Re: Ed Trust report on teacher quality

[ABurke5054@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/13/2006 7:58:52 PM Pacific Standard Time,  
campbellp@mail.montclair.edu writes:

...This is precisely the problem with organizations like Teach for  America, 
KIPP, etc., i.e., organizations that pride themselves on finding and  
developing great teachers. TFA could make meaningful, powerful, substantive  
contributions to the national conversation regarding educational reform.  However, 
because TFA does not make these contributions, it tacitly contributes  to the 
notion that the achievement gap can be closed -- exclusively -- by  attracting, 
training, and sustaining great teachers, i.e., TFA's  mission.





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TFA and KIPP stand for offering poor children the best possible  educational 
experience.  KIPP walks its talk by running schools  and TFA puts teachers in 
classrooms.   These are "meaningful,  powerful, and substantive contributions" 
to education reform by any rational  criterion.  Claiming that these 
organizations "tacitly contribute" to  keeping poor children down is as bizaare as 
claiming that  the Little Sisters of the Poor "tacitly contribute"  to the  
notion that society needs only charitable acts to ameliorate poverty.
 
These are crank arguments and serve only as examples of silliness and  
irrelevance.
 
Art