Teach For America & Teacher Layoffs in Kansas City
In The News, Teach First, Teach for America, Teach for Australia, Unions Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
More predictable news from the US involving the redundancy of employed teachers to make way for new Teach for America recruits.
In what is seen as a very deliberate attempt to undermine the teaching unions, the Kansas City School District have told over half of 200 teachers without tenure that their contracts won’t be renewed. Their places are to be filled by Teach for America recruits who “will go from filling gaps in the teaching ranks to what appears to be replacements for educators the district is jettisoning.”
It appears the union had initially agreed to endorse the employment of TfA recruits to address teacher shortages (Isn’t this the same Tory/Teach First line about filling hard to fill positions?) but this did not stretch to support for the replacement of existing staff.
Perhaps in light of this, in Australia, meanwhile, a teachers’ union has begun a campaign against TfA’s sister organisation Teach for Australia because the union believes Teach for Australia undermines the teaching profession, and that having inexperienced newbies in the classroom will be detrimental to teaching and learning.
We wait to see whether this campaign will be mirrored in other countries where Teach for All is hoping to expand.
(More on the Kansas City story here)
