Next year Duval County will continue its partnership with Teach for America despite the fact everybody admits this is the wrong thing to do. Trey Czar who will manage 11 million dollars to help train the TFA recruits said on the radio two weeks ago that first and second year teachers struggle and the districts own study said we have a disproportionate amount of rookie teachers in our struggling schools. Well TFA assure that we have a constant rotation of struggling, neophyte teachers in our struggling schools!
So what does Duval do? Read that first sentence again, it continues with its plans to employ these hobbyists who will be work with our most vulnerable children.
Oh and it gets worse, despite the fact Duval has a hard time retaining teachers it doubles down on a program where it knows that the vast majority of will leave after their two year commitment. Less than 25% of the first three classes have stayed to year 3.
How does any of this make sense? We should be cutting back not expanding. It’s ridiculous and it’s also offensive to veteran teachers who have made teaching a career rather than an extended summer job which is what it is to the vast amount of TFA recruits.
It also wastes money as many will get training on the districts dime that they will never use. Then their mere presence has pay, cost of benefits and pension ramifications for teachers.
How can we reach our potential when we insist of staffing our classes with rookie teachers who won’t stay long enough to get better instead of teachers who may become lifelong educators? The answer we can’t but that hasn’t stopped the powers that be from moving ahead.
So what does Duval do? Read that first sentence again, it continues with its plans to employ these hobbyists who will be work with our most vulnerable children.
Oh and it gets worse, despite the fact Duval has a hard time retaining teachers it doubles down on a program where it knows that the vast majority of will leave after their two year commitment. Less than 25% of the first three classes have stayed to year 3.
How does any of this make sense? We should be cutting back not expanding. It’s ridiculous and it’s also offensive to veteran teachers who have made teaching a career rather than an extended summer job which is what it is to the vast amount of TFA recruits.
It also wastes money as many will get training on the districts dime that they will never use. Then their mere presence has pay, cost of benefits and pension ramifications for teachers.
How can we reach our potential when we insist of staffing our classes with rookie teachers who won’t stay long enough to get better instead of teachers who may become lifelong educators? The answer we can’t but that hasn’t stopped the powers that be from moving ahead.
