TFA spokesperson Rebecca Neale said that TFA members are not trying to compete with district teachers. "Every school year there are openings and TFA members would interview alongside other candidates," she said.

Um, how is that not competing?

hey teachers union: fuck off

As a teacher, I feel insulted that TFA thinks that a 5 week training is equivalent to the master's degree that I worked two years at. Teaching is a skill that must be learned and to think that any green grad can do it really explains the situation our country is in.
Real solutions are often long, difficult, and require commitment from those involved. I find it hard to believe that just throwing bodies at the achievement gap will make any effective, real or long-term improvements.

@5 As someone who had shitty teachers who couldn't be fired, I'm offended (and wholly unsurprised) that the Teacher's Board is fighting this.

Look: TFA is one of the only outfits that does any significant research on what makes an effective teacher. They use this when screening applicants, and they screen heavily. This service alone is valuable, as teacher's unions frequently dismiss, ignore, or stop most other research. Without any metrics and the refusal to even seek them, how could you possibly go forward? And how dare they pretend to have the students' interests in mind when they blithely settle for mediocrity.

Unsurprisingly, most findings show that experience (and, sorry, Master's Degrees too) seem to have little to no bearing on how good a teacher is. Again, as a recipient of many a lame teacher, you don't need to tell me twice.

(Note that this doesn't mean all teachers in the system, or with Master's Degrees etc. are bad and toxic and ruinous. There are many fantastic teachers. But there are also many who are terrible, and remain protected).

This outrage is reminiscent of Michelle Rhee in Washington DC: are all her ideas great and fair? No, but an appropriate solution to the clusterfuck that is our education virtually must provoke an outraged reaction because the system is so broken.

TFA needs a success story VERY badly right now in order to keep justifying their presence in failing school districts where they have had little to no appreciable impact - Seattle schools present a great opportunity for them because of the "solvable achievement gap."

TFA is what happens when you privatize education: short-term focus on profits, long-term focus on entering new markets. It is basically a headhunting firm that has no investment in the long term improvement of education in the schools in which it operates.

Obviously elite college graduates have nothing useful to teach K-12 students.

I attended sub-par Washington public schools for most of my life. Nearly all of my teachers were dumbfuck Central Washington University graduates. "Fully-credentialed" though they may have been, they never taught me a damn thing. Anything that brings higher-caliber teachers into the classroom is fine by me. The best school systems in the world put their top college graduates in the classroom--it would be nice if we could do the same, though I recognize that paying teachers more would probably accomplish this better than TFA ever could.

maybe it's union teachers PLUS tfa kids = smaller teacher/student ratios. more teachers, not TFA instead of pros.

Studies of TFA folk show that they do about the same as other completely inexperienced teachers. They do worse than experienced teachers. Seattle has lots of experienced teachers looking for jobs. Ergo, we don't need TFAers. They may be earnest, well-meaning kids, but three years later over 80% are no longer teaching. How will that help our at-risk students?

So Maria GJ, who is enmeshed with the folks who run Teach for America, might end up paying TFA $4,000 for each of their 50 hires. And guaranteed, there will be 50 hires.

That's going to be $200,000 a year to Teach for America, just for the hell of it. That's enough money to hire about 3 more teachers. It's a waste of money.

@6: I'm sorry you had shitty teachers. Look squarely at your administrators, who hired those teachers, granted tenure to those teachers, and then kept those teachers in a position where they could be shitty.

This myth that you can't fire teachers is made up by principals and superintendents who are lazy. If they did their jobs, this wouldn't be an issue.

And seriously, @6, if you think that TFA is the only group doing research on effective teachers, you're a damned fool.

@7: "TFA teachers can go into a failing classroom filled with 5th graders who read at a 2nd grade, bring them up to grade level and say, "Look what I did." "

All of them? Every time? Really? And only TFA? Ed school graduates can't do that? Do you really want to set the expectations that high for TFA? Because in a lot of places, they're not that much better than every other teacher.

My testimony in front of the school board tonight:

There were five full time openings for teachers as advertised on the SPS web page this morning.

We have four colleges of education here in Seattle between Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University and UW and a remaining pool of rifed teachers in our district.

Why are you now considering hiring TFA recruits at an additional $4,000 per recruit to staff our schools?

The Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University in conjunction with the School of Education at the University of Colorado recently published a study looking at the performance of TFA recruits with that of their certified counterparts. They found that "the students of novice TFA teachers performed significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers". And in a large-scale Houston study headed by Stanford University, in which the researchers controlled for experience and teachers' certification status, standard certified teachers consistently outperformed uncertified TFA teachers of comparable experience levels in similar settings.

Links to these studies are provided in an e-mail that I sent to you today.

Another relevant piece of information is that a federal appeals panel in California agreed recently with low-income students and community organizations that teachers still in training are not "highly qualified" under federal education law. The effect of that decision is that teachers in training must be fairly spread across classrooms, and parents notified when their student has one of these teachers.

Hiring teachers, particularly for schools in low-income communities can destabilize a community even more. Students bond with their teachers and expect to see them at their school everyday. It provides a sense of continuity and stability that some students might not otherwise have. To bring in young recruits, fresh out of college, provide them with five weeks of “training” and then place them in the most low-performing schools defies logic. Then after two years, when their contract is up, most of these recruits move on, leaving the students and the community behind. This is called churn and is unfair to struggling students who develop bonds with their teachers just to see them leave after two years.

Director Patu, if you are concerned about the quality of teachers in the schools that you represent, then I would suggest that you have the district actively recruit the best and the brightest from our local four colleges of education who are more than willing to make a commitment to those communities over the long haul.

