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If you want to start a lively discussion, put "Teach for America" in the title of your blog. You're sure to get a little heat, if not outright hostility. That's OK--the purpose of blogging is hosting public dialogue. The best way to herd cats is to put out bowls of tasty food-- toss some debatable issues out there, then stand back.

For my very smart MIT student, Teach for America, would be a pit stop where she would pick up some leadership skills while teaching disadvantage children on her way to Chase, where she would use her finely honed mathematical and leadership skills in ways that almost certainly would not benefit the students she taught.

Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the GAP clothing company, began contributing to education-related causes through various philanthropic organizations in the late 1990s. The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund is the current foundation, although it was formerly known as the Doris and Donald Fisher Education Fund, is still sometimes abbreviated as D2F2, and earlier was known as the Pisces Foundation. The Fishers were early supporters of Edison Schools, and have been major supporters of KIPP and Teach for America. Although I cannot find some of the Fisher's earliest IRS 990s, the family also supported a young organization, The New Teacher Project, founded by Michelle Rhee. As noted on the Fisher's 2011 Form 990, the foundation contributed $250,000 to Rhee's newest organization, StudentsFirst. I gathered Form 990s for the fiscal years ending in 2003 through 2011, and pulled information about contributions made during each of those years. You can find all of these Form 990s through Guidestar.org or Foundation Center's 990 Finder. You can see the information I pulled in an Excel file on my Data page or check out the results below.

"Before you read on, I have to warn you. This piece is not a critique of Teach for America. It's merely a question."

""Empowering students to advocate for change." It's as if this organization was made just for me-just read my headline! If you take a few seconds to search around my blog documenting my vision, my involvement with students through mentoring and being a teachers assistant, my aspiration to be a future teacher, and restless dedication to elevating the student voice, it is no doubt I have full faith in the students role in education policy. As my blog was born out of my realizations of the inequalities in our education system, then continued further as I wanted to expose these silenced truths, this blog took me so far to revolutionizing my life. There is a never ending thirst for truth and knowledge, and the paramount responsibility I feel to share transparency for the sake of students' futures. I have a passion for the human capacity and potential, which is why I aim to be an educator who provides such opportunities for my future students. Which is why I fight hard against the push for more standardized tests, and teacher-evals that claim teacher effectiveness can be determined by a number. As I've stated multiple times before, "I want to leave this world knowing I did whatever I could to make the term "at-risk" one that is not so commonly associated with the term 'school.'" I have a restless drive for educational equity, which is why I stand against Students For Education Reform."

"I received the following description of the appearance of Michelle Rhee and her husband at the University of Hawaii, where they lectured on "Ethics and Education." Rhee paused briefly from her national campaign to raise $1 billion to remove teachers' collective bargaining rights, to strip them of tenure and seniority, and to promote vouchers and charters, to share her wisdom about American education."

Jack Schneider of Carleton College has written a clear, original, thought-provoking book about three significant strands in the fabric of contemporary school reform:  the "small schools" movement, Teach For America, and the Advanced Placement program.  In the process, he manages both to emphasize how in his estimation they are improving public schools and to highlight some of the ironies involved in their implementation.  Not until his concluding chapter, however, does he really come to grips with their most significant vagaries and limitations.

Teacher recruitment and retention are historical problems in high-poverty school districts, but using Teach for America "interns," who are recent college graduates and professionals, will only institutionalize this problem. The basic characteristics of Teach for America recruits - they are undercertified and lack classroom experience - mirror one of our most severe problems. Researchers frequently bewail the fact that experienced teachers do not remain poor districts, yet now Adamowski and the Windham Board of Education wish to enshrine the "farm" system.

Diane Ravitch reviews Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? by Pasi Sahlberg and A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for All by Wendy Kopp with Steven Farr 

Today I came across a Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp. She rightly condemned the public release of teacher test scores in New York City. I applaud her for speaking out against this disgusting act. But as I read, I became enraged when I saw a story about Ms. Kopp's own experience with her child's teacher.

"If you were thinking of ponying up $20 to buy Jonathan Kozol's latest book, Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America, don't bother. EduShyster has it on EXCELLENT authority that the book suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. While I haven't actually read Fire in the Ashes, I know someone who has-Teach for America foundress Wendy Kopp-and she thought it was a real dud. You see Kozol has spent the past 642 years writing about the scourge of poverty among America's children, racial segregation in the public schools and inequities in education funding-all of which we now know DO NOT MATTER AT ALL. In fact just by mentioning these non-mattering factors Kozol is practically a one man excuse factory."

"Let's consider what we know now about the major education reform agendas currently impacting out schools"

"There's one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a fairly neoliberal education agenda"

"Teach for America wanted to help stem a teacher shortage. Why then are thousands of experienced educators being replaced by hundreds of new college graduates?"

"The phrase closing the achievement gap is the cornerstone of TFA's general philosophy, public-relations messaging, and training sessions. As a member of the 2011 corps, I was told immediately and often that 1) the achievement gap is a pervasive example of inequality in America, and 2) it is our personal responsibility to close the achievement gap within our classrooms, which are microcosms of America's educational inequality. These are laudable goals."

"Most Teach for America recruits are idealistic and dedicated. But who is behind the organization, and does its approach bolster or hinder urban education reform?"

"Although Teach For America began twenty years ago as a well-intentioned band-aid, it has morphed into what is essentially a jobs program for the privileged, funded by taxpayers and wealthy individuals."

It was the best of teachers.  It was the worst of teachers. But how much better are the best teachers than the worst teachers?  Well THAT'S a tough one, but one that is very important to answer.  The corporate reformers believe that the gap is great so a feasible solution is to fire those bad teachers.

One problem in the current ed reform debate is that there is not enough genuine debating.  Really, there's no communication at all between the two sides who I see as the 'corporate reformers' (Duncan, Klein, Rhee, and even Kopp) and the 'realistic reformers' (Ravitch, Cody, Valerie Strauss, and others including me).  Without direct communication all you have is New York Times OpEds and press conferences where each side says what they want, but are never challenged, directly, to defend what they say.

As New York City, where I live and teach, works to shut down more and more schools, I just discovered a truly bizarre use of this kind of 'value-added' process which factors highly into the annual school report card grade which, in turn, factors highly into the decision to shut down schools.