I am seeing so many articles now about laid off teachers not being hired back, instead they are being replaced with recruits from Teach for America. These are career teachers, some fired or laid off before pension eligibility, being replaced by people who have five weeks training. The districts, instead of calling back in local teachers for free....are paying thousands to hire trainees from TFA.
I have wondered often how this movement, part of the education reform movement, has gotten such good play in the media with seldom a negative word. The teachers laid off after long careers are left hanging out to dry with only a few bloggers speaking out for them.
I guess being launched by the Clinton Initiative has its advantages. Public school teachers are basically on their own without the wealthy resources available.
From the New York Times in September.
Global Effort to Recruit Teachers ExpandsTeach for All, an international network of educational nonprofit groups modeled on Teach for America, has grown rapidly since its founding four years ago and now has some 1,500 teachers heading classrooms in more than a dozen countries, with recruiting under way in many more, the group’s founder, Wendy Kopp, said on Wednesday.
..."There is a universal power, it seems, in channeling any country’s most promising talents and future minds onto such a universally fundamental issue — educational inequality and equity,” Ms. Kopp said in an interview. “It’s amazing to see the caliber of people drawn to this. To find myself in Germany or Brazil or Peru, talking to these recruits, it’s impressive to see.”
Bill Clinton and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain announced Teach for All’s founding at the 2007 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, but the group has gotten little media attention. On Thursday, Ms. Kopp is to review the network’s growth in a speech at this year’s New York meeting of the Clinton initiative.
The countries in the program, which has a two-year commitment similar to Teach for America’s and a similar focus on needy schools, are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Colombia, Estonia, Germany, India, Israel, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru and Spain. Ms. Kopp said local social entrepreneurs in many other nations were working to recruit teachers.
I guess that will propel the TFA movement even more quickly to have the Clinton Initiative again present them a forum.
Here is a little bit more about the 2007 launch.
From a TFA press release from September 27, 2007. You have to scroll down a little.
Teach for America launches Teach for All.NEW YORK, September 27, 2007—Today at the Clinton Global Initiative, Teach For America announced its commitment to launch Teach For All, a new organization that will support entrepreneurs in other countries who are pursuing the development of the Teach For America model locally. These local organizations will channel the talent and energy of their countries’ top recent college graduates against educational disparities facing tens of thousands of children in their high-poverty communities. Teach For All was created in partnership with Teach First, an adaptation of Teach For America in the U.K., and with significant start-up support from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the Amy and Larry Robbins Foundation.
“While Teach For America itself remains deeply committed to its own ambitious growth plan in the United States,” said CEO and founder Wendy Kopp, “the creation of Teach For All will enable us to be responsive to those who are working to address educational inequity in other countries and who deeply believe that our theory of change can have a catalytic impact in their context.”
..."Teach For All will raise $25 million over three years for its global operations, and at the same time leverage millions more toward the local programs in each country. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has committed a $2.5 million grant to fund Teach For All’s support of the development of Teach For India, and the Amy and Larry Robbins Foundation has also pledged a $2 million grant to Teach For All. The organization has also benefited from millions of dollars in pro bono services from McKinsey & Company.
More details on Teach for All from the
Washington Post November 8, 2011.It’s not the way to improve the nation’s public teaching corps — especially since most of these young people leave the classroom at higher rates than conventionally trained teachers — but Kopp has helped convince policymakers that it is.
And her reach is not only across the United States but around the globe; her Teach for America is part of a global organization called Teach for All, which Kopp co-founded and for which she serves as chief executive. Teach for All includes organizations in 19 countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East, according to the Web site, with programs in 10 to 20 more countries expected to join the network within a few years.
That is real power with big financial backing. That is what public school teachers are facing.
When a former recruiter and former TFA teacher speaks out and warns that the group has gone from
mostly harmless to mostly harmful...then people need to pay attention.
."I’m glad I ‘did’ TFA. Twenty years ago they filled a need. Putting a few hundred barely trained teachers into the toughest to serve schools was one of those concepts that was ‘so crazy, it might just work.’ We weren’t always doing ‘good,’ but we also weren’t doing much harm. Our five or six hundred teachers were pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.
..."Twenty years ago TFA was, to steal an expression from the late great Douglas Adams? — ‘mostly harmless.’ Then about ten years ago they became ‘potentially harmful.’ Now, in my opinion, they have become ‘mostly harmful.’
He speaks about how many of the trainees and former recruits for TFA go on to become leaders in the education reform movement. His words:
Which sounds great except these leaders are some of the most destructive forces in public education. They seem to love nothing more than labeling schools as ‘failing,’ shutting them down, and blaming the supposed failure on the veteran teachers. The buildings of the closed schools are taken over by charter networks, often with leaders who were TFA alums and who get salaries of $200,000 or more to run a few schools.
Public school teachers are battling all these things on their own. They do not have the power players behind them in either party, and it's tough when a former Democratic president is helping to launch groups like internationally.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
