It is almost like the Duval County School Board is so shell-shocked that they can’t be on the right side of anything. They are so mixed up I bet their answer to what 2+2 is the Gettysburg Address. Proof in point, welcome to Teach for America week.
In case you didn’t know it, Teach for America takes non-education majors from supposedly elite college campuses, gives them a five week training course and puts them in the nation’s toughest schools where they are supposed to serve a two year commitment. Duval County while we have plenty of out of work teachers and college of education grads recently contracted with them to bring in 100 teachers. The county also pays 2400 bucks a pop as a finder’s fee.
There whole business model is one big flag but let me give you two more.
1. The school board announced Teach for America week, March 12th –16th on the afternoon of the 12th. Did they not see it coming? No calendars at the school boar building?
2. The press releases finishes up with, hey look at these studies that show Teach for America is a good thing: A growing body of rigorous research demonstrates the effectiveness of Teach For America corps members as classroom teachers. Recent studies from Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee found that corps members have a positive impact on student achievement. The most recent study from Tennessee Higher Education Commission identified Teach For America as the most effective of the state’s 42 teacher-preparation programs for the second consecutive year.
Well rigorous is a bit of a stretch. All of these studies have been debunked to one degree or another and if you type in Teach for America in the search window of Education Matters it will show you how but worse of all if something is so great why do you need to point to studies to say so? There is no study that says puppies are cute and air conditioning is awesome because they are cute and awesome. The mere fact that we have all these studies means a lot of people have questions about the effectiveness of Teach for America and why wouldn’t we, again look at their business model.
My question where is the U.N.F. appreciation week, you know the local college which has been sending teachers into our schools for years. The teachers who have made a life time commitment to our children instead of a, sure I’ll try it shrug.
TFA has a role to play but they should not get first dibs while we have local teachers and college of ed grads looking for a job and they definitly shouldn't get a week dedicated to them.
The school board gets it wrong again.
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