"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Oligarchs Push Ohio To Change Licensure Rules to Suit TFA and KIPP

(Photo by Brooke LaValley for Post-Dispatch)
With billions in tax-credited corporate cash and taxpayer money behind the total compliance apartheid testing camps of KIPP and the KIPP knockoffs, it is easy to buy stories that make the utterly ridiculous sound entirely sublime. See today's effort in the Columbus Post-Dispatch, which offers a "news" story that reads like an op-ed in favor of the oppressed white missionary KIPPstresses as they do battle against the big bad State of Ohio teacher rules. How about this for a title:

Teacher technicality: Educators with high-level training and experience seek change in state rules to allow them full licenses

The technicality, of course, is the approved licensure process that everyone else seeking a teaching license in Ohio must abide by.

It seems that KIPP and TFA are willing to accept Ivy League missionaries into their sects who know nothing about teaching or children, and who have no coursework in child development, curriculum, assessment, educational psychology or sociology, history, or educational philosophy, no methods courses or student teaching. After 5 weeks of TFA's Miracle Summer course, the new missionaries are turned loose in urban schools that need the most experienced and highly-trained teachers.

So why shouldn't the bad ole rules of the State of Ohio be changed to suit, nay, embrace this new containment and control model of urban indoctrination led by white privileged former debutantes with a corporate script? It all seems like a mean old mystery to Jenna Davis who, despite her two degrees, can't quite seem to figure it out:

KIPP teacher Jenna Davis graduated from the University of Dayton with bachelor's and master's degrees in education but has been told she doesn't qualify for a full license.

"I stayed in Ohio (to train to become a teacher), and I'm not even recognized as a teacher at all," she said. "It's the enigma of it all. Just tell me what I need to do."

The enigma of it all, indeed. Someone just tell Jenna what to do, please.



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