling on all university faculty to refuse to write letters of recommendation to TFA
I keep pointing to the fact that veteran teachers are often unionized because if it’s not obvious yet–the more TFA has become aligned with the corporate reform movement, the more it has also become a union busting organization. The unionized teachers at my school were the opposite of everything TFA told me they would be: they were profoundly skilled, profoundly committed to their students, knowledgeable about and respectful to our school’s surrounding community, and as efficient as they were hard working. The best teachers I knew left at 3:30 pm to take care of their own kids and families. But because they had deep experience and strong collaborative partnerships, they were able to consistently plan and grade papers in a way that put the efforts of my own 70 hour work weeks to shame. They were able to stick with teaching and to consistently be excellent at it because they knew what they were doing!
Also, it’s racist:
TFA & the charter schools that function as TFA’s biggest partners make use of this new slippery racism to rid cities of veteran teachers of color. TFA’s mantra to “close the achievement gap” relies on a logic that blames veteran teachers (“lifers“) for not believing in the capabilities of students of color. The logic here is deeply flawed because the teachers that TFA uses its corps members to replace are usually teachers of color. There is no teaching shortage. Schools and districts FIRE their unionized and more expensive professional staff in order to make slots for the cheaper, eternally revolving wheel of TFA and other non-traditionally certified recruits who start off innocent and hopeful, but quickly burn out, only to be coddled with high paying leadership positions before they can threaten to rock the boat. When we write students a letter of recommendation to TFA, this is what we’re recommending them for.
Charter schools are part of the program:
In New Orleans, No Excuses schools form a growing majority of schools serving primarily low-income students of color. Growing out from the “New Orleans model,” it’s increasingly the same case in almost every major US city. This summer in Chicago when there was massive resistance to the shutting down of neighborhood schools in low income communities of color, the resistance movement there suspected that their closing schools would soon be replaced by scores of “new paternalism” charters. They were correct in their suspicions. Even as I write this, TFA is recruiting new corps members for 2014 to replace many of the teachers who were fired in Chicago and to help build 52 new charter schools on top of the public, neighborhood schools that were closed. Also, see this reflection from a TFA corps member about how TFA put him him in this exact same situation, but in Philadelphia.
Public schools are not really that broken – yet. This corporatization of the education system is an effective method for making them broken.
I rec’d this diary, and I understand (I think) the concerns about corporate involvement in education. Two questions:
1. I don’t quite get the connection to TFA.
2. Given the role of education in communities — I just spent two hours at a school event — and the swirl of activity around the school (sports, band, school plays, etc.), doesn’t the school’s culture carry the day? And with municipal budgets under stress, why not accept public sector help? You clearly need a group of professionals protecting the curriculum … but aren’t they already there?
2a. Isn’t it sort of analogous to genetically modified food? Yes we shouldn’t … but we need to eat.
And just to be clear I’m not grinding an axe here. If it’s possible to keep private money out, we should. But is it possible?
Did you read the linked article? It is about TFA.
What does your “school culture” discussion mean in the context of districts closing schools and replacing them with charters staffed by unqualified amateurs? It isn’t about “keeping private money out;” it’s about keeping schools professional and publicly controlled.
It is? Why?
No pipeline of smart young kids fresh out of college ready to teach in the short term before going on to more lucrative things. That’s the reform “model” — to deprofessionalize teaching — and TFA makes it possible. Not to mention all the TFA “alumni” like Rhee who go on to make a killing pushing this “reform” and cite their TFA background as a badge of legitimacy.
TFA should not be used to replace teachers already in the system. They should be used where there are shortages. I think I’ve been aware of TFA for as long as they have existed and even started an application with them at one point. I was under the impression that it was an Americorps type program that gives young people an opportunity to serve communities most in need. Have they changed over the years or was that a false impression to begin with?
Some districts have let experienced teachers go so they can bring in cheaper TFA teachers, then replace them with new TFA teachers every two years. This happened right here in Boston. Rahm Emmanuel was all set to replace veteran teachers in the shuttered schools with TFA people in the charters replacing them, until such a fuss was raised that TFA backed out.
Here’s one TFA veteran’s take.
TFA would be an Americorps-style program. I thought that it would provide Ivy Leaguers with the opportunity to get to know teachers and lobby for education when they eventually entered the private sector. Foolishly, I also assumed more of them would remain in education. TFA people are basically privileged college grads who use the program to build their resumes and feel like they are helping.
TFA became an indoctrination program for education reform. For some TFAers, the program provided a fast-track to high-paying jobs in education lobbying and management and charter schools in spite of a deep background in education. Fenway’s link is a good one, if you want to learn more.
