Hey Wendy, Where’s the Money?
While Teach for America employs full time people to help ‘transition’ former TFA members to fields other than teaching, they seem to have a hard time accounting for the rest of the money they have received from educational grants- money that was in fact supposed to be used for teacher training.
According to a recent audit by the United States Department of Education:
TFA did not fully comply with applicable laws and regulations regarding its discretionary grant expenditures. We found that $774,944 (about 50 percent) of the total $1,534,290 in expenditures sampled was unsupported.
The recent audit, in fact, lists several instances where the money received by Teach for America remains “unsupported.”
So where is the money going?
It certainly doesn’t seem to be going towards ‘closing the achievement gap’ as TFA likes to tout over and over again.
Perhaps it is going towards those high priced functions that allow former TFA members to hob knob with future employers like Goldman Sachs?
The New York Times also mentions the article, but there might be a subscription limitation:
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/washington/07teach.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26partnerQ3DrssnytQ26emcQ3Drss&OP=532b9acaQ2Foyz6oQ3C5ZQ5Dm55dQ3EoQ3EQ25Q254oQ250oQ25Q20oyQ27Q5DQ26S9-d59oQ25Q20dzQ27ZQ26Q2BQ26dQ7DN
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Comments
Maybe TFA members don’t need training because they’re already highly qualified.
Maybe they’re ‘highly qualified’ from birth. Maybe being born to a certain privilege automatically makes you highly qualified.
Maybe the kids will learn by merely sharing a
room with such privilege.
Why bother spending money on teacher training when your goal is to get teachers out of the system and not to have them
stay in it.