Why Teach For America

Remember the headline about Teach For America that came out in The Onion a couple of years ago (TFA Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major)? Well, TFA’s come a long way since then, but it is no less frustratingly problematic.

According to a new article (Why Teach For America) in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, the original TFA was small and marked by its idealism and its focus on getting bright people into classrooms and doing some immediate good for poor children. The “new” TFA is much much larger and features corporate-style recruiting efforts and a hyper-aggressive PR operation.Folks from the early years probably couldn’t get accepted to TFA if they applied today, and it’s not clear that many of them would want to.

More important, TFA now wants to be judged both as a short-term intervention and as a broad-based reform movement whose scope includes everything from KIPP to Michelle Rhee to scores of alums in elected office.This was either part of the plan all along or a slick “re-engineering” of TFA’s original mission to address widespread concerns that putting smart newbies in front of poor kids for two years wasn’t going to solve any real problems.

One big question is whether or not this two-pronged approach is fair or not to TFA teachers and the kids and colleagues they work with during their brief teaching stints.Another is whether TFA should have been focusing on expanding its members’ longevity and impact in the classroom rather than on increasing its numbers of districts and candidates.Last but not least – the verdict is out here – is whether TFA alums are more powerfully involved in school reform than they would have been anyway, and what good comes of it.

Comments

Who came up with TFA?

"In 1988, from her dorm room at Princeton University, college senior Wendy Kopp developed a plan to call upon the most talented members of her generation to teach for two years in the nations neediest urban and rural public schools."

This person knows nothing about teaching. It's ignorant to think that you can go through a 6 month training course and become a good teacher. If they're doing it just for the experience and going on to bigger and better things then this movement is ultimately a selfish one. TFA thinks they're doing good by putting bright minds into the classroom but they're just setting them up for failure. Everyone who teaches knows that just because you're smart it does not mean you can teach.

The other point about having them become politicians and helping the education reform is admirable but it won't work because they still know nothing about teaching! They will come up with dumb ideas because they don't have the proper training. If they want to teach for a few years they should go through a good teaching training program for 2 years and teach for 3-5. That's still time to move on to bigger and better things or be a politician and help the education reform. I think they also wanted to use TFA as a way to make politicians who are sympathetic to education reform but who isn't? Every common person knows that education in our country stinks.

Anyways, I'm ranting. They need better teacher training programs, make good teachers, and have good teachers go off to reform education.

Who came up with TFA?

"In 1988, from her dorm room at Princeton University, college senior Wendy Kopp developed a plan to call upon the most talented members of her generation to teach for two years in the nations neediest urban and rural public schools."

This person knows nothing about teaching. It's ignorant to think that you can go through a 6 month training course and become a good teacher. If they're doing it just for the experience and going on to bigger and better things then this movement is ultimately a selfish one. TFA thinks they're doing good by putting bright minds into the classroom but they're just setting them up for failure. Everyone who teaches knows that just because you're smart it does not mean you can teach.

The other point about having them become politicians and helping the education reform is admirable but it won't work because they still know nothing about teaching! They will come up with dumb ideas because they don't have the proper training. If they want to teach for a few years they should go through a good teaching training program for 2 years and teach for 3-5. That's still time to move on to bigger and better things or be a politician and help the education reform. I think they also wanted to use TFA as a way to make politicians who are sympathetic to education reform but who isn't? Every common person knows that education in our country stinks.

Anyways, I'm ranting. They need better teacher training programs, make good teachers, and have good teachers go off to reform education.

Why Teach for America?

Don't you mean White Teach for America?

TFA is a mainly white organization developed and supported by rich white people to give their rich kids something to do after college instead of foundering around until they find a real job.

They also get to feel all noble about doing something for the great unwashed and their folks can feel morally superior when their friends talk about how their kid is is now a Hun-style lawyer or killing on Wall Street.

Student loans? Don't have to worry about payments or interest while you're TFAing.
And this year Congress passed a bill that says people who work in social service and 'charity' organizations can get their loans forgiven completely after 10 years.

Not us. Not real teachers with real teaching degrees. Just them and their ethnic studies degrees from Princeton.

