The in box. TFA Chicago plans exposed by EduShyster.com

Josh Anderson of Teach For America Chicago tours the East Chicago Lighthouse Charter School in East Chicago, Indiana. Photo: Sun-Times

Blogger EduShyster.com broke the story of the Teach for America (TFA) plan to replace unionized professional teachers by tag-teaming with Chicago’s rapidly expanding charter schools.

The story got bigger play today when Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post reprinted the EduShyster post in its entirety.

The blog post makes this important point:

In city after city, TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.

EduShyster contacted the head of Teach for America in Chicago, Josh Anderson,  for comment. Anderson essentially admitted TFA’s changing role in the charter take-over of Chicago’s schools.

But (Anderson’s) blandly legalistic statement doesn’t quite convey just how wired in Chicago TFA is to the very processes that Anderson describes. TFA has close relationships with the charter organizations listed—KIPP, of course, is run and staffed by TFA alum. Locally, TFA’s supply of corps members to staff schools like UNO and Noble at salaries far below what teachers in the Chicago Public Schools earn has been key to enabling the schools’ expansion.

Josh Anderson’s wife Phoebe Anderson is  chief of staff for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

Josh’s father is Jo Anderson, senior advisor to Arne Duncan and former Executive Director of the Illinois Education Association.