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Monday, January 6, 2014

TFA: The International Brotherhood of Corporate Interests | EduShyster

TFA: The International Brotherhood of Corporate Interests | EduShyster:

TFA: The International Brotherhood of Corporate Interests

Photo credit: Sarah Jane Rhee ofwww.loveandstrugglephotos.com



 By Chad Sommer
When I joined Teach For America in the spring of 2011 I had no idea that my belief in social and economic justice was about to be cynically exploited by the corporate class. As a former development manager for a nonprofit that serves low-income Chicago public school students, TFA’s claims that its corps members and alumni are helping lead aneducational revolution in low-income communities across the country spoke to me. Naively seduced by TFA’s do-gooder marketing pitch, I charged ahead on a mission to close the academic “achievement gap” that TFA blames on incompetent (read unionized) teachers.
Today, having completed the two-year program and seeing how it operates from the inside, I’m convinced that TFA now serves as a critical component of the all-out-effort by corporate elites to privatize one of the last remaining public institutions of our country: our public schools.
Adored by the corporate class
TFA and the privately managed, non-union charter schools that its corps members often