It's like the GI bill, without any of that messy going to war part. Plus you get your education up front; no risk of possibly dying before you get to cash in on your education benefits.

Is anybody surprised this took hold when Bush I was president and Iraq Part I was raging; now Bush II has embraced it and it is sheltering many of the children of the privileged from Iraq The Sequel.

It wasn't enough they get to avoid participating in a war declared and supported by their own fat cat leaders - the tax payers have to pay for education of the at risk by untrained people AND pay their tuition to boot.

Aren't you guys still paying for that second masters in the actual profession feeling like idiots now?

Be a fake teacher, assuage your social conscience with your slumming and get your Princeton degree for free.

To save time and confusion when the next poster claims 'oh, that's not true' -

"Teach For America is currently a member of AmeriCorps, the national service network. Through this relationship, our corps members who have not served previously as AmeriCorps members are eligible to receive loan forbearance and interest payment on qualified student loans during their two years of service (to learn more, click here to go to AmeriCorps' benefits page). Additionally, those who have not previously received AmeriCorps awards receive an education award of $4,725 at the end of each year of service (a total of $9,450 over the two years), which may be used toward future educational expenses or to repay qualified student loans."

http://www.teachforamerica.org/corps/financial_arrangements.htm

[George Schmidt]

Missionaries bringing the word of Salvation to the natives. Only in the case of TFA, the "natives" are the regular veteran teachers down on whom TFA's cadre look -- until they punch their tickets and then either change fields or go as quickly as possible into management (data driven variety).

Ruling classes have always had these kinds of programs for their children. At least the TFA crowd is spending a few months in the classroom. Their peers are shuffling through law school and then getting $90,000 a year jobs on the Seventh Floor laboring under Patrick Rocks, blocking out for every bit of nonsense Arne and Richie can shovel out into the schools.

Why the obsession with rich people and Ivy Leaquers in TFA? Surely, you realize that TFA serves more than the (purported) top 1% of this country's college educated, yes? Actually, maybe that's not so sure because you're too bent out of shape over...what, exactly? That Americorps and TFA are actually trying to do some good for education and poverty stricken districts? That college graduates are reaping economic benefits by teaching in depressed areas? That depressed districts are receiving young, energetic teachers who believe in the cause of educating the underprivileged? That TFA teachers haven't gone through the years of double-super-secret-special kung-fu training that's necessary (ha!) to be an effective teacher? Give me a break.

And the comparison to the GI Bill? Yeah, that GI Bill was/is terrible - sending all those people through college. Awful. And those low interest home loans? Big mistake. That whole New Deal thing turned out to be a Raw Deal, right? Heh.

Get a grip.

I have had nothing but great experiences working with TFAs. These posts bashing TFAs are disturbing. Our students benefit from their knowledge, dedication, and worldly experiences. TFAs are not just screened based on grades.

Whether you like the concept or not why would you want to deny students the opportunity to work with TFAs?

Wow, couldn't create a smokescreen with TFA-as-monastery, so you went straight to 'If you aren't for tax shelters for the rich, you're for the terrorists'.

Soldiers in previous wars did their tour and maybe, if they survived, came back to get an education. Now, the odds have made this almost impossible.

Today, kids, really poor, really young kids are being shipped out as cannon fodder to this misbegotten lopsided feud of the Bushes are being tossed back over and over, or worse, not being allowed to come home at all till the dice finally stop rolling in their favor. For the chance at an education they'll never come home to cash in on.

So we can pay for the Outward Bound camp experience of the rich?

So they can go immediately to City Hall, Springfield or Central Office to 100K jobs but be able to say, 'oh, yes - I taught in inner city schools'? So they can punch that public service bullet on their resumes just before they film their campaign commericals and run for office?

How about this? If you could actually afford your education and your family is really so pious about gracing the children of the poor with the salvation of your holy work, then work for Peace Corps salary and benefits. Better yet, work for free. Rich kids whose parents don't blink at unpaid internships or law clerking shouldn't miss the same opportunity to actually 'give' of their time.

Then we can talk about writing off your loans and interest.

And maybe ask for 3-5 years of these oh-so-important lives before their debt is written off, not 20 months in exchange for 100K in salary, tuition money and loan forgiveness before you're gone.

