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Monday, October 21, 2013

A Horror Comedy: Teach For America Rises to Power | Cloaking Inequity

A Horror Comedy: Teach For America Rises to Power | Cloaking Inequity:

A Horror Comedy: Teach For America Rises to Power

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Gremlins was a “horror comedy” movie that came out in the early 1980s. Wikipedia:
The film is about a young man who receives a strange creature called a Mogwai as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, evil monsters.
What does it take for the Gremlins to spawn and replicate into mini monsters in the movie? Water.
In TFA’s case, it’s money.
What Stephanie Simon reported on today at Politico has been well-known to policymakers for awhile— TFA is working behind the the scenes with millions of dollars at its disposal. Republicans and Democrats have bought in to their very simple “reform”— sending inexperienced (about 12-20 hours of teaching before they hit the classroom) teachers to teach poor white and minority kids for a two year commitment.
I get it. It is very difficult to counter TFA folks in conversation. They have hired the best and brightest, and they are typically very loqatious in person— even convicting. They are also very convincing to policymakers because Simon