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teach for america
NCLB Is Dead: ESSA is Law (After President Signs It)
Now, as never before, our role as citizens and defenders of the common good is necessary.
Dec 09, 2015
The new Every Student Succeeds Act passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote. It will be law as soon as the President signs it, which he has said he will do. No Child Left Behind is history, a cruel law that set goals so far out of reach that it was certain to label every school in the nation a failure. Because of NCLB, data became more important than education. It was a boon for the standardized testing industry. It labeled and ranked schools by test scores and led to cheating, teaching to bad tests, gaming the system (by districts and states), and narrowing the curriculum. Thanks to this dreadful law, many schools abandoned or reduced time for the arts, physical education, recess, science, history, and foreign languages. NCLB was the platform for the even harsher, even more punitive, even more disastrous Race to the Top.
The fight for better education for all now shifts to the states. As Mercedes Schneider reports here, the 1,061 page act was released to the public on November 30. It is now December 9. Who read the entire act? We know from Kenneth Zeichner's reading of the section on teacher education that the new law opens the doors to alternative routes, in some cases enables institutions to award graduate degrees that have no faculty with graduate degrees (Relay, Match). We know from Mercedes Schneider's work thatTeach for America moles on the Congressional staff protected TFA. We know from the crowing of charter organizations that the bill protects them.
There is much we don't know. What we can say for certain is that the fight for the survival of public education and the teaching profession now shifts to the states. The battle to repel the monetization of education funds goes on. The struggle to allow teachers to teach goes on. The battle to prevent technology entrepreneurs from replacing teachers and mechanizing teaching goes on.
Now, as never before, our role as citizens and defenders of the common good is necessary. The Network for Public Education will continue to be in the forefront of the struggles ahead. Plan to join us at our annual meeting in Raleigh on April 16-17 to discuss how we can make our schools ready for all our children, not just a few. And how we can repel the privatization movement in its efforts to capture and profit from what belongs to all of us.
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How a Billionaire is Trying to Control Los Angeles Public Schools
Eli Broad is a housing and insurance tycoon whose California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has poured hundreds of millions into "transforming" K-12 urban education by training administrators and supporting charter schools, merit pay and other market-based reforms. And now, Broad wants to do even more, trying to lead a campaign to raise nearly half a billion dollars to open enough charter schools to enroll nearly half of the students in the country's second-largest school district.
Oct 08, 2015
Eli Broad is a housing and insurance tycoon whose California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has poured hundreds of millions into "transforming" K-12 urban education by training administrators and supporting charter schools, merit pay and other market-based reforms. And now, Broad wants to do even more, trying to lead a campaign to raise nearly half a billion dollars to open enough charter schools to enroll nearly half of the students in the country's second-largest school district.
Broad, according to various reports, wants to open 260 new charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District over the next eight years -- effectively doubling today's number.
Whether the city's officials will ultimately approve the plan is unclear, but the idea is clearly spelled out in a 44-page memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times. It names other foundations and wealthy philanthropists who could be involved, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Hewlett and Annenberg foundations. Individuals include Tesla Motors' Elon Musk and entertainment magnate David Geffen. (Note: The Broad Foundation has partly funded the Los Angeles Times' new digital initiative to expand education coverage.)
Broad was one of the early members of what education historian and activist Diane Ravitch dubbed "The Billionaire Boys Club," whose members, including Gates, have spent so much money on corporate school reform that private philanthropy has had a major effect on public policy. Broad has repeatedly championed charter schools -- which are publicly funded schools that are privately run. Earlier this year his foundation suspended a program in which it gave annual $1 million awards to high-achieving traditional public urban school districts, but Broad is carrying on with a $250,000 Broad Prize for charter schools, which he says do a better job than traditional public schools in educating high-needs students who live in urban areas.
His memo cites three major charter operators -- Green Dot Public Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and KIPP Public Charter Schools -- as having seen "significant" gains by students. But it turns out that those results have actually been mixed. According to the LA School Report, a pro-reform publication:
In building a case for creating 260 charter schools within in LA Unified eight years at a cost of $490 million, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has cited "significant" gains by three charter organizations that have received $75 million from the foundation.
