Big Think

Jesse Alred on April 18, 2009, 9:12 PM

Having captured district leadership positions in several cities, and having created two charter school networks, Wendy Kopp’s Teach For America friends are pursuing an approach to school reform based on the false premise that teachers are the cause of sub-par academic performance in urban schools,

They not only discount major factors like the degree of parent commitment, family stability, student habits and economic inequality, they underestimate the power these obstacles exert in the daily experience of urban schools.

D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s school reform recipe includes three ingredients: close schools rather than improve them; fire teachers rather than inspire them; and sprinkle on a lot of media-thrilling hype.

Appearing on the cover of Time, Ms. Rhee sternly hovered over the camera holding a broom, which she was using to sweep trash, the trash being a metaphor for my urban teacher colleagues. MS RHEE, MY COLLEAGUES WHO WORK IN SOME OF THE TOUGHEST SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES ARE NOT TRASH.

TFA teachers are a welcome addition to our nation’s public schools, and TFA and its offspring, the KIPP and YES charter schools, provide valuable services, but no data exists proving they are closing the achievement gap, or that they (have a formula to close the gap, for the majority of low-income students. KIPP/YES teachers do great work, but they have students whose families apply to schools with longer school days, Saturday classes, an extra month of school in the Summer, and nightly loads of homework. Only a small minority of working-class families will allow schools to take over their kids’ lives that much.)

The TFA coalition implies poor schools and bad teachers create the achievement gap. They want the community to give them power because only they can bring“reform” by eliminating job security and diminishing teacher influence over policy.

This anti-teacher attitude derives from Ms. Kopp’s original vision when she decided, from her Princeton perch and without a day in the classroom, that inexperience was better for teachers than experience. They are launching an  unAmerican Ivy League class war on veteran teachers from our nation’s toughest schools.

tim hall on April 25, 2009, 7:35 PM

I think your both wrong. Great teachers come in many different ages and school districts. Failing schools in tough districts always have two things in common, failing administration and failing community. The administration needs to work on the community and the community needs to work on the administration. I once ask my very conservative friend if the school should be allowed more involvement into a childs after school activities? I went as far as saying that a parent should be prosecuted for child neglect if they won’t turn down the television, create a proper learning enviroment, and see to it that their child completes their assignments. My friend went nuts on me. He said "it is my gosh darn business how I raise my family. No government is going to (explicit) tell me what to do in my household. So, if we are up against this kind of attitude from backwards parents, then we need a work around. We need that child out of that enviroment as much as possible. We need longer class days. We need to make up excuses on weekends to steal their child. We need summer camps around real parents.

In the most troubled districts we need professional child counselers in every first period room talking with the child as they come in the door with that distressed face. These kids really need our help. They need us to look out for them. We have to organize their community. Who else cares enough to do it? If you send the child to the most wonderful charter school in the state, they will still go home to a negative inviroment. They may not fail until after they graduate, but they will most likely fail in a failed community. I have seen many straight A students go straight down the tubes in just six weeks. What is up with that?  It is called family counseling. Get your wallet out if you mean business America. There is no Band-Aid. It is straight-up educating the ignorant community. Trillions of dollars.