Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29

Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested?


On November 15, 2018, Teach for America (TFA) posted this Linkedin job listingfor a government affairs manager (in other words, a lobbyist).
Though TFA is fine with putting inexperienced college grads in classrooms as temp teachers following a five-week sneeze of *training*, if one wants this critical TFA lobbying job, one “must have” (TFA’s words) “two years of public policy and/or federal legislative experience.”
Why, TFA is even willing to help the would-be-yet-inexperienced TFA lobbyist get a foot in the Congressional door via its one-year Capitol Hill Fellows Program.
And, as one might expect, the successful TFA lobbyist applicant must have “a deep belief in Teach for America’s vision, mission, and theory of change.”
Token teaching for two years and then landing an ed policy position promoting TFA in the ears of legislators is part of that TFA theory of change. Such is the career path taken by current TFA director of government affairs (i.e., head lobbyist) Kelly Brougham. After a two-year TFA stint in Houston (make that one year, ten months), Brougham became an ed policy advisor in the US House of Representatives for four years (more than twice as long as she lasted in a Houston classroom) before becoming a TFA government affairs manager (same job as that of the job listing featured in this post) on her way to becoming a TFA head lobbyist.
It does help for one on the road to TFA lobbying to have a bachelor’s degree in political science, which Broughan does. However, if one holds a bachelors in Continue reading: Teach for America Is Looking for a Lobbyist. Interested? | deutsch29