It’s time once again to climb aboard the rephorm express. Today we’re headed west, to Vegas, baby: home to the legendary Strip, the Hoover Dam, and these days, plenty of excellence, Teach for America style. Alas, what happens in Vegas likely won’t be staying there for long…
First, allow me to lay it on you historical style. Once upon a time, back at the peak of the economic boom, Nevada’s most populous county was opening upwards of 10 schools and hiring 2,000 new teachers—every year. Then the economy imploded thanks to the greed of a great many people who were not teachers. Fast forward a few years and the excellent leaders of Las Vegas have at last identified the source of Sin City’s persistent woes: teachers. You see, it turns out that most of the teachers here are of the low quality, low expectations variety, single handedly stifling the hopes and dreams of Vegas’ youngsters, leaving them without the skills necessary to join the city’s low-wage, low-skills workforce. Fortunately, reader, where there is a simple, glaring problem, a silver bullet solution lies within easy reach. I give you—drum roll please—Teach for America.
Exellence happens
In recent years, Las Vegas has imported excellence to the tune of hundreds of outstanding young TFA recruits. And just like the Chinese laborers who once tunneled through the Rocky Mountains in order to bring the Transcontinental Railroad west, there is no challenge so tough that excellence can’t bore right through it. Take for example the ballooning class sizes—as high as 50 in required classes—resulting from teacher layoffs and a years’ long fiscal crisis. Here’s TFA alum turned Nevada Board of Education member Allison Serafin on how huge class sizes are no match for excellence.
How do you prepare teachers for Clark County’s large classes, which are among the nation’s most crowded?
Serafin: We don’t allow class sizes to be an excuse for lackluster achievement. You control what kind of teacher you are and what your students learn. If a member is struggling with a large class, we’ll find teachers who have succeeded with many students and see what we can learn.
Problem solved, or as Clark County’s 55,000 English Language Learners might say: ¡problema resuelto! In fact, that is most likely what our young ELL friends will say, given that many of the district’s ELL teachers have been laid off and that Nevada is one of just a handful states that don’t provide any extra funds to educate students who are still learning English.
Excellence rises to the top
But there I go again, making excuses. In the time it took me to type that last excuse, two more TFA alums were elected to statewide office on a “no excuses” platform. I kid you not, dear reader. It turns out that in Las Vegas, the TFA excellence adventure merely begins in the overcrowded classroom—then it’s onto bigger venues, like the Nevada State Board of Education, which is now home to two TFA alum. Armed with nothing more than then high expectations and a combined $300,000, raised primarily from out-of-state sources, these fearless young leaders are introducing the Board of Education to some serious TFA-style excellence. Fortunately Allison Serafin and Alexis Gonzales-Black have some powerful friends, like philanthropist-turned-education-advocate Elaine Wynn, two-time-former-wife of odious Vegas bazillionaire Steve Wynn and the new president of the State Board of Education.
Excellence meets the apocalypse
There remains but one question for us to answer, dear reader: is there a way for the tax payers of Nevada to increase their stake in the excellence project that is Teach for America? Good news again. In his state-of-the-union address, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval announced that the state is ponying up $2 million to bring still more TFA recruits to the Sagebrush State. Of course not everyone here is rolling out the welcome mat for the excellence express. Take the residents of Towne Terrace, a down-at-the-heels apartment complex in downtown Las Vegas, purchased by Zappos magnate (and Alexis Gonzales-Black employer) Tony Hseih who dreams of repopulating the entire area with more than 1,000 TFA corps members and alum. Except that the residents of the Towne Terrace made it exceedingly clear that they had no interest in being evicted to make way for excellence. Oh well, next time…
Do you wish that you were excellent? Send comments and self-improvement tips to tips@edushyster.com.
The irony of the name Sarafin, heavenly angel, is not lost on me. Angel of educational hell is more like it I’d say. Zappos! Dammit, another company lacking social values I now must avoid. Read up on the TFA boosters, including the US dept. of Ed., so be clear it’s an inside job to dismantle public education and heavily funded. http://www.teachforamerica.org/support-us/donors Most of these same donors bankroll more of the edreform movement; I didn’t even include the TFA spin off refromer groups, such as 50Can, and their spin off groups in various states, and the TFA leaders of public education policy, who coincidentally then destroy public education in the area they “reform” such as John White, Superintendent of Schools for New Orleans. Opps, I almost forgot SFER http://dianeravitch.net/2012/11/11/the-lowdown-on-students-for-educational-reform/ . EduShyster, I need your address and other stats because I want to take a life insurance policy out in you, since so many profiteer$ may not like the truth you write, they may take a hit out on you. You (and all the stupid LIFO dedicated, licensed, career teachers) are just standing in the way of excellence. The reformers are so passionate about a fair and quality education I worry for your safety!
Las Vegas has done everything in growth excessively. I have watched it change & grow for 21 years. We have too big, too many, too much, too fast. It is a crying shame that our education system is as bad as it is.
