Cloaking Inequity

Blogging live from the AERA conference in San Francisco. I am currently listening to the presentations in the session The Racial Complexities of Teach for America in High-Poverty Schools and preparing for duties as discussant. So what is the data collected by researchers being said by these scholar of TFA? (See CI’s TFA posts here) Is there […]

I had a coffee conversation with Mike Feinberg yesterday. About two weeks ago Mike Feinberg contacted me via email about one of my posts on Cloaking Inequity. He related that he wanted to clarify the conversation about KIPP’s funding. I agreed to meet with him at the Blanton Museum Café at UT-Austin for a coffee […]

Special Education and English Language Learners are considered vulnerable student populations. As a result, our society, courts, and policymakers have afforded these student populations special protections. However, in California, until recently, policy has allowed districts to offer rookie teachers limited access to training for teaching special populations— including Teach For America corps members. I have […]

The debate about the efficacy of Teach For America continued in the Washington Post this past weekend. Yes, it goes on and on. This time we are discussing a recently released study (apparently not peer-reviewed at this point) that says TFA teachers’ student performed better in math but not ELA. There are many non-peer reviewed […]

A Cloaking Inequity reader made me aware of this sincere tell-all from a former TFA teacher that was recently posted on Carla Ranger’s blog, a Dallas ISD School Board member (we have lots and lots and lots of TFA in Texas— Dallas, Houston, Rio Grande Valley etc.). John Bilby’s thoughts reblogged from Ranger’s blog: I left […]

Here I thought I couldn’t be surprised by anything that Teach For America does. Then comes along this investigative piece in Edweek’s Living In Dialogue written by Anthony Cody. It is a (not so) surprising narrative about Native students, mutton, $, and TFA from Four Corners. TFA never ceases to disamaze me (Is that a […]

Reblogged from Louisiana Voice: Remember when teaching was about answering to a calling—before the Jindal administration came charging onto the scene with its half-baked ideas of education reform through sweeping legislation that promoted something called Teach for America? As noble and magnanimous as Teach for America (TFA) would have you believe its motives to be, […]

Teach for America released a new study this week about their Texas operation. It is nearly 100 pages long, but when I reviewed the study I noted a fatal flaw. See my discussion of the fatal flaw in The Monitor: Study finds Teach for America corps members, alumni had outsized impact on middle schools in several […]

There is an update on the TFA civil war from California…I received the following letter via email from a source within the TFA alum circle. TFA alumni are organizing for teacher quality in the Golden State. TFA wants to be able continue to assign a revolving door of poorly trained (only 5 weeks in the summer) […]

Is a Civil War brewing amongst the legion of highly-educated (mostly temporary) corps alumni? I have been surprised by the recent articles from former Teach For America teachers discussing a variety of critiques. Emma Lind, a Harvard grad and a former corp member, called for a “rethink” of TFA in the Harvard Crimson. Matt Barnum, the […]