Even at the edu-reform math improvement think promo’d on this sight I did not find a single physics or math major. I did find two or three engineers but everyone should know that their math education ends after two or three semesters of Calculus and one or two semesters of engineering math. And that their physics ends after the basic 1.5 years calculus based physics and statics and fluids.

I did see loads of edu-degrees in leadership, facilitation, curriculum and instruction and education finance and the philosophy of structural education change. Would someone please explain what those degrees are.

And these folks, admittedly completing the weakest degrees in any university system, are leading the charge to save this nation from bad teachers. A couple of them were basketball players!

Truth is stranger than fiction.

While Kim’s story is by no means unusual, it is equalled by the degree to which TFA alums leave teaching to pursue more lucrative offers. This isn’t anything new. Sometime, take a look at the Boards and employees of national and local educational non-profits, as many counter-reformers have. You will note the large number of TFA folks alongside a relative paucity of such individuals who came up through traditional teaching careers to assume positions of influence.

You will also note the relative youthfulness of the non-profit TFA staffers and Board members. What I find really amusing is how most of their stories are some variation on this theme: “Kate joined Education Pioneers after spending two years teaching in rural New Mexico with Teach for America. In New Mexico, she became interested in management and leadership issues as root causes of failing schools, and sought an avenue to contribute in bringing talented, dedicated leaders to education.” http://www.educationpioneers.org/about-us/staff-members#1058

Then, when you look at the other people involved in education outside the box, you will find many people with connections to hedge fund management entities, technology corporations, and yet other non-profits. It’s all a very clever set-up; a nearly self-contained ecosystem of mutualism. Most classroom teachers are not affected by these non-profit entities, nor know much about the minutiae of their inner workings.

But why should classroom teachers be aware of the larger universe of reform? Most of their free time is not theirs and is instead invested with their charges in the classroom. While I will defend the value of unionism in education, the NEA and AFT have done a lousy job fighting back against political encroachment on not just labor relations but the larger attack upon the entire educational system.

So, there you go. There are indeed the Kim’s of the TFA pedigree who do commit or, more realistically, found out that teaching is rewarding and the TFA perks, can wait or are irrelevant. Just because there are true-believers who go on to be great teachers or who are otherwise long-term graduates of TFA doesn’t mean TFA isn’t a racket.

I recently came across this fascinating insight into TFA. No, not from some anonymous blogger, or even 60 Minutes. It’s from a proud parent of a TFA’er who is more than happy to detail the particulars http://patimes.org/teach-for-america-a-model-for-attracting-and-developing-talent/ Money quotes, “But TFA also understands that many of its corps members will go on to other careers after the initial two-year teaching commitment.” And, ” Partnerships with more than 200 graduate schools, including top-ranked programs in education, law, medicine, public policy, business, the sciences and engineering, that offer a range of benefits for corps members and alumni. These include two-year deferrals to work for Teach for America, course credits for the corps experience, waived application fees, and special scholarships and awards.”

Pity the traditional route to the classroom. People who get into TFA would indeed seem to have been qualified for another, more lucrative, career. People who want to be teachers in the traditional system but discover it’s not for them have no fall-back. Look, it’s just my guess here but it just might be possible that if a college grad agrees to do a two-year stint after college, it’s kind of like going the extra mile during high school to get into a college of choice. The modern job market is as much about padding one’s resume with extras as it is with actual measures of performance. This, dear friends, is the face of 21st Century education. It’s not about digital this or that or virtual worlds of whatever; it’s squarely about gaming a dysfunctional system. Same as it always was, same as it always was.

Hello Florida, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk to you again.
Why are you so, oh, oh-oh
The crazy oh no, no-no

Rick Scott:
Is a $2,335-a-year pay cut for the average teacher worth a $44.72 property tax savings for the average Florida homeowner with a homestead exemption?
That’s a key question behind the math that Gov. Rick Scott’s administration is banking on for his pared-back school spending plan as the legislature gears up to begin its annual session Tuesday.
More Rick Scott:
“Why would it be that teachers are guaranteed their jobs for life? If you were guaranteed – you didn’t have to do anything, just showed up, and you didn’t have any obligation other than showing up every day – you think you would get better or worse? Right. This stuff is not hard. So we have a big opportunity.”
Ann Romney:
“AR: I’ve been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people’s lives if they don’t get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers’ unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.”

