I can only describe TFA in two words: foolishly arrogant. I completed one year with TFA. Why only one year when TFA requires members to commit to two? Because TFA changes the rules of their game to suit the agenda of TFA. In my case I was terribly placed in an area of teaching that was well outside my content area. I was trained to be an English teacher by TFA but that's not where they placed me. As a result, the charter school system with a 25% turnover rate did not take my contract the second year. TFA's policy (a word of warning to all prospective members) is they don't necessarily place you elsewhere and can (and do) drop members from the program. Because they do not like to lose at what they do, they are not very nice about it either.
TFA's current problem, among hundreds of others, is that real teachers, the ones who went through accredited institutions and have credentials the day they walk into the classroom, are being laid off, so placement of ersatz teachers like TFA's becomes harder for that organization. Beyond this though, is the irrefutable fact that TFA has existed for 20 years and even though in some cases their results have been as good as that of accredited teachers, it has been no better and in many cases, far worse.
The major problem facing TFA is that their rhetoric is twenty years old, held cult-like by die-hard members on TFA's payroll, and like a chain-letter or pyramid scam, TFA's existence depends on fanatical belief in order to raise the private funding needed to support the organization. The federal government is wisely expanding alternate certification program funding to other organizations making it competitive. In short, TFA's dogma, arrogance, and apparent lack of organizational intelligence to adapt has fostered the beginning of the demise of TFA as a viable organization.
It is unfortunate that government officials at all levels appear to be moving toward the incredibly unregulated world of privatized education. Charter Schools, (many of whom don't have qualified principals: they call them directors) are loose cannons. They too play by their own rules. They are a natural marriage for organizations like Teach For America, and that is the unfortunate development in American education. If it weren't for the play it by ear, almost unregulated charter school systems, organizations like TFA would have folded their tents long ago. It should be noted however, that American voters are to blame. Americans need to understand that privatization of education and teaching with unqualified teachers is not the long or short term solution to American education. We need to fix the existing system. That is done, not by flailing moderately paid teachers, but by making administrators, many of whom earn salaries four times as high as the teachers in their charge, prove competence and do their jobs.
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-i-hate-teach-for-america.html
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