Just curious, is that 18,688 unique applicants?

The UW CofE totally fucked over their 2010 & 2011 masters grads. Those masters are now excluded from open SPS positions and paid/owe $90,000 for their degrees. The TFAs are getting first priority and free tuition if they choose to study for a masters. That's far beyond the "same privileges".

The TFAs don't even have to work in total shit shows now that the program is moving into Seattle and Portland. Seattle schools are far from perfect, but they sure aren't Baltimore or Detroit or the rural South where TFAs went before.

Gee, wonder why the program was so determined to get in middle class city districts? I guess after 20 years of the program's existence, it turns out that having an Ivy League educated teacher for one year doesn't reverse systemic overwhelming poverty after all.

Simple solution to this should the district stuff our schools with recent college grads that have had 5 weeks of teacher training. Parents, don't allow your kids to be taught by these TFA kids. Tell your principal that you want another classroom assignment. Do it as a group. See what happens.

Another part of the story is that there are a large number of teachers who are leaving Rainier Beach High School next year, and it's possible that the District will try to use this school as a testing ground for their TFA dream. Lots of vacancies in a struggling school = lots of possibilities for TFA people. Another grand experiment on our kids...

It's hard to know where to start. Let's start with Peter Maier who seems to be saying our pool of applicants isn't broad enough.

First of all, there are NO guarantees which recruits will come to Seattle. Right now there are about 8 TFAers with science/math backgrounds who expressed interest in either Seattle or Federal Way (the other district taking them in).

Second, there is NO guarantee that most of the TFA recruits will be minorities. In fact, a chart from TFA comparing SPS teachers to TFA shows that the district does better in its numbers of Hispanic/mixed race and Asian candidates than TFA does. And for those expressing interest in the Seattle area, SPS does better in the number of African-Americans.

Morva McDonald, a College of Education professor, who is helping create the TFA accreditation program at UW, told a group of COE PhD students that there is "no teacher shortage in Seattle." And, there isn't.

TFA is just a revolving door of young, undertrained, inexperience teachers going in and out of struggling schools where those students need stability above all else. Having a stream of new teachers coming in and out every two years doesn't help.

Dean Stritikus started working on TFA even before he was announced as Dean (he's a former TFAer himself). He told the Master's students in the COE that if he himself had to choose between a trained Master's student and a TFA recruit, he'd choose the Master's student. BUT he also told the students that they had a "moral responsibility" to support any TFA teacher in the same school as them because the TFA teacher has less training.

Damned by his own words.

This is bullshit.

It's a slap in the face to a crusty, hidebound, demonstrably ineffective teaching establishment that values its seniority privileges and security of benefits more than innovation and the well-being of students.

Just because Washington State has arcane, punishingly restrictive teacher certification processes, doesn't mean people from elsewhere who are genuinely enthusiastic about teaching here shouldn't be allowed to.

Am I being deliberately inflammatory? Maybe. I mean, I am ME, after all. I am not a fan of the existing educational establishment, though, and I'm all in favor of fair, competitive turnover, and, more to the point in this instance, maybe this will be a part of kicking Washington in the ass when it comes to making more people want to teach and making it feasible for them to do so without having to be in the lucky, privileged position of having set out to be teachers from the moment they entered college.

TFA is educational tourism.

Hm, I've graduated from college, I don't know what to do with my life, oh, guess I'll just drop in for a year or two at the nation's neediest schools filled with students who crave consistency. Man what a rough year, good stories to tell to my grandkids, on to law school!

In what other profession is this acceptable? Where else can you just "try out" a professional job, with zero experience, then dump it? Medicine? Business? Law? Don't tell me I'm exaggerating. A poor teacher can do irreparable damage, and they do every day.

The revolving door of young inexperienced teachers is detrimental to our children. You want to attract bright new minds to the profession, and KEEP them? Improve working conditions. Raise salaries. Forgive student loans. Get rid of seniority. That will do a lot more than filling our schools with college grads with no incentive or intention to stay.

I am so baffled at how SPS and the UW COE think we are all idiots. Do they really think this is wise and would be the best for the kids? It just seems ludicrous that they could get away with this.
Sterno, that's a good idea to demand to have your child pulled from a class with a TFAer but is there something we can do before it gets to that point?

I've been a teacher at the secondary level for seventeen years (in both urban and suburban Los Angeles schools) and have seen numerous TFA kids come and go over the years. Generally speaking, I would say that they have been earnest, smart and energetic teachers.

BUT, they typically last only a few years, they have their heads filled with flavor-of-the-month teaching strategies, and their motivations for teaching are often suspect. Too many of them have been seeking to pad their resumes so that they can then go on to grad school, or to an MBA, law or medical school program. In the meantime, local college grads who have spent years (and tens of thousands of dollars) in teacher training programs have been sidestepped. I don't understand why a school district would take TFA recruits unless the new teachers were for critically short subject areas (special ed., math or science). If a district cannot get qualified recruits in those areas, then sure go after TFA aspirants.

TFA only enters a school district if its recruits are given priority in hiring and seniority over other new teachers if layoffs ever occur. I can only wonder why Seattle schools would be targeted for contracts/agreements, as they are nowhere within the bottom 50% of schools nationwide.

Yes, Kerla, you can write to the School Board, the Superintendent, the new President of UW, the Professional Educators Standards Board (which has to vote in early July on UW's proposal). Tell them you HATE this idea. Tell the Board and Superintendent if you get one of these teacher wannabes, you'll protest.

And, if you do, make sure that every other parent you know in the district, knows who these teachers are. Because see, despite the grandiosity of what TFA is, they (and their districts) don't want parents to EVER know their child's teacher is TFA. They know what the likely reaction is.

Director Maier says he wants to expand the applicant pool because having about a hundred qualified, certificated teachers for every available teaching job just isn't enough choice. What an ass.

Just last year, Seattle Public Schools said that they wanted to get more experienced teachers into the low performing schools and reduce the teacher turnover in those schools. So what do they do? They sign up for novice teachers who will leave in two years. That's exactly the opposite of what they said the students needed.

Teach for America is a noble effort, but only where they are needed, and they aren't needed here. They are needed, however, in communities where there are not enough teachers and the choice is long-term substitutes or other folks with emergency credentials. Teach for America in Seattle is like sending CARE packages to Bel Air.