I would also suggest that you consider hiring older professionals such as myself who have the experience not only in terms of what we do professionally but who have also mentored and taught on a volunteer basis. There is a large pool of professionals in the fields of science, engineering and the arts who are semi-retired, unemployed or lightly employed who would love nothing better than to work full time as teachers, providing additional wisdom, experience and knowledge in the fields of math, science, history and the arts. I am not suggesting displacing any qualified teachers, far from it, but if you are looking at alternatives, then think farther than Teach for America which has simply become an employment agency for charter schools.

21-I'd say dumbasses who want to control the content and standards of education at the local level, vis a vis school board member morons, are the biggest impediment to quality education in America. Also, all the other dumbasses who beat up on the teaching profession and education in the US aren't helping. While we fight over petty bullshit, we're easily passed by most of the developing world because we're not willing to pay for better-qualified teachers for our own children.

But American exceptionalism and stuff.

When you want to make a great car, you hire union autoworkers.
When you want to install a good electrical system, you hire union electricians.
When you want your busses driven well, you hire union bus drivers.

Just look at this thread. Union teachers with experience and knowledge of the subject are forced to argue against people who claim the six teachers they had in elementary school didn't teach him well.

I'm all for anything that weakens the teacher's union.

Most teachers simply can't comprehend why their organization is the subject of so much vitriol. After all, it's a union. Somehow, that should make everything better, right? Just look at six shooter's comment.

A union is a democracy where kids and parents don't vote. A union's main function is to get the best job security, working conditions, and compensation for its members. Period. Teachers that try to argue that a union is somehow focused on improving educational outcomes argue that the way to do that is to pay teachers more, have them work less, or improve their working conditions. They evaluate any other changes in light of those issues, and in general, change is bad (except when it directly leads to substantial improvements in compensation or working conditions).

In short, while kids may be a high priority for many teachers, they're a much lower priority for the union.

Why are is the union having to defend itself? Because of the experience of thousands of parents and children across the country, over decades. If union boosters are shocked they're on the defensive, they haven't been paying attention.

Agreed, @25:

The Union's argument: Why should the district spend money on hiring teachers with fewer credentials than our professional teachers? Why should the district weaken its standards AND pay a recruiting fee to potential hires when there are already plenty of teachers already applying for these positions?

Union teachers are better teachers and therefore worth more money than non-professional teachers. At its core, the Union believes it provides better workers which, in the end, will result in better educations for children.

@16
"I'm sorry you had shitty teachers. Look squarely at your administrators, who hired those teachers, granted tenure to those teachers, and then kept those teachers in a position where they could be shitty."

And what? They'll say they're sorry? Great, that fixes everything!

Whatever their reasons are for retaining shitty teachers probably haven't changed. And moving the blame to superintendents doesn't change the fact that the system allows tenure of awful teachers, and places importance on certification that seems to validate nothing.

"This myth that you can't fire teachers is made up by principals and superintendents who are lazy. If they did their jobs, this wouldn't be an issue."

Obviously it's technically possible to fire someone. It's just damn difficult if the teacher wants to stay in that position. And again, moving the blame doesn't change the existence or shittiness of shitty teachers, or the existence or brokenness of the broken system that harbors them. Say it's someone else's fault, I'll be glad to be rid of them too.

"And seriously, @6, if you think that TFA is the only group doing research on effective teachers, you're a damned fool."

You're right: I was over the top, and hyperbolic. Thanks for calling me on it.

That being said, teacher's unions really need to do more to convince me that a) they're applying this research at all, but more significantly b) even if it means cutting some fat. As another commenter pointed out, the -only- time I see them mobilize or move to change anything is if it increases compensation or working conditions. When teachers unions taken any sacrifice at all for the better interests of their students?

Oh, and @24, I don't know if you noticed, but we're 48th in STEM fields. It's not just my terrible teacher. Having the word 'Union' in your group doesn't imply virtue.

I know the union would like people to believe the assertion that union teachers are better teachers. I'm sure many union teachers would like to believe that, too. I'm also sure that union leadership works hard to convince teachers that the dues they pay, rights they give up, and sacrifices they make to be union members also makes them better teachers.

When allowing carefully screened recent grands to merely interview for teaching positions causes this type of firestorm from the union, it's a sign that there's something deeply wrong with it.

NEA boosters don't get it. Their members are trapped in a deafening echo chamber. It seems impossible for a lot of their members to recognize that many, many parents have had experiences that have convinced them that the union is the biggest obstacle standing between their kids and a great education. After all, what is one, ten, twenty, even a hundred parents trying to reform a local school, when they're up against a huge, entrenched national union that has carefully constructed contracts that protect its members above all else?

In the echo chamber, the parents' experiences get dismissed as propaganda or bad management. When the union dodges responsibility and accountability again and again and devalues the direct experience that parents have, it only reinforces their conviction.

"A union is a democracy where kids and parents don't vote."

No, this district is a democracy where kids and parents don't vote." There was ZERO public engagement on this issue. These are "teachers" who will be teaching kids with huge challenges. Their parents deserve to understand - in advance - what they are getting. TFA teachers can teach special ed....with no special training. Not my kid.

And TFA Foundation can get access to student identifiable information and use it (and even give it to third parties). It's in the agreement. It's nonsense.

This has a lot less to do with unions than it does with a foundation trying to build itself up and burnish some resumes.

Agreed, @25:

The Union's argument: Why should the district spend money on hiring teachers with fewer credentials than our professional teachers? Why should the district weaken its standards AND pay a recruiting fee to potential hires when there are already plenty of teachers already applying for these positions?

Union teachers are better teachers and therefore worth more money than non-professional teachers. At its core, the Union believes it provides better workers which, in the end, will result in better educations for children.