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2012

Reprehensibility
How dare Diane Ravitch and Karen Lewis stand up for teachers after what happened in Newtown! How dare they point out the obvious fact that these educators were career teachers and union members! It’s reprehensible! Clearly, it’s wrong to stand up for those who work in schools after six of their own were killed in an act of senseless violence!

Because it’s not like there’s been a systemic assault on teachers and their unions over the last few years, right? [all emphases mine]

Dannel Malloy:

“And to earn that tenure — that job security — in today’s system basically the only thing you have to do is show up for four years,” Malloy said in his speech to the Legislature on the session’s opening day. “Do that, and tenure is yours.”
Chris Christie (there are so many to choose from – lets go with…):
The state teachers union said–they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The “me first” rally. “Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line.” Well, you know what? I’m not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we’ll shine a bright light on it, and we’ll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that’s how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest.
Mike Bloomberg:
“Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke,” Bloomberg said. “Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”
Half of the teachers in NYC are “bad”?

Bobby Jindal:
Jindal, speaking at the Brookings Institute on Tuesday, said America’s K-12 schools are lagging in the world and “do not provide equal opportunity in education” to children of different income levels. But his strongest criticism was aimed at the teachers unions, which he blamed for standing in the way of progress.
“Were it not for the teachers union Herculean efforts, every low income family would probably have the opportunity to enroll their child in a better performing school,” Jindal said. “That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.”
A “fact”? Also from Jindal:
1. “Short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up one of the business’s clients, they can never be fired.”

2. “We are going to create a system that pays teachers for doing a good job instead of for the length of time they have been breathing.”
Scott Walker:
January 3, 2011 — In his inaugural address, Walker attacks teachers and other public workers’s salaries and tries to pit low-wage workers against public workers, saying, “We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.”
February 11, 2011 — When Walker announced his intention to kill teachers’ unions and other public sector unions, he said that he was prepared to bring in the national guard to deal with worker unrest. Clearly, Walker’s statement was a smear on teachers and other public workers, because it intimates that teachers and other public workers would react as a union thugs requiring the National Guard’s services.
February 21, 2011 — Sent out a press release with a sub-headline of “Viagra for Teachers,” which attacked teachers in Milwaukee for having a health care plan included all prescriptions.
March 3, 2011 — Sent out a press release with subheadline of “Arbitrator Reinstates Porn-Watching Teacher.”
March 8, 2011 — Sent out a press release with a subheadline of “Teachers Receiving Two Pensions” and another attacking Green Bay teachers called “10,000 Per Year for Doing Nothing”
March 10, 2011 — Sent out a press release trumpeting his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he attacks the seniority system that protects older– and more expensive– teachers from being fired and replaced by younger, less-expensive workers during budget crunches.
March 31, 2011 — Creates the absurd “Read to Lead” task force and smears Wisconsin teachers by making the completely bogus claim that 1/3 of Wisconsin fourth graders cannot read at a basic level. Such bogus claims are simply intended to undermine public confidence in Wisconsin schools.
The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute:
Teachers, did you know you are overpaid by 52%?
That’s the conclusion of a new study by conservative-leaning think tanks The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
Taxpayers, they conclude, are “overcharged” $120 billion each year from the difference in teacher salaries and compensation compared to similarly credentialed private sector workers. Teacher benefits are often far more generous than the private sector, the study notes.

Dannel Malloy:

“And to earn that tenure — that job security — in today’s system basically the only thing you have to do is show up for four years,” Malloy said in his speech to the Legislature on the session’s opening day. “Do that, and tenure is yours.”

Chris Christie (there are so many to choose from – lets go with…):
The state teachers union said–they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The “me first” rally. “Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line.” Well, you know what? I’m not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we’ll shine a bright light on it, and we’ll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that’s how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest.

Mike Bloomberg:
“Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke,” Bloomberg said. “Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”

Bobby Jindal:
Jindal, speaking at the Brookings Institute on Tuesday, said America’s K-12 schools are lagging in the world and “do not provide equal opportunity in education” to children of different income levels. But his strongest criticism was aimed at the teachers unions, which he blamed for standing in the way of progress.
“Were it not for the teachers union Herculean efforts, every low income family would probably have the opportunity to enroll their child in a better performing school,” Jindal said. “That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.”
A “fact”? Also from Jindal:
1. “Short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up one of the business’s clients, they can never be fired.”

2. “We are going to create a system that pays teachers for doing a good job instead of for the length of time they have been breathing.”