‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America
Teach for American founder Wendy Kopp (The Washington Post)
A new book about the 25-year-old Teach For America tells the story of the controversial organization through the eyes of alumni who share their experiences and insight about working in TFA.
TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton Universityexperience — and it has become a powerful force in the corporate school reform movement, winning tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. Education Department and millions more from private philanthropists to continue its work.
It became famous for its program of recruiting thousands of new college graduates and giving them five weeks of training in the summer before sending them into high-poverty schools to work as teachers (not interns), leading to criticism that their corps members were not properly prepared for teaching high-needs students and that they were being recruited by school districts at the expense of veteran teachers. As growing criticism and a polarized education reform debate has harmed TFA recruiting, the organization has been experimenting with new training programs.
The book — “Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out” — is edited by T. Jameson Brewer, a former TFA corps member and and a doctoral student in Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and
The editors of the book say they view it as a counter-narrative to that given by the organization, and it reveals some of the problems within the structure of TFA that they believe hurt teachers and students. Following is an excerpt from Chapter 14 of the book by Wendy Chovnick, a former corps member in Washington, D.C. schools, who also served as chief of staff to the executive director in the Phoenix TFA office. You can read more about her experiences here, in this interview I did with her in 2013.
And here’s the book excerpt by Chovnick:
Teach For America (TFA) has a compelling mission and thousands of well-intentioned, hardworking, and intelligent corps members and staff members working towards its ambitious goals. Yet, how the organization functions and the questionable impact it is having, given its vast resources, are disturbing on many levels.I was a 2001 Washington, D.C. corps member, served as the chief of staff to the executive director in the Phoenix TFA office from‘Good Intentions Gone Bad’ — excerpt from new book about Teach For America - The Washington Post:
