Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways?
"The fact that we're discussing race and privilege in such a frank way is completely new."
Audrey Pribnow, with Teach for America, leads her class at University Academy in Kansas City, Missouri. Photo by Tammy Ljungblad/TNS/ZUMAPRESS.com
Last weekend, Teach for America, the nonprofit that places freshly minted college graduates in schools to teach for two years, held a national summit in Washington, DC, to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The event featured a number of the organization's most celebrated alumni who helped build today's education reform movement—known for its passion for testing, ranking of teachers, and deep support of charter schools. Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor was there; so was Eva Moskowitz, the head of the largest chain of charter schools in New York City, and Michael Johnson, the Colorado senator who helped pass one of the early laws mandating the use of test scores in teachers' evaluations.
As soon as the summit began, Teach for America's zealous supporters and fierce critics took to Twitter. "Please tell me that somebody is protesting this awful, anti-public education conference," writer and author, Nikhil Goyal, tweeted. Joel Klein, a former superintendent of New York schools who now works for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, tweeted, "[Teach for America] has produced more great leaders fighting for edu[cational] equity than any other." Teach for America alum Gary Rubenstein launched a #FactCheckTFA25 hashtag that he said would deflate many of the organizations' exaggerations about its successes.
It's hard to think of an education reform organization today that is more well-known and more divisive than Teach for America. Many advocates say Teach for America is on the front lines of fighting educational inequity and racism by sending top talent to the most struggling classrooms; opponents charge that Teach for America sends poorly trained teachers into schools with high rates of kids in poverty that need qualified teachers the most. Opponents also argue the organization's elite recruits often displace veteran black and Latino teachers.
In the last three years, a stream of articles and open letters from Teach for America alums have fanned the flames. In 2013, Olivia Blanchard published an essay in The Atlantic, "I Quit Teach for America," in which she declared that the five-week Is America's Most Controversial Education Group Changing Its Ways? | Mother Jones:
