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I have a friend who works for a school in Tulsa, OK who is being laid off at the end of the school year. From what I have been told, they are laying off 4 to 6 teachers at every school in the city and hiring 50 new TFA teachers for next school year. Some of the teachers have been teaching for over five years and are losing their jobs to TFA teachers.*
Unbelievable. Well, I guess if you were familiar with the schools in Tulsa, it wouldn't be that unbelievable.
*I received all my info from an employee, but here is a link confirming everything, but not mentioning that the 50 employees will be TFA. http://www.tulsabeacon.com/?p=3557
TFA is "Teach For America." That is a program that lets anyone who has a four-year degree to go to a summer training program and teach for three years to pay off student loans. Tulsa signed a contract with the TFA program last summer and I am guessing that they are obligated to take so many of them every year.
The school district was pretty bad already. I am sure this won't help it any.
Those Teach for America folks get lauded for what they do. I think they don't deserve the praise. They waltz in, lord their degrees over everyone, get toasted by the local brass, then waltz out with student loans paid.
You've already admitted that it's already bad; maybe it's worth a try. It sucks to get laid off, but that's the way it goes; money doesn't grow on trees, and you can't tax the unemployed.
It is likely that the TFA teachers will come from better universities, with better GPAs, and will have a much better understanding of Math(s). After all, the standard certified elementary teacher has taken one Math class; Math For Elementary Teachers. I've met a number of them that major in EED simply because they are Math illiterates. Then there is all this coverage of how terrible US kids are in Maths v. their Asian and European counterparts.
It really doesn't matter what university you go to, if you aren't trained to be a teacher, you probably aren't going to be better than the average certified teacher. I wouldn't want a lawyer from Harvard as my doctor, ya know?
The requirement for TFA is to have a bachelor's degree and a 2.5 GPA. I would imagine that 95% of people with a bachelor's degree has a 2.5 GPA.
Also, I don't know of any TFA people working in elementary education. THey may do it, but I am not aware of it. All that I know are in middle level and secondary - and those teachers have a lot of math/science in their degree plans.
The ultimate issue is this: We have more certified teachers than we do teaching positions. Despite this issue, TFA has doubled the number of their "corps members" in the last five years. It seems like an initiative that is not needed right now.
Heaven forbid, Bill Gates showing up to teach computer science. After all, he doesn't have an online degree in Education from the University of Phoenix.
Heaven forbid, Bill Gates showing up to teach computer science. After all, he doesn't have an online degree in Education from the University of Phoenix.
Way to reach out to the extremes of both sides of the spectrum to make a logical point.
I know TFA means well, but I don't like the idea of laying off teachers to hire non-education related graduated.
If a Tulsa Public Schools graduate is lucky enough to land a job, do you think their OJT will be by a professional educrat? Highly likely; not. They might as well get used to it, now. And I love the way the NEA go out of their way to make the non traditional teachers look bad.
TFA is probably a form of union busting--same thing happens in the private sector.
Last edited by smokemaster; 04-12-2010 at 10:30 PM..
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