But when all factors are considered, there is little conclusive evidence in the report outlining the expansion plans that shows big investments in charters always -- or evenly routinely -- achieve consistent academic improvements, raising an important question: Just what can Broad and other foundations promise for an investment of nearly half a billion dollars in an expansion effort that would dramatically change the nation's second-largest school district?
The LA School Report story details where test scores went up -- and down -- at the three cited charter school networks in Los Angeles, pointing to what is generally known about charter performance around the country: On the whole they don't perform better than traditional public schools, but it is hard to compare because the populations of students are often not the same.
The Los Angeles Times notes in this story that "charter forces point to test scores showing that their students, on average, do better than those in L.A. Unified" but that district officials "argue that it's more accurate to compare charter schools not with the district as a whole but with magnet schools. In that match, magnets generally do better." Of course, that isn't a fair comparison, either, given that the populations of charters and magnets are also different.
The proposal, called Great Public Schools Now, would require some 5,000 teachers, according to this story in the Times, which also says:
The Broad proposal, which would set aside $43.1 million for a "teacher pipeline," refers to Teach For America as the "strongest human capital partner" for charters in Los Angeles. That group recruits recent college graduates and provides training that consists of six weeks before they start teaching -- more in some cases -- combined with ongoing support and course work.
The plan also looks to other fast-track programs, the New Teacher Project and the Relay Graduate School of Education, as avenues for hires. The New Teacher Project recruits those who want to change careers as well as recent grads; Relay is an emerging program developed in conjunction with charter leaders. It's based in New York City, with regional campuses in five states, not yet including California.
Younger teachers offer a workforce that charters consider more flexible and one that is willing to work at a pace that may be unsustainable over the long term, some experts said.
Teach For America is the nonprofit famous for recruiting new college graduates, giving them five weeks of training in a summer institute and placing them in schools that are among America's neediest. It has been a prime mover in the "no excuses" movement, which promotes the notion that the conditions in which children live can't be blamed for poor academic performance. In other words, teachers should be able to overcome a child's hunger, sickness or trauma.
Most charter schools have teachers who are not unionized, and so it is no surprise that unionized teachers in the traditional Los Angeles public schools oppose Broad's proposal. Several hundred last month protested the Broad charter plan at the opening of a new Broad museum in Los Angeles, the Times reported:
"You want art for the masses?" one person shouted into a bullhorn.
"Then fund more classes!" others shouted in reply as they paraded back and forth under the museum's much-discussed honeycomb facade.
Charter schools have not proven to be the magic bullet that their supporters had hoped a few decades ago when they began to open as a way to push improvements in traditional urban public education. Still, the Times' editorial board likes Broad's idea, endorsing it in an editorial titled, "A charter school expansion could be great for LA." The editorial notes that all charter schools are not high quality and that it will be important to make sure that bad charters are monitored and closed. It actually says:
The only serious official scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued the right to operate, and five years later when they apply for renewal. It would seem a more thoughtful approach could be developed.
It would seem so, don't you think?
Here's what Ravitch wrote in 2011 about the growing influence of the wealthy on education reform policy. It still has resonance today:
What does all this outpouring of interest by the wealthiest people in the United States mean? Some no doubt are motivated by idealism. Some think they are leading a new civil rights movement, though I doubt that Dr. King would recognize these financial titans as his colleagues as they impose their will on one of our crucial public institutions. Some hate government. Some love the free market. Some think that the profit motive is more efficient and effective than any public-sector enterprise. All of them share a surprising certainty that they know how to "fix" the public schools and that the people who work in those schools are lazy, unmotivated, incompetent, and not to be trusted.
For me, as a historian, the scary part is that our public schools have never before been subject to such a sustained assault on their very foundations. Never before were there so many people, with such vast resources, intent on dismantling public education. What does this mean for the future of public education? What does it mean for our democracy?
