TFA Seems to be Limping into Town (And Hey, Where did the Fee Money Go?)
The Times had an article this week on TFA recruits coming to the Puget Sound area. This might be a tougher area to crack than they had anticipated. According to the article, they will try to bring in 35 with one sole commitment (from Federal Way) of only 4-10 teachers. (Of course, even though SPS's contract is said to only allow interviews to happen, I'm pretty sure SPS will be hosting many of them.)
From the article:
Tuesday's announcement was made on the same day Teach For America sent out its third round of acceptances for the 2011-12 school year. Twelve people learned that they will be placed in the Seattle area, Ortega said, and she expects to add another 23 later.
What is also a big question mark is this (bold mine):
This fall, Seattle Public Schools agreed to consider taking 20-25 more, although it offered nothing more than the chance to interview for open positions. It also won't hire any Teach For America recruits unless it finds outside funding to cover the required district contribution — now about $4,000 per teacher.
What happened to the Gates Foundation paying the $4k per teacher? If that's not a done deal, SPS has NO business hiring any new teacher who costs the district an extra $4k. No bright-faced college grad is worth that in hard economic times with many other unemployed qualified teachers in our region. Again, why are we importing more workers to this region?
I like CAO Enfield's comment:
What's particularly exciting, she said, is that all Teach For America recruits are strongly committed to closing the achievement gap among ethnic groups.
"I'm not saying that only Teach For America candidates have that," she said, "but you know that these people are coming from that space."
And what are the other "space" are teachers in the already large teaching pool coming from? I'll have to ask Dr. Enfield.
And that raises a good point. TFA likes to say how much principals like the recruits and how they have shown, in some cases, to do well. One thing they can't say - that they helped closed the achievement gap in a single school in the U.S.
From the article:
Tuesday's announcement was made on the same day Teach For America sent out its third round of acceptances for the 2011-12 school year. Twelve people learned that they will be placed in the Seattle area, Ortega said, and she expects to add another 23 later.
The program placed 100 percent of its recruits last year, and expects to be able to do the same this year.
That's a lot of confidence given they only have a guarantee for 4 from Federal Way. Hmm, makes you wonder if the fix is in.What is also a big question mark is this (bold mine):
This fall, Seattle Public Schools agreed to consider taking 20-25 more, although it offered nothing more than the chance to interview for open positions. It also won't hire any Teach For America recruits unless it finds outside funding to cover the required district contribution — now about $4,000 per teacher.
What happened to the Gates Foundation paying the $4k per teacher? If that's not a done deal, SPS has NO business hiring any new teacher who costs the district an extra $4k. No bright-faced college grad is worth that in hard economic times with many other unemployed qualified teachers in our region. Again, why are we importing more workers to this region?
I like CAO Enfield's comment:
What's particularly exciting, she said, is that all Teach For America recruits are strongly committed to closing the achievement gap among ethnic groups.
"I'm not saying that only Teach For America candidates have that," she said, "but you know that these people are coming from that space."
And what are the other "space" are teachers in the already large teaching pool coming from? I'll have to ask Dr. Enfield.
And that raises a good point. TFA likes to say how much principals like the recruits and how they have shown, in some cases, to do well. One thing they can't say - that they helped closed the achievement gap in a single school in the U.S.
Also from the article:
Still, some area school districts have said no, including Highline. Superintendent John Welch said that's largely because he doesn't expect to hire many teachers this year, and may have to lay off some.
"It didn't seem to be the right time to be partnering with Teach For America in a recruiting strategy," he said.
The article also states that TFA is "close" to announcing which local university will be its partner.
Comments
Frankly, if there is a clearly documented disparity of inexperienced teachers teaching out of field at high-poverty schools, there's a battle that awaits.
I wonder if Gates will come forward with any of their promised TFA funding for Seattle.
I have to wonder why, if there is one, it hasn't been announced.
TFA is sold to recruits as a resume enhancer, something that gets notice on things like law school applications. Goldman Sachs also offers summer internships for CMs. Bright and shiny. But what are they doing differently that makes their students more successful than the kids being taught by experienced educators who stick around?
If half the battle to educate is in the classroom, with the other half at home, how can TFA claim they have the solution if their movement is primarily designed to advance itself?
A lot of reform money comes from corporate-connected individuals who aren't concerned about income inequality. They benefit from it. Doesn't the TFA business model, in fact, bank on the enlargement of the have and have not gap they promise to close?
The whole point of the school climate change movie is that the director drove by bad schools to deliver his kids to better schools. He's not changing a thing.
TFA is a political movement with expansion plans. Recruits are encouraged to pursue careers in policy, ed reform. TFA recruits from a pool of motivated college grads with loans to pay and places to go that don't necessarily involve a classroom career. (Yale isn't cheap, even with $11K from a GS summer.)
TFA doesn't encourage a long-term commitment in the classroom, but isn't that what at-risk and under served students need? TFA students appear to be training fodder for an organization that doesn't care about their parents, and probably doesn't care about them. What they care about are sig gains:
http://www.teachforamerica.org/assets/documents/sig.gains.slide.pdf
Unless I see otherwise, this appears to be all about opening new markets that are being forcibly abandoned by the public sector. Lack of jobs, lack of tax base? Follow the cascade and make money on it, just like Hank Paulson did.
TFA is building market share on failure, not mitigating it.
When you look at it this way, it's no surprise that SPS has failed at drumming up "market share," and why Broad and TFA are moving in.
wv says pagash on it all
I have no idea how well the first batch did or did not do. As teacher union President, I have not been privy to that data.
As far as the arguement that the TFAers may in fact cost less than a veteran teacher. That could be true, but these folks are not replacing veteran teachers. They are taking jobs away from other unemployed teachers with little seniority and teachers just out of college--teachers who wouild cost them a heck of a lot less.