Let’s not forget that Alexis Gonzalez-Black is also married to Victor Wakefield, Executive Director, Teach for America Las Vegas Valley. In a recent interview Victor Wakefield showed that he is an expert at pushing the TFA propaganda of making gentrification of education a priority over equality of education.
http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?SegmentID=9652&ProgramID=2696
Ms. Gonzales-Black has so many excellent connections that I literally could not find room enough to squeeze them all in. I recommend getting your hands on a bottle of Patrón–alas I don’t believe it comes in boxes–and taking a refreshing sip whenever you encounter a familiar name on this list of her campaign contributors. http://nvsos.gov/SOSCandidateServices/AnonymousAccess/ViewCCEReport.aspx?syn=sIcXN2Eaa5vGj8CGNGxwpw%253d%253d
The Nevada state superintendent of education recently recognized that there were only 2000 or so good teachers in Nevada, he must have been referring to the TFAers! Glad he was able to find a few!
Great analysis and commentary on the sad joke that the educational “reformers” are playing on Nevada. Only one quibble – Hseih’s plan to pack Towne Terrace with TFA hires did not fail because the residents didn’t want to move in. It failed because the TFA hires did not want to live downtown with the icky poor and mostly brown people, instead prefering the tony neighborhoods of Summerlin and Green Valley, thankyouverymuch. Hseih is investing heavily in the Las Vegas’ downtown. He should be promoting people who have a similar faith in the urban core.
I should say that the existing “residents didn’t want to move out,” apologies.
What a debacle. Apparently checking to see if corp members were interested in living there before kicking out current residents didn’t make the “To-Do” list of the project. That said- it doesn’t sound like the apartment thing was a TFA-sponsored thing.
As a former TFA corps member in Vegas (who has since left Vegas for the colder climes of the midwest), I can only say that many of us (from several years ago) remain in the traditional public system (and aren’t located only in Henderson, Somerville, etc). I love this blog and the writing, AND I am appreciative of what I got from TFA- a primer in pedagogy and classroom management, the belief that I could make a difference in my classroom, and the push to stay with the profession when it was the most challenging this I had ever experience. Is there a general mix of arrogance-meets-bright-eyed-do-goodism among many current corp members across the nation? No doubt. It was there when I was a member and I found it off-putting. Did I also meet some of the most talented, committed, and compassionate educators (and human beings) I’ve met to-date? Yep.
There are many sides to TFA, and one of them is the side of alumni who stay in their schools (or other district schools), work hard on behalf of their students, families, and colleagues, and generally serve as wonderful teachers. But that’s clearly not interesting fodder for the intrawebs.
Did I also meet some of the most talented, committed, and compassionate educators (and human beings) I’ve met to-date? Yep.
And some of these wonderful humans were not TFA temps? Are you saying some of the people were life long unionized teachers? Is that what you are saying? That wasn’t clear or not worthy clarifying.
CT- I’m going to share soemthing with you now, but only if you promise to never, ever tell Wendy Kopp I told you, ok? (she can hear us typing!)
Here it is: many of the wonderful people I met WERE in fact life-long unionized (I believe the CORRECT term is actually LIFO lifers, but let’s not quibble about who cares less about kids… I kid!) teachers- and we worked together as educators. I still stay in touch with a handful of the master teachers I met in Vegas today.
Stay with me, because here’s where the ish gets cray: I ALSO met many outstanding people in TFA. (In a weird, tripping-the-light-fantastic twist, many of the TFAers I knew also happened to be a part of the union!)
Fact: Many TFAers don’t make a career in education.
Fact: Many do. (I call “no questioning the term “many.”) Many make outstanding teachers and because great teachers are people who work at their craft, who learn from experts and their colleagues, who sometimes DO fail but stay with it, and who believe in and care for their kids in and out of school.
Opinion: The Kool-Aid is strongly flavored, but it goes down so smooth and so sweet.
Opinion: I would loooooooooove to see the same outrage at TFA directed (even by a tenth as much) at traditional teacher prep programs who teach classes that (having gone through them myself now) do NOT prepare a person for the classroom and the challenge of educating students in a complex world and society.
Fact: Finland’s overrated. There, I said it! We were all thinking it!!!
Nor is it the purpose of TFA as an institution, which is avowedly more interested in developing school leadership cadre, rather than career teachers.
Those committed, compassionate educators who’ve stayed with teaching do so in spite of TFA the organization, not because of it.
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It is well-documented that TFA, with its 5 week teacher prep model, is anti-traditional teacher preparation. Contrary to the position of some TFAers, there are a lot of us who took the ass-backwards alternative approach to becoming educators by teaching first and learning later in traditional teacher prep that got a lot out of those programs.
I believe the value of traditional teacher prep from career educators and education scholars who’ve had decades of classroom experience trumps 5 weeks of indoctrination by “teachers” with a couple years of experience. Although corporate sponsored “reformers” will trot out their think tank economists to convince the world the 5 week TFA training model and two or three years of experience at most are needed for effective teaching, that is contrary to a large body of research across disciplines indicating that it takes a minimum of 10 years of experience and deliberate practice, with a concerted effort towards improvement, to become an expert in virtually any field, aka “the 10 year rule.”
Nevada is a complete hole when it comes to education. It has been that way for a long, long time. Lots of corruption, lots of cronyism, lots of disrespect for anybody older than 50 who is a teacher.
I have written about Nevada extensively because I had lived there for 26 years and had been a mid-career changer until I was illegally fired by Washoe County School District. As bad as the district was under Paul Dugan, it is much worse now with Broadies at the helm. Pedro Martinez, the current WCSD sup, has NO teaching or principal experience whatsoever, yet he is allowed to be a superintendent. He was a crony of Arne Duncan’s in Chicago, a CPA by trade.