Why Teach For America’s Push for “Diversity” Should Not Be Celebrated
Yesterday, I was disappointed to see Teaching Tolerance-a social justice education resource which I have personally used many times-publish a blog post entitled Teach For (a Diverse) America. It was difficult to see a TFA alum spout this harmful organization's current PR talking points on a site I trust and love. So, I’d like to take a few moments to debunk TFA’s deceptive diversity strategy.
But first and foremost, I want to say that getting more teachers of color into our classrooms and keeping them there is of the utmost importance.
But TFA’s overall mission, actions, and impact absolutely negate any benefit from their inauthentic push for diversity. Over the past five years, this darling of the media has come under increasing attacks and criticism even from within their own ranks. As a result, TFA has used “diversity” as a way to rebrand. But their core mission which undermines public education and increases inequality remains unchanged.Here are a few ways TFA actually hurts teachers and students of color:
1) TFA has a direct tie to the overall reduction in teachers of color in schools. The black middle class is shrinking, and TFA’s anti-union stance and its attacks on the teaching profession are inextricably linked. Current education policies-which TFA aggressively promotes-are forcing far more black educators OUT of the classroom than TFA could every put back in. Many black educators site the worsening working conditions, the loss of job protections which disproportionately affect African American teachers, and the effects of neoliberal edreform policies around school closings, turnarounds, and charter proliferation as reasons why many are leaving/being forced to leave the profession. TFA spouts the virtues of teachers of color out of one side of their mouth while they spit on veteran black educators out of the other. This loss of black educators was perhaps most dramatically seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when TFA helped illegally displace thousands of veteran black educators-most from the communities where they Ms. Katie's Ramblings: Why Teach For America’s Push for “Diversity” Should Not Be Celebrated: