With a distressed national economy, states with shrinking budgets, and municipalities issuing massive worker layoffs, you would think that many school districts would welcome help in failed, over-crowded, inner city classrooms from literally thousands of well qualified, university educated teaching assistants.
You would be wrong. Because for the politically powerful teacher's unions, it's about preserving teacher's union jobs - not economically providing the best educational opportunities for poor, mostly black, school children.
*Betsy, a recovering gub'mint school teacher, has an excellent post which highlights three stories: one from the WSJ; one from the Boston Globe; and the other from the Detroit Free press.
"This is such a shame. TFA pays for the training of these young, dedicated teachers and then places them in the most challenging situations. These young, often Ivy-League educated graduates vie for the opportunity to tackle teaching in some of the most at-risk schools in the nation. The program has been an amazing success. In fact, I had thought that the limit on the number of applicants accepted was designed as sort of a mechanism to increase the desirability of winning a place by creating a false scarcity. I should have known that teachers unions were the true cause. They can't stand the thought that anyone could become an excellent teacher without going through education programs."
Your tax dollars at work - against the best interest of your children.
Update: Related: Congress dislikes poor, mostly black, school children, too.
*format fixed