History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Teachers alone can’t create excellent schools
- 03-28-2011
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Guest blog by Vikash Reddy/Washington Post
As a Teach For America (TFA) alumnus, I enjoyed George Will’s recent op-ed, “Teach for America: Letting the cream rise,” in The Washington Post. Will notes that TFA has become a force not just in education-reform circles but also among recent college graduates, with more than 15 percent of seniors at Harvard and Princeton competing for the chance to spend two years teaching students in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods. I fear, however, that the lessons Mr. Will has learned from TFA’s story are incomplete. He writes, “Until recently—until, among other things, TFA—it seemed that we simply did not know how to teach children handicapped by poverty and its accompaniments—family disintegration and destructive community cultures. Now we know exactly what to do.” Not so fast. At best, the lessons drawn by Mr. Will are likely to distract us from identifying, and then addressing, broader policy problems. (more...)
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