I read an article yesterday about a new study which ‘proves’ how effective TFA teachers and TFA alumni teachers are. The study, which can be accessed here, claimed that middle school math TFA corps members get an extra half year of learning than non-TFA novice teachers, that middle school reading TFA alumni get an extra…
read more »About two months ago I set a countdown to June 6, 2013, the last day of school. At that time, one hundred and forty-two days stood between me and freedom. On the other hand, one hundred and forty-two days stood between me and the coveted TFA “significant gains”. One hundred and forty-two days stood between…
read more »A few days ago The Pope of the Catholic church and The Pope of Teach For America, Wendy Kopp, both stepped down. I was not always thrilled with the direction that Wendy Kopp was steering the organization in, and I publicly aired my grievances in my open letter to her. I was pleased with her…
read more »Yesterday I watched, for the first time, an episode of Oprah’s new reality show ‘Blackboard Wars.’ The show chronicles a first year ‘turnaround’ high school in New Orleans which has been taken over by a charter company. New Orleans is ‘ground zero’ for the corporate reform model with a TFAer as state education commissioner and…
read more »I’m going to make a few top 10 lists over the coming weeks since I know from reading other people’s blogs that I don’t often go back and read old posts. But some of the older posts from me and others are not ‘stale’ in any way. So in addition to this list, which will…
read more »For the first 19 years of my 21 year struggle to help TFA improve, my issue with them was quality of the training for the new corps members. It has been frustrating since sending untrained TFAers into the neediest schools is unfair to the kids and also unfair to the corps members. As the organization…
read more »In New York City schools get an annual ‘progress report’ grade from A to F. Schools with an F, D, or three consecutive Cs can be slated for closure, and many school have suffered this fate, with about twenty more fighting for their lives this year. The progress report is based on test scores and,…
read more »When you ask the leader of an allegedly high performing charter school what makes them so successful, they generally say that they have more flexibility with hiring and firing since they are free from pesky union contracts. This is why I found it quite odd that I received an announcement with job openings at a…
read more »In November I visited the KIPP High School in New York City and summarized some of what I saw in a blog post. I’ve decided to write more about what I saw there in a series of shorter blog posts. In this one, I will describe what I saw in their special education classes. KIPP…
read more »Wendy Kopp announced that she is stepping down as CEO of Teach For America, and around that time on The Huffington Post, a TFA alum named Kate Casas wrote an open letter to Wendy. This letter was in stark contrast to the one I wrote which I was pretty proud of and which actually got…
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