Cloaking Inequity

Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers

1–2 minutes

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Vasquez Heilig, J., Cole, H. & Springel, M. (2011). Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers. Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, 20(3), 388-412.

At a time when accountability leads almost any discussion within or about the education sector, it is a disconcerting irony that we continue to require more and more out of students in terms of skills, performance, and results, but less out of their teachers. The policy disconnect cannot be ignored. Now is the time to elevate the teaching profession, not dismantle it. Men and women entering the profession via TFA should do so not as a short-term stepping stone to other vocations—but because they feel a long-term calling and a commitment to dedicate a career to teaching. Sometimes reform needs reform.

Vasquez Heilig, J., Cole, H. & Springel, M. (2011). Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers. Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, 20(3), 388-412. At a time when accountability leads almost any discussion within or about the education sector, it is a disconcerting irony that we continue to require more…

6 responses to “Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers”

  1. Failing the Test: Nine Solution Takeaways – Capital & Main

    […] low pay have enabled thousands of teachers with just five weeks of summer training (and sometimes as few as 30 hours) to enter the classrooms of primarily poor children during the past 10 years. All […]

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  2. On Assignment for DianeRavitch.Net: Rewriting Thomas Harkin’s Teach For America Constituent Letter | Cloaking Inequity Avatar
    On Assignment for DianeRavitch.Net: Rewriting Thomas Harkin’s Teach For America Constituent Letter | Cloaking Inequity

    […] I have been very pleased with the impact of NCLB and the watering down of the high-quality teacher provision. Why? My support of a weak high-quality teacher definition has resulted in an explosion of under-qualified teachers entering the classroom across the nation. National data show that NCLB has exploded under-qualified individuals into schools— as about 133,000 teachers entered classrooms with limited training in the seventeen years before NCLB compared to 359,000 in the seven years after its introduction— a 270% increase. Typically, poor children are primarily taught by the under-qualified teachers— not children attending wealthy schools. Why would the wealthy allow their children to be taught by teachers that are under-qualified? That is a silly proposition. BTW. You’re Welcome. (See Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers) […]

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  3. Julian Vasquez Heilig Gives a Lesson to Senator Harkin About TFA | Diane Ravitch's blog Avatar
    Julian Vasquez Heilig Gives a Lesson to Senator Harkin About TFA | Diane Ravitch's blog

    […] I have been very pleased with the impact of NCLB and the watering down of the high-quality teacher provision. Why? My support of a weak high-quality teacher definition has resulted in an explosion of under-qualified teachers entering the classroom across the nation. National data show that NCLB has exploded under-qualified individuals into schools— as about 133,000 teachers entered classrooms with limited training in the seventeen years before NCLB compared to 359,000 in the seven years after its introduction— a 270% increase. Typically, poor children are primarily taught by the under-qualified teachers— not children attending wealthy schools. Why would the wealthy allow their children to be taught by teachers that are under-qualified? That is a silly proposition. BTW You’re Welcome. (See Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers) […]

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  4. The Teat: Teach For America— Expensive & Convincing Inequity | Cloaking Inequity Avatar
    The Teat: Teach For America— Expensive & Convincing Inequity | Cloaking Inequity

    […] is also disconcerting is that they lobby heavily behind in the scenes in D.C. AGAINST teacher quality provisions in legislation because they believe it will adversely harm their […]

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  5. George Buzzetti Avatar
    George Buzzetti

    Teach for America started out as something good and morphed into something bad for education when the big money came their way. Now it is used as a calling card to certain corporations and to eliminate high time experienced teachers who are about to vest in lifetime benefits and such at the top of the pay scale. It is totally blatant in the way it is done. They do not last very long. Why would you go to an ivy league college with those costs for a low paying job unless it is to prevent paying to work, intern. It is better to get TFA on your resume and get paid something and they go get the good job. Districts today use flexability, interfund transfers, RTI and TFA to try to balance their budgets. This is happening everywhere. Everything is a percentage and that is how they look at it. Illegal or not, who cares, just do it. Fire teachers without due process, falsely charge them with crimes, replace them with TFA, who cares, just do it. Students, you are nothing more than revenue generators for us to pork our friends.

    And make sure that you realize that Obama and Duncan along with the republicans are behind this. As a friend of mines grandfather taught him “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.” Just watch what they do not what they say.

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  6. A Roundup: Lean Times, Kool-Aid, and Teach For America | Cloaking Inequity Avatar
    A Roundup: Lean Times, Kool-Aid, and Teach For America | Cloaking Inequity

    […] wandering around the web rounding up how localities have dealt with TFA in these lean times. In Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers we […]

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