Is Teach for America Costing Experienced Teachers Their Jobs?

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I have been in teaching for 17 years and possess two Master degrees; 7 years teaching high school and 10 years as a college adjunct. Falling on hard times, as so many are, I applied for Teach for America and was promptly rejected. I think they just want young kids out college. Cheap labor from young people who can be persuaded to put up with a lot of crap for very little pay. I'm actually glad I didn't get accepted. I would not have fit their mold. We really are experiencing the Walmartinization of education industries. It's been happening in the colleges for some time now. What really blows my mind and is so socially irresponsible is that the quality of education is reduced to the point where we are not teaching young people much. The college students I teach know very little about anything academic because for the past 12 years they have been in a baby sitting facility that is some sort of remnant of a nineteenth century education system designed to assimilate immigrants and prepare them for industrial work. What I am saying is that it is disgusting that we live in a world run by thugs that only care about the bottom line. The long-term results are that we end up with dummied down curricula and students who go through 12 years of school and don’t even know how to form a proper paragraph, or in many cases write a sentence correctly. So many are unprepared for college and life in general. I’m no fan of Obama but God help us if those tea party republicans get more power. We might as well board up the schools. One more thing; I forgot to mention that I’m 50 years old. Just wanting a little feedback; do you think I was discriminated against by Teach for America? Just Curious on what others might say. Good luck out there. Dona nobis pa cem.

Jim of AZ 5:00AM March 02, 2012

Use only American teachers and put trouble youth in the military.
School is for people, who want to learn, and should be a safe place, but it is not, no matter where you live or economic status. Remember Columbine? Wilmett? Get out of other people's countries and spend that "WAR" money to educate your own. When America is dead, the parasites will find another foolish country, who will put foreigners before their own citizens.

Acajudi of IL 10:26PM March 21, 2010

To all who read this, what I am about to say will astound you, but it is a true. At first, you will say this guy is crazy, but then you will investigate it, and find I am right.
Teach for America is part of a big social engineering project led by the Neo Liberal (social justice thru market solutions) anti-union forces in America and their D.C. politicians they have bought. Check, you'll see Carol Penner-Walton (of anti-union Walmart) is on the board. Check the Board affiliations of all of them, almost all are charter people.
Teach for America candidates (who use and "alternative" credentialing process to get around NCLB) are hired to break the teachers union nationally. The private charters need them, that's why they need so many, to replace the public school teachers. The huge increase in number of private charter schools operated by EMO's, Education Maintenance Organizations, corresponds well to the subsequent rise in Teach for America recruiting. NCLB allows them to close down a school, open up private charter, bring in Teach for America grads.
I'm sure the Teach for America are fine young men and women. Some fresh blood is good, but they are all pawns in a much bigger plan to bust the teacher's unions in America. They are just the scabs that are going to do it, they just don't know it. Worse yet, neither do the teachers. It's so well planned, so far into it, and so brilliantly executed. Teachers still don't see it coming. The ultimate blindside. It's so Orwellian, I'm almost afraid to send this. They should call them "Teach for Walmart". There, I coined the term first.

ScrappyDoo of DC 4:52AM January 07, 2010

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h1d8d123df3 of MI 9:38PM November 26, 2009

I live in the city where I've applied to teach, and I've been volunteering and subbing in our district for a number of years now.
I have a credential, am highly qualified, the whole nine yards, but guess what happens when I apply for a full-time faculty position?
"Well, you know, the district has a contract with Teach For America. We get a finder's fee for every TFA teacher we place. So sorry, but they're such a good deal financially, that..." etc. etc.
Most of these TFA kids don't hang around. They approach teaching as though it's some Peace Corps volunteer gig before they start their "real" careers. Do they even know that they're taking jobs away from people who truly want to teach for the rest of our lives?