When I see the enormity of this fraud on American Education, and yes, on a handful of the young people who participate in it, I smell Jack Ryan.

Remember Jack Ryan, that fake man of the people? He 'left' his job at Goldman Sachs to 'teach' and get his saintly aura courtesy of the students at Hales Franciscan.

9:25, don't need your name, just the nature of your 'work' with (and any relationship to) TFAs.

Just. Asking.

Stop shilling for Arne.

[Charlie]

You can argue the value of a Teach For America teacher during their actual corps service all day long. One side is that since TFA teachers don't all plan on having a marathon teaching career, they run their two years like a sprint, giving everything they have and with that work ethic (which is completely unsustainable over the long term) they have a greater impact on the lives of their students. Those who do stay in teaching end up as better prepared teacher than many of their non-TFA counterparts.

The other argument (often just as valid) is that TFA teachers come into the worst schools with the least experience and training and often the most naivety and idealism. And that very quickly the latter two collide fairly violently with the reality of our urban school systems. And that in the end all of their energy is more or less for naught, and that their short commitment to their school makes no lasting impact.

But what I do think is valuable (and here I think this is more of an accident than TFA's original plan) is the involvement level in education of TFA alumni around the country. I don't think that most of these people would be as involved if they hadn't exposed to TFA. Even if they had planned on education being their career, I think their TFA forever impacts the rest of their career path, and most often for the better.

Overall, I think that the organization has had a positive effect on education around the country.

[Charlie]

There's so much garbage in the posts above, I don't even know where to start.

When I was in Teach For America, there were a number of teachers who had already gone through traditional teacher training programs before joining TFA, some had even already taught for a year or two. The majority of these teachers fared no better than those of us who came straight from college or had transitioned from different careers.

Any teachers, especially in Title I schools, are privy to the same sort of loan forgiveness program

The stereotyping of TFA members as rich kids is ridiculous, classist and needlessly inflamatory. I'm not saying the organization doesn't attract its fair share of your typical white-guilt ridden do-gooders, but so does any teaching program. By the way, what's the percentage of teachers who come from traditional teaching programs and stay in education for more than 2 years? About 50%?

Teach for America might be an easy target for the socialist radicals out there (I'm surprised no one brought up the fact that the organization was started with a large matching grant from Ross Perot), who are content to wage class war rather than actually focus on the issues at hand. You're all like Red Sox fans...even in a good season all they can cheer is "Yankees suck."

Wow, what a coincidence both your scenarios have you coming off as either self-immolating saint or future philanthropic saint.

Don't need the rich to pray for me or throw themselves obscene banquets to give the schools pennies in charity or 'in-kind' donations of their time.

The rich should pay the taxes they owe. Then maybe they'd have enough money to support decent schools AND contract out the war.

You can go work for Blackwater.
Go TFA in Darfur. Or Islamabad. or Baghdad.

Don't forget to have George and Dick spring for the good body armor, not that crap they're issuing to REAL soldiers...

That's why I picked the military for my comparison.

They and so-called philanthropic ersatz peace corps schemes make people pay millions for untrained mercenaries instead of investing in the real foot soldiers in the fight, the ones you mock as burnouts if we are even around for more than 5 years (past our shelf life for the principalship or any other leadership after that, or maybe just too expensive with our annoying multiple degrees and teaching credentials).

And then have the gall to stand by clucking at how very bad public education has gotten.

Why no Surgeons for America? Surgeons don't kill enough people to get your attention?

Attorneys for America?

CFOs for America? You think a good math teacher would bungle it worse than the crowd that has been running banks, Enron and Andersen?

Why does everyone think teaching is so easy that any aimless nephew/brother-in-law/kid with nothing better to do can be plopped into a school ::as an act of charity:: no less, yet these great charitable acts, charter schools, triple shift and year-round schooling experiments never seem to find their way to Glenbrook North or Hubbard Woods or Wheaton, home of the most pious downnose lookers?

And all the time, what are they vaunting in your face as their right to be there?

Their education.

