A blogger at The Geek Buffet writes:
The Background Story: I was at a small departmental gathering last night and – after much food and drink – the topic of conversation turned to Teach for America, since our host’s daughter is going through their training program as we speak for a Denver teaching position in the fall. Not being one to hold back his opinions, I made several disparaging remarks about Teach for America, including that it A) encourages people to see teaching as an altruistic resumé-builder that a privileged recent college grad could do rather than as a serious profession that must be done by our best and brightest, B) has a low rate of participants who continue in the field as teachers, C) doesn’t sufficiently train their participants to deal with the tough educational environment of poor rural and urban public schools and D) is a stop-gap feel-good solution for a much wider educational equality problem of income tax disparities between districts. These opinions reflect both research published in various educational journals and in the Education training I received at Grinnell College, particularly from Drs. Jean Ketter and Kara Lycke.
2 responses so far ↓
Nick Johansen // September 6, 2008 at 1:42 pm |
Okay. Here it goes: I just went to the TFA website and I noticed two things: there’s no [unless I'm just to stupid to find it] very little information on who runs the outfit; then you look at the job offerings and see that they must be very short on staff.
It does say that a 21 year old came up with the idea and proceeded to raise a few million bucks to get it started.
It seems to me to simply be one more of many non-profit [!] organizations designed to make money off public education.
Plus, the “news” on the page is old. Maybe TFA is about to enter the dust bin of other such scams to make a few people a bundle of cash in a short amount of time. And, nothing more.
Public education is collapsing without any help from TFA.
And, by the looks of McCain’s rise in the poles, America is screwed.
TFA Alum // February 17, 2009 at 2:50 am |
If you’d like to know more about who runs TFA, simply click on this link: http://www.teachforamerica.org/about/our_team.htm
While many TFA staffers are under 30, you’ll notice that the management team brings significant experience from several different sectors of the economy. You might also be interested in seeing who their Board of Directors includes: http://www.teachforamerica.org/about/our_boards.htm
As for the staff argument, last I saw there were about 54 openings against a total staff of approximately 900. Their goal is to have just over 1,00o on staff by 2010, so this strikes me as a fairly strong position to be in right now.
Finally, regarding finances. TFA’s annual operating budget is currently in the neighborhood of $150MM, and has been growing at a rate of about 15-20% annually over the past decade. I’m sure that will slow down considerably given the current state of the economy, but talk of the “dust bin” is probably a bit premature. Disagree with TFA’s theory of change all you want – there are certainly intelligent arguments out there against TFA’s approach – but the term ’scam’ is simply absurd.
It’s also worth noting that if you are going to post on a blog geared towards education, you might want to learn how to spell “polls.”