Those who have been paying attention know that some years ago Teach for America ceased being an organization providing bright students from good colleges to fill in at schools where there were a lack of certified teachers to being an organization that serves as a way-station on the way to other careers.
What many may not realize is how formalized this has become, not merely with the preferential admission to graduate and professional schools after 2 years of service in TFA, but also a parallel organization, Leadership for Educational Equity, which seeks to place former corps members into positions of influence in politics and policy.
To help understand the scope of this, I strongly recommend that you read Teach For America's Deep Bench from American Prospect. This piece, by James Cersonsky, from last October, provides a clear and potent description of what the TFA apparatus is seeking.
Here are two key early paragraphs from the article:
Since its founding, TFA has amassed some 28,000 alumni. Two have made Time’s “Most Influential” list: its Chief Executive Officer and founder, Wendy Kopp, and former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor and StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee. Others have gained prominence as the leaders of massive charter operations, like KIPP Schools and New Schools for New Orleans. And TFA alums are currently the heads of public schools in Newark, D.C., and Tennessee.
What about the other 27,000-some-odd people? That’s where Leadership for Educational Equity, or LEE, comes in. LEE was founded in 2007 as a 501(c)4 spin-off of Teach for America to provide resources, training, and networking for alumni who are interested in elected office or other extracurricular leadership positions. Its goals are ambitious: by 2015, as its standard job posting reads, it hopes to have 250 of its members in elected office, 300 in policy or advocacy leadership roles, and 1,000 “in ‘active’ pipelines for public leadership.” If all goes as planned, LEE could shift control over American education reform to a specific group of spritely college grads-turned-politicians with a very specific politics.
There is more.
LEE functions as an alumni network for former TFA corps members.
The organization also provides resources for the electorally curious. Besides running two six-month fellowships pairing members with public officials, it offers a variety of webinars and tool-kits on organizing, advocacy, and elections.
And there is this:
In 2010, 12 LEE members ran for local boards of education (with 4 wins), 31 for Chicago local school councils (14 wins), 31 for neighborhood council or other local office (21 wins), and four for state legislature (two wins). In LEE’s accounting, these totals are a step up from 2008, when five members ran for school boards (four wins) and four for other local offices (three wins). In total, as of August 2011, LEE counts 56 TFA alums in office: 14 on school boards, 13 on local school councils, 24 on neighborhood councils or other local boards, two state senators, a constable, a judge, and a justice of the peace.
Understand clearly, that whatever the original intention of TFA may have been, it has morphed into something else, and LEE serves as an important mechanism, to seek to reshape American education into a model to which most Americans have NEVER given their assent.
Read the article.
Consider the implications.
Recognize that the vision they seek to impose is NOT what most professional educators seek for their students.
Then decide what if anything you are going to do to save public education.