PSAT for 7-23-13: How about an LSC no-TFA policy?
I came back from a week in DC at the Parents Across America annual meeting to find my friend Xian Barrett’s face on the front page of the Sun-Times. Xian, a top notch teacher, 2010 U. S. Teaching Ambassador Fellow, and all-around excellent human being, was just fired in the latest round of CPS budget death-blows. Read Xian’s wonderful, moving blog post, “Yes, I Was Fired and Still We Will Win,” here.I first wrote about Xian’s Teaching Ambassador recommendation to Arne Duncan and his minions that LSCs are the best, most democratic way to run schools – just one of the many cool things he has done over the years.
It was inevitable that when CPS moved to lump-sum budgeting this summer, schools would feel forced to make choices between keeping fewer experienced teachers or hiring more new, less expensive teachers to maintain lower class sizes. Of course, our students need both experienced teachers like Xian AND lower class sizes, not one or the other.
Folks in power who don’t seem to care what students really need are pushing Teach for America (TFA), the heavily-funded program that puts college graduates with nothing more than a 5-week summer training course into struggling urban schools.
To teach.
Senate Democrats are big on TFA. They have been re-writing NCLB requirements that every child