As if they themselves weren't taught by good teachers, except those teachers didn't have one hand tied behind their backs, weren't asked to teach with no materials in schools so old the pipes in the plumbing system were handmade and standard pieces can't be swapped out....

Don't throw yourselves a party, write it off on your taxes, then write the schools a check for the pittance left over and pat yourself on the back.

AND demand my undying gratitude.

That's the part that frosts me the most - after this obnoxious fraud, gamesmanship, shoddiness - I'm still supposed to say Thank You??

Please.

[erstwhilesteve]

The difficulty with TFA as a contributor to school reform (which, as I remember, was the core question in the original post) has nothing to do with the class, race, or age of the TFA-ers. It has to do with the fact that a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for schools to improve as "communities of learning" is the long-term collaborative relationship of a group of strong and creative teacher-leaders. The two-year-and-out people will contribute little if anything to this effort. Let's invest in the people who are committed to staying.

[George Schmidt]

"...The two-year-and-out people will contribute little if anything to this effort. Let's invest in the people who are committed to staying..."

Most of whom come to CPS from places like Chicago State and Northeastern, then get looked down on and denigrated.

And that's the only way to describe the cheap shots every time the TFA crowd or Arne Duncan spout off about "quality universities" producing more teachers or a place like Payton (just prior to its opening) does a diversity dog-and-pony show trotting out one of each group of necessary teachers -- just so long as all of them came from Northwestern, Harvard, or the Big Ten.

The grunt work in Chicago's classrooms for generations has been done by hard working teachers who came out of Chicago's city colleges and (for some) the state universities in Illinois. That's the system's backbone and has always been its strength. After the 1960s, that group was reninforced by graduates of the traditional black colleges, especially those in Mississippi.

The TFA schtick is an attack on public school teachers, elitist, and generally irrelevant to the success of truly public schools. It was hype from the day its marketing deparment began hyping Wendy and family, and it will remain so no matter how many wannabe educrats punch their tickets going through it.

[Charlie]

Ok...so this thread really has my blood pumping. I'd like to be the first to say that I think the best thing for public education is teachers who are well-trained and who are committed to staying in a school for the long haul.

That being said, there is a severe shortage of those people and especially so in our most underserved school districts around the country...Teach For America was started with that problem in mind. At face value, its a band-aid solution at best. However, TFA and similar emergency certification programs around the country have brought greater attention to the serious problems facing public education and have made careers in educational more accessible and attractive to recent college graduates. These people, like all of you here, are far from saints. More than a few of them have a number of ulterior motives for joining TFA. They know it will very nicely pad their resumes for law school or med school, etc. etc. But I don't believe that those folks make up the majority of the corps. The majority of TFAers, truly want to dedicate their lives to improving education, whether it be through classroom teaching, policy work, administration, urban planning or politics. And after two years of teaching, during which all corps members are receiving their certification through approved certification programs and many or whom are receiving their master's degrees in education, they leave knowing a lot more about the truth of education than the average person, and no less than any other average education major who ends up leaving the field after two or three years anyhow.

If anything I have seen most of them leave with a much more humble sense of themselves in relationship to career teachers, and certainly a much broader and better informed perspective on poverty, race, education, society, etc. etc. There may be more than a few people who enter TFA with a bit of a savior complex, but there aren't very many who leave TFA with that complex still intact.

But instead of calling out those who turn an utterly blind eye to public education for their entire life, lets make fun of a bunch of young idealistic recent college graduates and career changers who make the choice to work in the worst schools in the country for two years or more.

WPA hired real artists, musicians, writers and actors to work.

TFA is a scam because these are not real teachers being supported to grow and to stay in the profession.

Why aren't you funding real Education majors to finish school, pay them a stipend and then give you the next 3-5 years of their lives?

They used to do this. It was called Federal Teacher Corps. To call TFA even a watered down version of the Teacher Corps is an insult to water.

It is an out and out theft of the concept and the name to continue to perpetrate the nature-over-nurture theories of those who have been sheltered from the storm, but want to pretend it's all because of their natural superiority.

Interestingly, the national program was cut by Reagan to save money, but they reinvented it as 'non-profit', except, oh yeah, it's now funded federally again.