Age discrimination suit waiting to happen of CA 4:55PM November 11, 2009

My girlfriend and I traveled to New Orleans for interviews this summer and they went well. She had several interviews and at one point was told she should expect a formal offer soon. Then they asked her to bid on the job and gave it to someone else. They told her that because of the unusually high number of TFA teachers in New Orleans, twice more than they expected, is causing entry level teachers with degrees to be pushed out. The TFA teachers are guaranteed jobs. Her cousin was one of those teachers. She is teaching science, which is good. She has a biology degree. She knows another teacher in a special ed position with a political science degree. My girlfriend is a special ed teacher with several endorsements. This is very discouraging. I would not want a political science teacher teaching my handicapped child if I had one.

Mike of MI 11:16PM October 25, 2009

Is anyone really surprised that a cash strapped school district would swap higher paid teachers for cheap TFA grads?
I mean, come on. They're just kids. It's not like anyone really cares about the kids in poorer districts. People say they do, but if they really did, education would be a higher priority with higher funding. If funding tells the story then the story is that nobody cares about the quality at the schools.
It's that or there's some massive logic disconnect that makes people think that the resources for services for kids drop from the spittle of unicorns and are administered by people who have taken vows of poverty.

Snarlingcoyote of LA 1:19PM October 09, 2009

It is hard to recruit people into teaching as a career. The pay is inferior to business, engineering, medicine, nursing, and perhaps anything else that requires a bachelor's degree. Not to mention the hostility to the organized profession. Teachers join and supprt unions because unions are the only way to get fair treatment from the school boards and superintendents. Since public schools are public and public employees usually do not have the right to strike, there is little bargaining power for the unions. Many smaller school districts don't have uinions and there is seldom any right to organize.
The frequent attempts to blame educational problems on "unions" is absurd. No school board is required to give up its absolute right to make policy. They can always defeat unions in a confrontation. Boards do not have to give up any management rights. The board members' livelihoods do not depend on reaching an agreement with the union. Teachers can't hold out and must settle.
We cannot have excellent public education on the cheap. We cannot have the best people teaching if they are denied careers. With or without unions, teachers need the right to arbitrate disputes with the boards -- to protect against wrongful discharge and discrimination. Teachers need tenure to make careers more certain. Tenure should not be easy to earn. Universities have demonstrated that tenure is a precondition to excellent education. America's universities are the best in the world. It is very difficult for a university to rid itself of really incompetent teaches -- therefore tenure is rarely granted on less than six years experience, good teaching perofrmance, and, at least at the great research universities evidence of a national reputation for scholarship. These universities nearly always require outside evaluation of the candidates performance. Tenure is a commitment of millions of dollars in future pay. Tenure decisions usually go against candidates with sub-margginal records. The rejected applicant must leave, and start over again in a less prestigious university.
Huge "shortages" are forecast for nurses, science and math teachers, engineers. We import nurses who are not fluent in English, and engineers because our public schools to not provide the education that is required for engineering degrees. America has hundreds of outstanding high schools. It needs thousands. TFA focuses on the other end of the spectrum -- typically jobs that only the most desperate job seeker will consider. There is no reason we cannot have selective excellent schools at the top and schools with low achievement that are struggling to become better. Most of the schools in the middle could do well if they had the resources. It is at the high school level that the international struggle for national economic success and student achievement will be fought. We will not continue to dominate world scientific and medical research unless we drastically improve our high schools. . .

nihil of HI 3:14PM October 08, 2009

"Why are we protecting the adults in the educational system at the expense of the students?"
I don't mean to be rude or impolite but to quote your own post "Get your facts straight before you stand up on that box." The reason that adults in the ed system are, or rather should be, protected is that the article asserted (and I have not run into this in my state) that they were being laid off and then replaced by TFA at vastly lower rates of pay making money the bottom line rather than a good education.
Most teachers have either a property interest in their employment or have a just cause contract that simply means there must be a good reason for terminating them. A layoff is often used when there is no good reason for termination. By the time that a challenge to the layoff is completed, the teacher may have lost a year or more of employment even when they have union protections.
Someone said it in another post, this is not about individuals who enter TFA. It is taking advantage of an otherwise great program to save money at the expense of experienced teachers who have a valid legal right to their jobs.

Richard Long of MI 2:11PM September 27, 2009