TFA and Charter Schools Move into Sacramento
By SETH SANDRONSKY
There was little news coverage of TFA’s coming to California’s capital city. Was this an accident?
The answer is unclear. What is clear is Michelle Rhee, a TFA alumnus, helms StudentsFirst, an education reform group hostile to teachers’ labor unions, from its national headquarters in Sacramento.
Rhee is married to the city’s mayor, Kevin Johnson; they are registered Democrats. Critical news coverage of their efforts to reform public education is limited.
On that note, the Sacramento News & Review, the city’s alternative weekly, ran two full-page advertisements for TFA recently. (Disclosure: I contribute to SN&R occasionally.)
In the Golden State’s capital city, TFA corps members taught at one traditional public school with a labor union representing all classroom teachers in 2012-2013. TFA corps members also taught at five public charter schools that privately operate with taxpayer dollars, hiring employees under at-will contracts in Sacramento.
Ninety percent of the public charter schools across the US operate as non-union workplaces, according to author and historian Diane Ravitch. This is a close fit to the schools with TFA employees teaching in Sacramento.
Nikolas Howard is the executive director of TFA in Sacramento. Reared in Los Angeles, he became interested in classroom teaching and education reform in the 1990s.
Howard is the first in his family to attend college. He completed his undergraduate studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and graduate school at the University of Oregon.
Howard joined TFA in 2003, teaching special education at a middle school in West Philadelphia. Howard was a TFA coach, instructing incoming teachers in the South Bronx, N.Y., from 2005-2007.
Later, he accepted TFA posts as an assistant principal, chief instructional officer and principal in L.A. He arrived in Sacramento last year.
According to Howard, half of TFA’s teachers in Sacramento are local residents, and identify as people of color from low-income backgrounds. Half of the TFA teachers instruct students in kindergarten through middle