Sound familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Teachers_Corps

How is this not money laundering?

Take from the poor, pretend you're giving it back to the poor, then give it to the rich.

Want me to stop already? Then come to Pilsen, the West Side, the South Side, take each public high school's most poor but promising Education major and you give them the TFA free ride.

I bet you after they finish, they will stay.

[cermak_rd]

One of the benefits of the TFA crowd that you are all forgetting is that they are warm bodies. Too often, the worst schools simply can't attract teachers of any quality at all, so the students are condemned to a string of sub-par subs or an unsuitable teacher. Schools in Wheaton and Oak Park have no problem attracting teachers because they pay fairly and don't ask the teachers to put up with violent, disruptive students and they do have enough materials, supplies etc.

As far as the rich paying their taxes and then the schools would be better: most of the money that pays for schools comes from the local tax payer. The Feds pay a tiny portion, usually for special programs like Title I or special ed. In IL, the state (who pays maybe 30% of the cost of education) has a constitution that forbids a graduated income tax, meaning if you want to raise taxes on the rich, the middle class will get it too. The County and local taxing districts do the heavy lifting in IL and I don't think a lot of people in Cook County or City of Chicago believe our taxes are particularly low.

I see nothing wrong with TFA. So they're do-gooders, big deal, so are a lot of new teachers. SO they don't stay, big deal neither do a lot of new teachers. I would like to see them have a special group of TFA alums whose job is to parachute in when a teacher leaves a post in the middle of a school year so the students don't lose the rest of the year.

The other thing is I can't believe it is bad for teaching as an industry if people who have actually taught wind up in the halls of power. They will have had more hands-on experience than any of the architects of NCLB, for instance.

[Tom]

Ok I was not in TFA, but I was in Teachers for Chicago. I went into the program with degrees in political science, education, and an Illinois 6-12 teaching certificate. I had left teaching for several years and was lured back by the offer of basically a free Masters degree; I attended St. Xavier for the M.Ed. I taught at two different CPS high schools while I was in the program. The reason I taught at two different high schools was because my position was cut and I was placed in another high school. I was cut my third year in the program. I completed my fourth required year and left the CPS to teach at ETHS.

I was profoundly disturbed by the program, and ultimately the program was closed down by CPS. I saw people, not by any means children of the rich, thrown into very tough high schools and fundamentally eaten alive. None of the teachers for Chicago I knew were carrying huge levels of college debt and none had gone to tier 1 schools like Northwestern or Ivy League. The CPS promised these teachers one mentor full time for each four interns. In almost every case the local school abused this freed position and reassigned the mentor teachers to carry out various administrative duties instead of mentoring. Because I was experienced I in effect became the mentor to the other three Teachers for Chicago at the first high school I was assigned to.

None of the other three teacher interns I worked with are still teaching today. If I had not left Chicago, I might not be teaching now. This was a burn out program and from everything I can see TFA is a burn out program also. Do these teachers while in the process of burning themselves out improve the educational outcomes for the students they are instructing? One poster indicated that they do. My experience was that during the first year students got a lot of attention from these interns that they were not getting from tenured teachers, but after the first year the interns realized they had to pace themselves in order to survive the program. In effect the interns learned from the existing staff at schools how to survive, for example skimming writing assignments, using generic lesson plans, relying on text book publisher materials rather than teacher created materials, using tests that were simpler to grade rather than blue book exams, etc.

Many of the aspects of good pedagogy that were being taught to the interns at St. Xavier, or other local colleges that partnered with CPS on this failed program, were ejected by these second and third year teachers for Chicago program participants. The reality of the school system and the general high schools they were placed in dictated pedagogy of efficiency and survival. This is what I see happening current with TFA. I now have a child in college; I would pay for her to complete a full time education degree rather than allow her to go into TFA. Fortunately for her she is getting her degree in engineering and will hopefully not need to scrounge around for a job following graduation.

