More than one blogger has linked to this LA Times piece by Elle Herman, a TV writer, about her trials and tribulations in getting certified to teach in the public schools. Its woe-as-me style is funny—she must have been a sitcom writer—but it’s also, quite frankly, a bit whiny. Must she really “endure” a TB test and a criminal background check? Um, yeah. Does she really have to take a test to show content mastery? Uh, yes, I think so. Look, I’m not saying that she doesn’t have a legitimate beef with some of California’s certification requirements, and it is true that alternative certification programs should be more streamlined than they currently are, but really, are all the requirements just a “mountain of detritus”? Here’s the world’s tiniest violin . . .

Update: Alexander Russo gets all teary-eyed about the blog dialogue on this post (requires reading the comments).

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Teach For America corps and staff alum Tim Morehouse is in the Olympics in fencing. Saturday night (Aug. 9) at 7, NBC will air a segment on Tim and his Olympic preparations. You can read his blog here.

I know that somewhere (maybe Palo Alto?) someone is saying, “Now wait a minute, TFA–you can’t just train a kid in fencing in 6 weeks and send him into China!”  Well guess what–we totally can.  And the next time someone wants to mess with us, hopefully they’ll picture this sword-wielding bad ass and think twice.

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

It’s not exactly beach reading, but Three Cups of Tea, about a mountaineer who built over 50 schools in Pakistan, is very engaging and certainly an object lesson on perseverance. I am about halfway through it and, like most readers I suspect, just amazed that author, Greg Mortenson, knew nothing about fundraising but was able to pull it off. One of my favorite passages in the book is where he and an American Pakistani—who teaches him how to use a computer—brainstorm a list of really wealthy people in the United States (including Oprah), and then write them letters asking for money. Incidentally, Mortenson’s experience is not so different than that of Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp’s in the early days of the program, as chronicled in her book One Day.  Funny how being somewhat oblivious of the obstacles can actually pay dividends.

Another summer reading rec: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Very entertaining. My only complaint: as with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, author Michael Chabon seems to have a hard time finishing a book.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Test scores in Denver Public Schools rose significantly last year. As in DC, lots of questions about why, who gets credit, etc. and a broader question around how this impacts the teacher compensation discussions per this post. 

These positive stories beg the broader question of how much incremental change–growth that outpaces every other district in the state, mind you, but growth still leaving DPS kids below proficient–should be celebrated.  I’m not going to defile Michael Bennet’s Wheaties this morning though because he’s the first to ask this question even as he is rightfully praised for his vision and willingness to stick his neck out.  One scary thing is that new administrations in DPS and earlier in July, DC Public Schools were able to get test score gains right out of the gate which sated the local beat writers and bought some time. Would the patience for radical reforms still be there if they didn’t get the early bounce?

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

In his most recent Gadfly commentary, Mike Petrilli writes:

The strategy of opening up the teacher pipeline to non-traditional routes is clearly showing some success, in some areas. (Areas, by the way, that tend to attract young high-flyers; the list of such areas is unfortunately short.)  . .  But this strategy isn’t showing success at scale. And thanks to our national obsession with “reducing class size,” we boast a teacher workforce of more than three million; teachers coming through TFA and TNTP are a metaphorical drop in the bucket.

The “scaling up” argument on Teach For America is a bit shopworn. It’s true that Teach For America corps members make up a very small percentage of all teachers in public school classrooms. However, I would argue that in our 18 years of existence, we have learned quite a bit about effective recruitment strategies that, with some tweaking, could be applied to traditional teacher preparation settings. There’s nothing preventing such programs from using these strategies to target undergrads in their sophmore year of college. I think we also know quite a bit about how to accelerate teacher learning that has applications for both traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs.

Despite our elitist rap, we do play nice in the sandbox and look for opportunities to share what we have learned—it’s part of what I was brought onboard to do. Drop me a note if you would like to receive a hard copy of our complete program overview or a PowerPoint on our recruitment strategies.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

I am honored to kick off the first week of Andy’s summer vacation with my colleague Michele. I have been on staff at Teach For America for 8 years (I was in the 1992 corps in Houston and later practiced education law in DC before coming back to the mother ship). 
 
My goals for the week are relatively simple: 1) ensure that we maintain a nice lead-in audience for Goldstein; 2) don’t embarrass Wendy Kopp; 3) write at least one thing that gets cross-posted on the anti-Teach For America blogs as further evidence of the coming of the apolcalypse; and 4) totally blow your minds that a TFA lifer and a former AFT blogger could work together and blog together and, like, totally get along.  It’s wild, man. Reminds me of one of my childhood faves… (note: MM said she gets to be Stevie–apparently not a Paul fan…)

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

Thanks to Eduwonk for allowing us to kick-off the first week of his guestblogging extravaganza. I hope Andy catches lots of fish, rewrites the U.S. Constitution or whatever it is he does on vacation. I am happy to see that he has not, in recent times, referred to his SO as the eduwife—that always creeped me out a bit.

So, I have my blogging shoes on, and I’m ready to roll. Feeling a bit rusty. I used to write for the AFTs NCLBlog—be sure to check out what my pals Ed Muir and John See are up to over there (no good I’m sure). I am now at Teach For America. (Yes, they do “let people go the other way” as someone queried me recently at a conference.)  My boss Kevin Huffman talked me into co-blogging for the week at Eduwonk—thanks Kev! He assures me that he can be quite clever—we shall see!

I thought that out of the box I would just put to rest what may be an underlying question about someone who moves from the AFT to TFA (and yes, I have noticed it’s the same letters reversed).

I drank the Kool-Aid. I believe that Teach For America is building the movement to eliminate educational inequity.  There. I said it. Happy now? And, I humbly submit that it is not inconsistent to be a trade unionist at heart and completely embrace the mission of Teach For America. Talk amongst yourselves.

Let’s move on, no? Is guest-blogging about the blogger (yawn)? Or their organization (bigger yawn)? I think not. I will try to keep references to Teach For America within reason. That said, here is my wholly self-indulgent link of the week: as you sip your morning coffee, take a gander at this video clip if you want to get stoked about the sense of possibility—as some like to say at Teach For America—that together we can close the achievement gap.

P.S. Andy, you owe me dinner. I know you are reading your blog on vacation.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

For the past few weeks in education fly fishing circles there has been some buzz that this photo of Dutko’s Ben Wallerstein in Alaska raised some, umm, you know, size questions relative to Wireless Generation’s Josh Reibel’s recent striper.  Today, upping the stakes, the Reibel clan sends along two photos from a recent Panama trip.   All prior education fish porn pics here.