I find myself reading his blog at the TFA blog site frequently. He has been recognizing that Teach for America has changed. It was a group that was meant to work in difficult schools where there was a need. It morphed into a group that is replacing experienced teachers who are laid off to make room.
From Gary Rubenstein's TFA blog:
Why I did TFA and why you shouldn't.
He mentions that he used to recruit for Teach for America.
"When I joined TFA twenty years ago, I did it because I believed that poor kids deserved to have someone like me helping battle education inequity in this country. At the time, there were massive teacher shortages in high need areas......At the time, we knew that we weren’t going to be great teachers. It was unrealistic to believe otherwise. But we also knew that the jobs we were taking were jobs that nobody else wanted. Principals who were hiring these ‘Teachers For America’ or other paraphrasings of this unknown organization, were completely desperate. If not for us, our students, most likely, would be taught by a different substitute each day. Even if we were bad permanent teachers, we WERE permanent teachers and for kids who had little in life they can call permanent, it was something. The motto for TFA back then could have been ‘Hey, we’re better than nothing.’"
Rubenstein goes on to say that he is glad he did TFA. He felt like they did some good, and they were not doing harm. Then he speaks of what it became to get federal and private money.
"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.
...TFA and the destructive TFA spawned leaders suffer a type of arrogance and overconfidence where they completely ignore any evidence that their beliefs are flawed. The leaders TFA has spawned are, to say this in the kindest way possible, ‘lacking wisdom.’"
.."So TFA has participated in building a group of ‘leaders’ who, in my opinion, are assisting in the destruction of public education. If this continues, there will soon be, again, a large shortage of teachers as nobody in their right mind would enter this profession for the long haul knowing they can be fired because of an inaccurate evaluation process. And then, of course, TFA can grow more since they will be needed to fill those shortages that the leaders they supported caused."
The blogger recently posted about a TFA twitter post which got so much attention. I remember it upset me because of the implication that ordinary everyday classroom teachers like I was for decades may give up on kids because they are poor. It's a phrase meant to make traditionally trained public school teachers look bad. It's a nonsensical meme, and I was glad to see Rubenstein speak out on it.
Reason #15 to be wary of TFA
He says he saw this on Twitter:
"So I think if you want to applaud the phrase ‘Poverty Is Not Destiny’ because it says the most obvious thing — that there is no ‘genetic’ obstacle that makes poor kids incapable of succeeding, then go ahead.
But if you are applauding because you believe that TFA has ‘proved’ that with enough grit schools and teachers can overcome all the distractions of poverty, then you are just naive. That naivete might be the thing that causes you to be a failure in the classroom, ironically.
..."At TFA they like to say “I don’t think we have to wait to fix poverty before we can fix education” but the question is whether or not it is truly possible to ‘fix’ education without addressing the bigger issue and the root cause of the education problem. Think of all the money this country spends on standardized testing. Perhaps some of that can be diverted to work on the huge poverty problem which if improved would help with a lot of other problems in this country too."
It will take more bloggers, more media speaking out before the reformers stop using experienced teachers as scapegoats. It is hard to believe that teacher recruits with 5 weeks training have been given so much media coverage as being elite and being far better than experienced teachers.
School districts fight for the right to pay thousands to hire these recruits with so little classroom training. How did they do that? How did they manage to get people to consider them elite? Hiring locally is free and would come with the gratitude of many laid off teachers.
But then the reforms never have been about the children at all. They have been about making education profitable to the very wealthy who are taking it over rather quickly now.