The NEA’s Van Roekel and TFA’s Kopp on teacher quality. That’s reaching deep.

Teach for America’s Wendy Kopp, NEA’s Dennis Van Roekel’s new best friend.

I had some friends get down on me a few weeks ago when I criticized the NEA leadership, President Dennis Van Roekel in particuluar, for the NEA’s commission or committee or whatever the hell it was on teacher quality.

Egged on by such anti-union stalwarts as the American Enterprise Institute’s Fred Hess, the commission’s report fed perfectly into the corporate reformer’s critique of public education: The problem is the teachers. We’re not prepared. We’re not good. We’re not fired.

My friends thought I was reading too much into the Hess connection.

But what do you make of this: USA Today features a column written jointly by Van Roekel and Teach For America’s Wendy Kopp on long-term commitment to teacher quality.

Teach for America? Teacher quality?

Please don’t do the lecture on how there’s good folks in TFA. Spare me. I’ve heard the argument. I’m not impressed.

Whatever you think of individual TFA members, there is no evidence that TFA has anything to do with teacher quality. This is the group that promotes the two-years-and-out approach to professional teaching commitment. This is the group that sends in replacements to cash strapped school districts after they fire veteran union teachers.

Scabs, some might say.

So what is Dennis Van Roekel doing co-writing a USA Today column with the corporate school reformers’ poster woman?

Ask him.

Meanwhile teacherken at Daily Kos speaks for many:

I cannot support this action by Dennis Van Roekel.  I suspect that I am far from alone among the more than 3 million members, many of whom are likely to see this as a betrayal.