BIGGEST PROBLEM! The biggest problem with Wendy Kopp involves a key word—“influential:”

From The Daily Howler:

There comes a time when you have to demand that the nonsense stop. At moments like this, Wendy Kopp comes off like a cult leader:

DILLON (6/19/08): Ms. Kopp describes Teach for America as a social movement to improve education for the poor. ''We have the potential to end educational inequity,'' she said in an interview at her headquarters in the garment district of Manhattan. ''I truly believe that.''

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Acts 9:18... kinda

Teaching in the 408 writes:

I have, in the past, been critical of Teach For America, for promoting service over professionalism, for a borderline unethical disregard of further teaching, and most relevantly, for pursuing a two-sided approach to "the movement," that wildly over-estimates the achievement gap-closing potential two years of poor-to-mediocre teaching will have on the pursuit of an alum's law/ policy/ business career.

At the risk of belaboring, it is this last issue that is the most unfortunate. Oft-repeated and oft-cited, the duh-invoking notion that the entirety of the achievement gap cannot be closed solely from within the school site has germinated into a nice talking point, an easily applied defense of a variety of policy mistakes. Folks in my neck of the TFA woods are growing a lot more direct in voicing this two-parts-to-the-movement ideology, pushing the notion that they've hit on something special and unique.
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Don't you mean White Teach for America?

A commenter of the Chicago Schools Blog writes:

Don't you mean White Teach for America?

TFA is a mainly white organization developed and supported by rich white people to give their rich kids something to do after college instead of foundering around until they find a real job.

They also get to feel all noble about doing something for the great unwashed and their folks can feel morally superior when their friends talk about how their kid is is now a Hun-style lawyer or killing on Wall Street.

Student loans? Don't have to worry about payments or interest while you're TFAing.
And this year Congress passed a bill that says people who work in social service and 'charity' organizations can get their loans forgiven completely after 10 years.

Not us. Not real teachers with real teaching degrees. Just them and their ethnic studies degrees from Princeton.

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Teach for America is not all that it's cracked up to be.

A commenter on Assistants in France writes:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Teach for America is not all that it's cracked up to be. Whenever you see speakers at college they always rave about how wonderful the program is. However, these are the people that excelled and survived the program. There are many people that quit, and once you quit they blacklist you...forget any letter of recommendation.

One of my best friends from college is teaching elementary school in Texas through Teach for America, if you'd like I can give you her email/phone number so that you can talk this over with her. It's her second year on the job, so she will be able to give you valuable advice. I know that she has encountered many challenges with the local administration. For instance, it took them one month to inform her of who had learning disabilities in her classroom. They blame her for the lower than par exam scores in her class, as if it's her fault that her students came into 4th grade with 2nd grade reading levels?!!
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Teachers quit en masse

An anonymous author from The Lantern writes:

I love to teach. It is my passion. Ten years from now I envision myself in the classroom, encouraging, impacting and inspiring my students. Likewise, programs like Teach for America also seek to encourage, impact and inspire. But, in my opinion, Teach for America demeans the teaching profession and should be abolished.
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How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million

Joshua Kaplowitz writes:

In the seminars we attended when we weren’t teaching, I learned the basics of lesson planning and teaching theory. I also internalized the TFA philosophy of high expectations, the idea that if you set a rigorous academic course, all students will rise to meet the challenge.

But the training program skimped on actual teaching and classroom-management techniques, instead overwhelming us with sensitivity training. My group spent hours on an activity where everyone stood in a line and then took steps forward or backward based on whether we were the oppressor or the oppressed in the categories of race, income, and religion. The program had a college bull session, rather than professional, atmosphere. And it had a college-style party line: I heard of two or three trainees being threatened with expulsion for expressing in their discussion groups politically incorrect views about inner-city poverty—for example, that families and culture, not economics, may be the root cause of the achievement gap.

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Teach for America

Gary K. Clabaugh, Ed. D., writes:

"Teach for America attracts people to the classroom who are unwilling or unable to make a legitimate, much less adequate, effort to become expert teachers. Discarding the thoughtful, thorough and progressive preparation characteristic of all expert professions, Teach for America coaxes half-committed aspirants through just six weeks of summer crash course work in pedagogy. Then, with the connivance of local and state education officials, they are turned loose on kids."
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The Effectiveness of “Teach for America” and Other Under-certified Teachers on Student Academic Achievement: A Case of Harmful Public Policy

Ildiko Laczko-Kerr, Arizona Department of Education andDavid C. Berliner
Arizona State University write:

Four separate evaluations found that TFA’s training program did not prepare candidates to succeed with students, despite the noticeable intelligence and enthusiasm of many of the recruits. Most criticism of a corps member’s teaching behavior (classroom management was the greatest area of concern, followed by insufficient knowledge of the fundamentals of teaching and learning) was qualified by the cooperating teachers’ perceptions of limitations of the program in providing the corps member with adequate practice or theory to be successful

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Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education

The American Way writes the following about privatizing education:

The Heartland Institute’s Joseph Bast has urged others who share his group’s extreme agenda to be patient. “The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.”(emphasis added)

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“TEACH FOR AMERICA” And the Quality of Public Education in Target Communities

Katherine A. Tibbetts, PhD writes

Teach for America is not likely to create problems in target schools in the short term and may have a beneficial effect on student achievement if TFA teachers displace less qualified applicants. However, TFA is not a long-term solution to the shortage of well-qualified teachers.

The development of a pool of well-qualified teacher candidates is key to sustained improvement in the quality of education and student achievement.

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