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Monday, August 5, 2013

All Things Education: Shortages or not, TFA is not the way for VA

All Things Education: Shortages or not, TFA is not the way for VA:

Shortages or not, TFA is not the way for VA


Nice Watch!

Just a quick TFA post.

Today as I was watching & tweeting Governor McDonnell's K-12 Education Reform Summit, I got into some conversations with a TFA advocate, W. Aaron French and Eva Colen who is the Managing Director, Community Engagement at Teach for America--she is based in Richmond.

I'm not going to repeat what I've already written, so if you want to see my previous thoughts on TFA, please read hereand here. As TFA pertains to Virginia and the legislation that just passed, I wrote about that here:
You probably already know what I think. I have written about TFA before. It's my most popular piece. 
The only thing new I have to say is: Why does Virginia need TFA? There are budget and teaching positions being cut across the state and I hear it's hard for our college graduates to get teaching positions. Where is the evidence that there's a teacher shortage anywhere in Virginia? And if there is one, why don't we have a Teach for Virginia instead? Teachers who are being laid off could be given incentives to go and teach in hard to staff areas. Top students at Virginia colleges and universities, especially ones seeking a teacher's license, could also be granted incentives to start their careers in these supposedly "hard to staff" places. 
Otherwise, it doesn't seem like anyone's fighting it, so meh.
Aaron and Eva both claimed that in fact there was a shortage and cited this page from a VADOE website. Now, I don't know if that means these will likely filled with subs or worse-qualified candidates than TFA corps members. I do know