No I will not contribute to an organization that still continues to oppress students, communities, corps members, and public education.
TFA Wants My Money: Why I said “NO!”
No I will not contribute to an organization that still continues to oppress students, communities, corps members, and public education.
Cloaking Inequity 
Nicely stated notice of the “strategic” overuse of people of color in the TFA advertising; that has always stuck in my craw.
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Dr. JVH, I read the wonderful letter from the TFA alumnus to Kevin Huffman and thought I’d share the facebook page some Tennesseans set up when Kevin Huffman was our Commissioner of Education. There was no love lost when he was finally asked to leave TN. https://www.facebook.com/RemoveKevinHuffman
It’s ironic that Huffman would be asking teachers for money since he made certain that TN borad of ed approved a massive cut to teacher pay, eliminate raises for advanced degrees & dumb down certification requirements . When he was TN Commissioner of Education he removed yearly raises & replaced them with paltry increases at 5 & 10 yrs & ending all raises after 11 yrs of teaching. When Gov Bill Haslam (billionaire oil gov) hired Huffman he received the highest salary in the state. Haslam justified it by claiming he couldn’t find quality public employess without raising the salary.
Maybe someone on the TFA board should track any money Huffman collects- he was accused of corruption & misuse of TFA funds. Here’s the report:
“Kevin Huffman, under the direction of Bill Haslam, drives education policy in Tennessee. Where did he come from? Just a few years ago, Huffman was senior vice president of the Teach for America organization, which relies heavily on local, state, and federal tax dollars. A scandal initiated by an audit by the Department of Education’s Inspector General (IG) that identified a multitude of suspicious transactions was the subject of a CBS News investigation and was highlighted in Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)’s annual pork report with the heading, “Pigs in the Classroom.”
Most of these transactions were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a $277,812 charge for food and lodging for an event that might not have even taken place. Huffman was personally questioned about these dealings, and when TFA later submitted documents in an effort to explain away the missing money, the IG rejected them because the documents showed “significant discrepancies.” The IG suggested Huffman’s group return the taxpayer money.
The taxpayer funds were never returned. Huffman instead took a job in the Haslam administration, where he is one of Tennessee’s highest paid state employees and is charged with managing a $9.5 billion annual budget, several million dollars of which goes to … Teach for America. We’ll get into the ins and outs of that contract later. As you’d suspect, it’s very sketchy.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/…/07/11/eveningnews/main4254956.shtml
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Interesting to have found the word “compel” in the Kevin Huffman letter:
I’m proud that we continue to compel tens of thousands of young people to apply for the chance to work in our highest need schools.
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