Philip Kovacs Takes on TFA in Huntsville
In the past few weeks, Philip Kovacs has taken a public stance in Huntsville, Alabama, raising questions about the school district's decision to invest significant resources in bringing Teach For America interns to that city. This is a guest post by him, describing his concerns.
Guest post by Philip Kovacs.
When I first heard about Teach for America, I thought it sounded like a good program. Given a hard to staff school in a poverty stricken city, why not let enthusiastic college graduates with some training go in and put their hearts and souls into classrooms that would otherwise be staffed with less-prepared or unprepared individuals?
That line of thinking began to change as I read column after column problematizing the venture.
Over the past two years, my city (Huntsville, AL) laid of over 300 certified teachers, many of them graduates of my program. Then I found out our city had signed a $1.7 million deal for at least 170 TFA members. That figure is