TFA is a glorified sub pool for places that can't find enough people to teach. Clearly it would be a problem for tfa to pitch the program as a long term sub pool for graduates from competitive colleges. That isn't very phenomenal, to use one of tfas favorite words. So, to survive, tfa markets the program as an elite cadre of elites educating the poor, huddled masses. The best and brightest boys and girls, riding around on white horses, propped up with hollywood fantasies, serving the greater good. But this isn't a big right wing conspiracy, it is sales. It is the american way. How would you get the elites to teach if you didn't give them a chance to feel like they were on a mission, being jaime escalante, jonathan kozol and hollywood starlets all wrapped into one, saving the country from itself?

As NYT pointed out, a TFA funded study by mathematica suggests it adds a modest amount to the bottom line in terms of achievement. Linda Darling Hammond did a big study that says the opposite. There is a third study, bigger still, that will come soon to a journal near you, saying the differences in student achievement between tfa and traditionally trained teachers are (basically) non existent. In other words, assuming you have some teacher candidates to choose from, it is no better or worse to hire a tfa person than a traditional ed school graduate. Except they leave. Which may make it a lot worse.

But the data on the tfa vs/ not tfa teacher does raise questions - about what we are doing more generally on the teacher training front; about what would happen if you provided high quality training to tfa types; about (as some above suggest) what actually costs more based on the results we get.

It also raises the question about whether all this energy debating a modestly better sub pool might be better invested in debating how schools might be organized so they actually keep good people for the long term, make mediocre people better, and get rid of bad ones before they cause too much damage.

As for whether tfa people who become congressmen or presidents or ceos or policy wonks, write better education laws, go on to become more forceful advocates, or make better political speeches, I don't think that will ever be won. It is likely to be, as the NYT suggests, a second clever marketing strategy. It means the people who leave the classroom are let off the hook (as we imagine them being very important people in other fields who somehow have a great effect on the quality of american public schools), and it trumps the economic arguments about whether the money poured into tfa for at best marginal effect on children's learning is the right investment at all.

[SmashedFace]

There are two recent pieces in the NYT that relate: In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert, a liberal columnist, had the following lines in his piece on education in America:

"The first [way to improve what is happening in the classroom] is teacher quality, a topic that gets talked about incessantly. It has been known for decades that some teachers have huge positive effects on student achievement, and that others do poorly. The positive effect of the highest performing teachers on underachieving students is startling.

"What is counterintuitive, but well documented, is that paper qualifications, such as teacher certification, have very little to do with whatever it is that makes good teachers effective."

Part of TFA's requirement is that they have to take the first gig they are offered. And these are often in the places that are in the greatest need of teachers. Are they all great? No. Are all the teachers who come out of local programs great? No.

I am not surprised that there is little difference between those who go through teacher ed programs and those who do not. I know that the teacher prep program I went through was completely worthless. The most important piece of advice from my homophobic professor was that I should not have such a "limp-wristed style" when I teach. That sure was helpful.

In fact, if I had skipped a vast majority of my education classes and taken more courses in my subject area, I would have probably been better early on.

Now, if college teacher prep programs were better, there might be a difference, but as long as colleges continue courses on how to put up bulletin boards, I say bring on TFA or any other program that brings in people who want to make a difference.

"I say bring on TFA or any other program that brings in people who want to make a difference."

I agree - for those who are in it for the long haul. Not for fakers and slackers who want a free ride and have no intention of staying and making a difference in anything but their student loan debt.

10:25,
What do we do about teachers who go through traditional programs who decide not to stay with it for the long haul?

There is not way to know who will stay with it and who won't. We lose a lot of people in the first few years.

[Mike]

Glad SmashedFace made the comment that I don't think anyone else had yet: Regular certification programs are not necessarily any better than TFA's training, and many (including the one I went through downstate) are worse.

I too would love to see TFA be less about the development of its corps members and more about student achievement and truly cultivating teachers, but their track record on the last two really isn't that bad - again, especially in comparison to those that come down the traditional cert-track (as cermak_rd pointed out).

Additionally, I can't say their larger strategy of developing talent is all that bad: It acknowledges that the battle over the achievement gap cannot and will not be won exclusively in the classroom. Yes, we need people working at 125 S. Clark (and FTR, I do not), we need people in cushy foundation jobs, and we need people running for city/state/fed office. I'd rather these people had SOME classroom experience and saw the view from the ground.

