Spoiler alert, Teach for America loving group says Teach for America is great.

I love cheesecake; I completed a study that said cheesecake is both good for my figure and low in calorie. My conclusion, eat more cheesecake. That’s essentially Miami Dades Teach for America study and it’s probably just as reliable as my cheesecake study too.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funded both TFA and the study conducted by the American Institute for Research. You know the same group who was responsible for the disastrous VAM scores and who have chosen to field-test our next round of standardized test questions in Utah. I personally wouldn’t go to them to ask for anything more important than the time of day and couple that with a TFA loving foundation bankrolling the study and I am very skeptical.

I personally don’t understand how any district would prefer to have Teach for America which produces both churn and prevents people who may be professional teachers and make education a career from filling those slots in any classroom. Furthermore I can’t imagine a parent picking a Teach for America recruit without an education degree, who has five weeks of training and who will only stay for two years over a professional teacher either. Putting professional teachers in all our classrooms should be our goal. However since a handful of really rich people like Teach for America I guess we will continue to experiment with our children.

We should want to know how Teach for America is doing in our schools but we should take this study with more than a few grains of salt, more like a salt mines worth.