On TFA: If TFA teachers are going into the most challenging schools then I don't see how they can stay even one year. This is based on the fact that even qualified and experienced teachers in the most challenging schools are receiving better than average but less than perfect reviews. However, if you rated poorly even near poorly then you're on probation.
How can an inexperienced uncertificated amateur hope to last in that environment?
The evaluations could be used quite harshly now to pave the way by opening spaces for TFA candidates since they get to interview with the general public during phase 1 hiring at level 1 schools. After the way has been opened then a sudden shift to very lenient evaluations could provide the TFAers with strong evals. Which brings up the fact that a TFA candidate in their second year and without a real certificate could be on the mentor track and be getting thousands of additional dollars to be a teaching lead when their sum total of experience is a semester more than student teaching and observations.
-Curious
They were being closed because they only enrolled 1,100 students.
These schools in Seattle enroll less than 1,100 students- some half ( or less than) that many.
( Using OSPI data)
Chief Sealth
Cleveland
Ingraham
Nathan Hale
Nova
Rainier Beach
South Lake
Center School
Some are in buildings that befit their size, some are not.
Certainly neither she nor the Board has shown much interest.
Let us not forget the substandard performance of NTN schools and yet the Board approved this 4-3 and never submitted a certified correct record to the court. Instead Dr. Enfield chose to submit an inaccurate record that included a forged document.
Quite a crew that runs this operation.
Great idea put substandard teachers in low income schools to close the achievement gap. That will likely work as well as their $1.2 million high school math adoption.
More of the same disrespect for the existing staff and the fully certified teachers waiting to be hired. Can current and prospective teachers expect an apology from the CAO, for suggesting that non-TFAers just don't have that certain je ne sais quoi...
Way to support staff, tell them they just don't seem to come from "that space" (whatever "that space" is)
"So CAO Enfield thinks TFA is all about closing the opportunity gap ("achievement gap") and says 'I'm not saying that only Teach For America candidates have that...but you know that these people are coming from that space.'"
Space, the business jargon definition: "A consultant's designated area of expertise or focus. The term is normally used with some form of the verb 'play.'"
Have we been served?
what I find amazing is, for the number DR.s at JSCEE, there is alot of ignorance about good management, good pedagogy, motivating employees, and winning people over to your side without lying.
They obviously want TFA to come. So TFA is coming. The only way to sell TFA is to say they do something different and better than...fully certified teachers. Thus, you basically have to say, "the teachers we have, or foresee having, just ain't up to snuff like these TFAers." Now they have to support their decision to bring in TFA carefully, without flat out telling staff (and prospectives) that they suck, so we end up hearing that TFA comes from a good "space."
If they want cheaper teachers, or if they think the surplus of qualified teachers just doesn't care about "the achievement gap" why don't they just say it?
Is this what you want for your school and children?
Do you think that it would be fair to have these teachers work in schools with a large low-income population where the difficulties are even greater?
So far in our region (seven or so months in and TFA brought in 100+ of us to Detroit), multiple Corps members have ended up hospitalized in Detroit-area psych wards due to the stress of the program and how little support they offered us, about 15-20% of our Corps has already resigned at various stages in the program and many more will gone before the two years are up (no doubt) and I know that relatively few will be staying in teaching beyond two years (except those handful who were placed at better schools and hence are doing fairly well due to the strong systems already in place). TFA’s statistics saying that 2/3′s of their Corps members are still in education are based on self-selected survey results that doesn’t count participants like me who drop out of the program (we would never see that survey) and only 45% or so of the alumni they send the survey to respond (presumably mostly those who had a decent experience with the program and don’t hate TFA with all their being and thereby immediately delete all TFA alumni emails). So those numbers are immensely exaggerated and inaccurate.
It’s especially frustrating to me that TFA is coming to Seattle, where real teachers are being laid off all the time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. My mother has been teaching for decades in the Seattle area and even her job isn’t necessarily safe anymore nor does she get regular cost of living increases, etc., which is very sad and frustrating.
Teach For America’s boot- camp-esque summer training is also woefully inadequate and does not have any components dealing with child psychology, the history/philosophy of different teaching movements/ideas, minimal emphasis on behavior management (which is honestly what destroys most TFA teachers who aren’t successful – it was certainly my problem, although I got thrown into absolute war zones) – we practiced experimenting (I mean, teaching) for an hour a day on summer school students and the rest of the time was devoted to learning how to do ridiculously excessive lesson plans that no one ever used again as well as being brainwashed with TFA-isms and other garbage.
Here are my predictions for the 2011 TFA Seattle Corps – out of the 50 or so TFA teachers that are supposedly coming, I bet 1-2 end up hospitalized for mental/stress reasons, 10-20% resign before their two years are complete, the vast majority of the remaining teachers get the heck out of teaching after their two year committment is up and a handful of TFA teachers who are placed at more well-established/supportive schools with stronger parental involvement and a less disruptive student population in the first place will manage to survive and will then be hailed by TFA as amazing success stories (based on bogus, inaccurate purported ‘teaching data’ for the most part) and go on to star in the up and coming privatization of education movement (KIPP CEO’s, here we come!). There is a chance the numbers in Seattle might be slightly better than that since a smaller number of Corps members are coming in, Seattle schools are probably slightly less insane than inner-city Detroit schools and hopefully TFA hires staff people for Seattle who aren’t incompentent TFA robots like most of Detroit’s staff is, so keep your fingers crossed.
Good luck Seattle schools – you’ll need it. And good luck incoming TFA Seattlites – you’ll definitely need it .
Check out my website – ‘recoveringfromTFA.wordpress.com’ if you want to read my resignation letters…you can also email me at j.asher.williamson@gmail.com. I’d love to chat more.