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As WalMart Writes Checks, Critics Blast Teach for America
Critics blast non-profit as 'pipeline' for pro-corporate policies like charter schools and privatization
Aug 05, 2013
The education non-profit Teach for America has been under increasing fire recently as critics and alumni accuse the organization of misappropriating their original mission by backing the policies of the "corporate education agenda" that promote privatization, the expansion of charter schools and the undermining of teachers unions.
These criticisms come amidst news last week that Wal-Mart owners, the Walton Family--key backers of charter school expansion and the effort to end teacher protections--donated $20 million to the nonprofit for "recruitment, training and professional development," bringing their total support for TFA to over $100 million since 1993.
"The Walton Family Foundation's support for Teach for America is driven by the organization's proven ability to create a pipeline of outstanding education reform leaders," said Ed Kirby, deputy director of the Walton Family Foundation's K-12 Education Reform effort, in a statement released last week.
"The foundation is expanding its investment in Teach For America because of the organization's ability to produce leaders who are helping to transform public education in the US," the statement continues.
Recruiting recent college graduates from many of the nation's most prestigious universities, the organization requires a two-year commitment from its student-teachers. Though the majority of recruits have no education degree or experience, the nonprofit boasts an "intensive" five weeks of training before dropping these fledgling educators in the nation's neediest urban and rural schools.
Touting such alumni as StudentsFirst founder and former Chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools Michelle Rhee, LAUSD Board member Steve Zimmer, and KIPP charter school founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, TFA prides itself on introducing individuals to the policy side of the public education debate.
As the Washington Post's education columnist Valerie Strauss explains, "TFA is not looking for young people who want to be teachers, but rather, people it believes will have 'important' jobs later in life who can advocate for public education. That's why TFA recruits are asked to give only a two-year commitment to teaching."
"TFA is a self-perpetuating organization," addsJacobin writer Kenzo Shibata. "Teach for two years, burn out, go to law school, become a policy maker, make policies that expand TFA."
In a Los Angeles Times article published Saturday, reporter Howard Blume notes the high correlation between the number of TFA hires in states such as California, Alabama, North Carolina, and Louisiana, and the dominance of efforts to embrace charter school expansion, limiting the protections on veteran teachers and teachers' unions.
In Chicago--where the school board recently voted to shutter 49 of the city's public schools eliminating jobs for over a thousand teachers--the Board of Education voted to increase its payment to TFA from $600,000 to nearly $1.6 million, and to add up to 325 new TFA recruits to Chicago Public School classrooms, in addition to 270 second year "teacher interns," the Chicago Sun Times reports.
"While TFA uses the rhetoric of justice and equity, these reforms in fact stifle democratic processes and are used to justify budget cuts and the takeover of public institutions by privately funded and privately run companies." -Valerie Strauss
After Hurricane Katrina, when Louisiana state officials laid off more than 7,000 employees and took over 102 of 117 city schools converting them to nonunion charters, Teach for America provided a large share of the replacements.
"I don't think this could have happened without TFA," boasted Georgia State University assistant professor Kristen Buras. "You need these on-the-ground organizations that are going to assist the state with these reforms."
This year, approximately 375 New Orleans teachers are members of TFA, up from 85 just a few years ago.
"While TFA uses the rhetoric of justice and equity, these reforms in fact stifle democratic processes and are used to justify budget cuts and the takeover of public institutions by privately funded and privately run companies," added Strauss.
For just one example, this video from the organization's own website, where TFA alumnus turned Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston employs the language of the civil rights era to justify passage of Colorado's high-stakes teacher accountability law: Though the chorus of criticisms against the organization has grown, it was not until last month that the first coordinated effort to "put the breaks" on TFA took place when roughly one hundred students, parents, academics and teachers, some affiliated and others not with the organization, gathered in Chicago for a symposium entitled, "Organizing Resistance to Teach for America and its Role in Privatization."
"The desire to make the world a better place is something that Teach for America taps into," said TFA alumna Terrenda White, a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University.
"When did my willingness to teach in urban communities become translated to this very specific political agenda? It's not what I believe in."
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