(not an elite college student type) who was picked by TFA in the mid-90’s, when it was less selective. Three years in a rough neighborhood in a rough city down South, followed by six more years at the same school. More than fifteen years after starting with TFA, she now has returned to New England and still teaches, but in a top suburban district.
My sense is that today she’d be more the exception than the rule. My cousin, who finished college in 2011, applied more out of concern about the job market than a desire to teach. They didn’t take him but they did take several of his friends. Two years later, all of them are applying to law school, med school, business school. I myself went to law school with a number of TFA alumni.
… more adversarial than educational labor relations in this country… To be sure, our present labor system, economy-wide, is an adversarial one. However, in education, it has moved beyond the structural and into the deeply antagonistic, as this post demonstrates.
Nor, it must be said, can I think of anything so counterproductive as this deeply ingrained adversarial posturing in education on both sides: if some diabolical intent had set out to create a system designed to limp along ever on the edge of failing and flailing, constantly poised between crash and burn… well, I’d be hard pressed to define any way in which it would be different from our present system. So, yeah, I disagree: our public schools really are that broken. They started broken and they aren’t being fixed. Certainly, railing at TFA isn’t a solution.
If TFA is abused, and that sounds likely, it is not because of the young teachers in the program: you can’t, you know, actually ‘gild’ your resume with real work. And if there is a high turnover rate to the students that might, you know, be the first indication that teaching is hard and that some won’t cut it, or wish to do so. The only difference between staying on as a teacher and going to law/medical/business school is the remuneration at the end: doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers expect, and receive the big payday. Teachers don’t. Maybe they ought… All this is to say that if TFA disappears tomorrow it won’t change, one whit, the situation as it stands.
This absurd notion that teachers and management are, or even ought to be, in constant tension and opposition is the real problem. Absent this insanity there would be absolutely no room for some bean-counter to make the assertion that X amount of experienced teachers higher pay is interchangeable with a Y amount in-experienced neophytes… It ought to be unthinkable. Instead it is not only encouraged, it is the go-to talking point for the ‘opposition’. It would be like a professor thinking that his bothersome and expensive graduate students could easily be replaced by a few of this years incoming freshman… Such a situation, though analogous to that of the teachers, is never countenanced because there is simply no framework to define the potentialities in that manner. Just such a framework, in fact a framework that encourages this thinking by virtue of it’s antagonism, is very much in play in our public schools. More is the pity.
Your thoughtful comment suggests that labor acrimony leads the “bean-counters” to assert that “X amount of experienced teachers higher pay is interchangeable with a Y amount in-experienced neophytes.”
I’d suggest that the very reason labor relations are acrimonious these days is because “bean-counters,” along with TFA management, many politicians, Michelle Rhee, Scot Lehigh and 2/3 of the media, have been making “the assertion that X amount of experienced teachers higher pay is interchangeable with a Y amount in-experienced neophytes.”
The whole trend has been to scapegoat teachers. Policymakers act as if they, and not the students they’re asked to educate, are unruly children who won’t try to do their jobs unless they’re shown a stick in the form of standardized tests. Because all the money in our society has flowed to the top and nobody wants to pay for public goods anymore, never is treating teachers with respect instead of bashing and squeezing them considered.
… but not exactly right either. I think acrimony is built into the system and, with our media equating acrimony with fairness, it’s both rewarded and, worst of all, not at all questioned. You think people have good reason to be acrimonious, and wholly within that given context, perhaps they do. But the context is a construct of our capitalist, anti-collectivist history, that not only invites acrimony but actively creates the situation in which Michelle Rhee, Scot Lehigh and others say what they say and are rewarded for it: It matters little the specific words that Michelle Rhee uses, it only matters that she is ‘against’ something and is a ‘heroic figure’ solely for her willingness to dig in her heels… no matter the cause she fights for; having the form of herooism without the actual cause or, sadly, consequences therein.
Scapegoating is a most basic form of antagonism and becomes even stronger when no real antipathy exists: if it has to be manufactured to feed the context, itself created, then it is made up all the more stronger and the more vicious for all it’s need to deny real affinities that may, in truth, be stronger than the crudities of opposition: the one who lies has to to make up cruder and bolder lies to overcome the weaknesses of the initial untruth. Sadly, this comes so much easier for many than a simple community.
But let’s be clear: the source of this issue is the law. I would LOVE it if labor-management relations were managed the way that they are in Germany, but the legal system seats both sides on opposite ends of the table and tells them to work together.
What does consociationalism look like? Easy: the union names half the members of the school committee. Think that would happen here?
Yes.