[1.04]

TFA

I spent a quarter century teaching with people who didn’t have college degrees. They were the vocational teachers brought into the profession by the Smith Hughes act of 1919.All of them had undergone a four year apprenticeship in their trade. Most had gone
to high school at Dunbar They were the best, because they wanted to be there they also took no prisoners.
My point is that Teaching is an art. No college can turn a person into a teacher no matter if it is Harvard, Yale, or Slippery Rock State University.
Some of the resentment shown here is pure envy. Personally I never treated any TFA
differently than any other FNG. That is because I know who I am and have pride in what
I do. Give the kids a chance some of them might have the gift and do well.

[George Schmidt]

One of the saddest things in recent history is returning to Dunbar and walking down that long corridor and not smelling the scent of cutting oil, hearing the buzz and screech of machine tools, or seeing that constantly rebuilt bungalow that used to sit in the courtyard. It still takes training and hard work to lay a line of brick straight, floor afer floor.

I was at Dunbar most recently on vote day (the September 10 referendum) and learned more about how those incredibly powerful traditions -- both vocational training and leadership in the black community -- have been sapped and sabotaged.

Amost all now gone.

One of the things that needs to be remembered about Dunbar (especially) is that many of those shop teachers were in CPS (and in Dunbar) because of the vicious segregation in many trades back in the "old days."

You might have helped save the world from fascism as part of the ground crews with the Tuskeegee Airmen out of Italy (remember: most of the group with those Mustangs never flew in combat, but kept the planes running), but back in Chicago there was no way you were going to get hired out at Midway (once "the world's busiest airport...").

Ditto in the printing and allied trades (except at the Defender). Etc.

So there was a social strength inside those old vocational schools.

In turn, many of those old time vocational guys helped build the Chicago Teachers Union (and the Black Caucus of the American Federation of Teachers, once the strongest in the nation). It all flowed from the same roots. Root and branch, once Harold Washington showed what might be in Chicago, all of us had to be extinguished -- behind a screen of elitist nonsense, in many cases.

The old voc teachers were providing real training for all kids. Not everyone can (or should) master calculus. But there are other routes to a decent life, work, and family than college prep and fantasy data drive globalized reality.

The shops should not have been destroyed (and much of the work privatized after the destruction) at Dunbar. Ditto at Lane. At Prosser. At CVS. And at all the other vocational schools (and in all the other vocational programs) that have been destroyed by the 1990s fantasy versions of post secondary jobs and realities.

Thanks for mentioning Dunbar.

Someone should do a story on what was, and what has now been wrought. Most of the shops at Dunbar (CVS, etc., etc., etc) -- the ones that taught skills that young people could use the moment they walked out of school every afternoon -- have been shuttered for years. The teachers who brought those skills to generations of young men (and, by the 1980s, women) have been slandered by the "ETC" nonsense of the current fashion. Vocational training -- ETC - is now a often a privatized hustle, often cheating desperate working class people out of their dollars and their dreams.

There is a place for TFA types.

But that cocky air of superiority is the problem, and all an Ivy League degree proves about most children is that your Daddy had more money than the kids who wound up at Chicago State of UIC.

The attack on vocational education in the high schools during the 1990s came from the same people who were giving us NAFTA, and the hundreds of ENRONs that now litter the landscape of history. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

The amazing thing about current realities is that the word people -- and their recurrent lies, false narratives, and self-deceptions -- still rule most roosts.

But like many previous rulings elites, they are, at base, helpless or learnly so. The first time a toilet clogs, or a car won't start, or the roof gets peeled off the house, they're helpless.

The years I taught (as an academic usually English teacher, although I also taught drafting, sheet metal, and machine shop) at Prosser, Cregier and other places that had real shops (Bowen had many until they were destroyed) showed that we could strike a very good balance between academics and "other" for the kids. The relentless drive to oust the shops (and the shop teachers) is a symptom of something much nastier than has been articulated to date.

TFA is another symptom of the same virus. Alone, it's kind of cute. As part of a shift in school governance and the way the USA deals with the inner city it is, as has already been noted, an elitist white supremacist attack on public schools and democratic public education.