Teaching For America?

Tens of thousands of talented college graduates are being blocked from teaching in some of America’s poorest school districts by a public education establishment that obviously doesn’t care about the children its supposed to be educating.

“Teach for America” is having to reject tens of thosands of teachers due to quotas imposed by teachers’ unions and public education monopolies – yet another example of the monopolistic suppression of what should be a thriving education marketplace in this county.

From WSJ:

Teach for America — the privately funded program that sends college grads into America’s poorest school districts for two years — received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market.

So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year’s applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of Teach for America teachers they will accept, typically between 10% and 30% of new hires. In the Washington area, that number is about 25% to 30%, but in Chicago, former home of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it is an embarrassing 10%.

This is a tragic lost opportunity. Teach for America picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money. More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it. Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment to a teaching career. But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that “TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience.”

Damn right.

This is yet another example of how America’s public education monopoly fails to serve teachers, parents or students – and how rampant bureaucratic waste and incompetence is preventing our children from receiving the education they deserve.

Here in South Carolina, for example, less than half of every dollar spent on public education actually makes its way into the classroom – and yet the second state revenues start “slipping,” teachers’ heads are the first to be placed on the chopping block.

As FITS has noted in the past, S.C. public schools currently have nearly $800 million sitting around in their bank accounts.

How many of these qualified teachers could they hire with that money?

Here’s the real rub, though.

By creating additional parental options – using just a fraction of what the government spends per pupil – we could easily create dozens of new private and parochial schools in this state.

And while the status quo wants you to believe otherwise, it’s obvious that finding qualified teachers to serve in these schools won’t be a problem.

They’re literally lining up for the chance …

That means new jobs for this state in the short-term, and better jobs in the long run for our future generations.

It’s a no-brainer, which of course is why government is fighting it with every fibre of its being.

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