Readings Due:

Required:

• Anonymous Oakland After School Teacher (2012). The Deceptive Promise of Charter Schools: A New Orleans Case Study. (pp. 1-8)
• Scott, J. & Trujillo, T. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A Conceptual Framework for the Next Generation of Scholarship. (pp. 2-24)
• The Onion (2012).https://www.theonion.com/my-year-volunteering-as-a…
• Lanier, H.K. (2012). Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach for America. Chapter 2 pp. 14-19 excluding final paragraph)
• http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

• Supplemental Material:

  • Former literacy tutors https://buildteachers.wordpress.com/ about their Teach for America experiences. These tutors are also former UC Berkeley students and worked with an on-campus organization called BUILD
  • Questions to answer in the CRR . Choose three questions and make sure to talk about both Teach for America and Charter schools:
    1. Do you believe that Charter Schools and Teach for America are what Quart refers to as “Dystopian Social Net”? (Reference CRR 3 for a refresher) Why or why not?
    2. What role does entrepreneurship have in US schooling?
    3. Considering “The Deceptive Promise of Charter Schools: A New Orleans Case Study,” an Oakland teacher argues that large corporations have a profound impact on schools. What examples does she use to support this claim?
    4. What are the drawbacks of using charter schools to bridge the opportunity gap in low-income communities as articulated by an Oakland teacher in “The Deceptive Promise of Charter Schools: A New Orleans Case Study”?
    5. What do Scott and Trujillo argue is TFA’s greatest point of impact and how does it operate in society?
    6. What is the relationship between Lanier’s experience in TFA with the white racial frame?
    7. What is the relationship between the documentary Education INC and the Scott & Trujillo reading?
    8. What connections can you articulate between this week's readings? More specifically, how do these readings give us a sense of TFA’s perspective on the purpose of education, how we define strong teachers and schools, and what institutions influence schools?
    9. How does Scott & Trujillo define a strong TFA volunteer and applicant? How might these qualities support TFA’s reinforcement of ideology and power structures?