The charter school and TFA flood begins soon in Minnesota.

[spedtr90]

Two years after the alternative teacher licensing program approved putting teachers with 200 hours of training into MN classrooms, Teach For America will become the first to apply to provide that training. The legislation seems such a perfect fit - imagine that! TFA provides 5 weeks of training...25 days x 8 hours a day...200 hours! It's like it was meant to be... much like the ALEC model bill that it was.

Not much actual teaching comes with that 200 hours, according to the TFA website: Corps members teach summer school students for an average of two hours each day and are observed by experienced teachers. For one of the two hours, they lead a class to master academic content, and build their own skills in delivering lessons and managing a classroom. For the other hour, most corps members work with four to five students to build skills in math and reading and gain experience in leading small group instruction.


The groundwork at the local levels is moving along nicely, depending on what you believe constitutes local control of public schools. The brother of Teach For America CEO Matt Kramer is a member of the Minneapolis school board. It get more interesting...

So what do board meetings look like when everyone agrees that the achievement gap is the civil right$ issue of our time? At one recent meeting:

■Eli Kramer (brother of TFA co-CEO Matt Kramer) urged the board to sell a shuttered public school to Hiawatha Academy, the outstanding and innovative charter that he runs.

■Hiawatha Academy’s expansion is backed by Charter School Partners, which employs TFA co-CEO Matt Kramer’s wife.

■The TFA-backed school board member who moved to Minneapolis to run for office had to recuse himself from the vote because his girlfriend will be the principal of the new Hiawatha facility.

■A second board member also recused himself from the vote because he formerly chaired the board of Hiawatha Academy.

■The board voted to sell the shuttered public school to Hiawatha Academy. According to the MinnPost, the newspaper owned by TFA co-CEO Matt Kramer’s father, the sale heralds a new era of collaboration. I’ll say.


More and additional links at http://edushyster.com/?p=2258

[elehhhhna]

1. this is self-dealing and clearly a conflict of interest in the extreme.

no bids made for this school building? None?