nation | Last year, Wendy Heller Chovnick, a former Teach For America manager, spoke out against her former organization in The Washington Post,
decrying its “inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid
criticism.” In recent years, such criticism has centered on Teach For
America’s intimate involvement in the education privatization movement and
its five-week training, two-year teaching model, which critics claim
offers recruits a transformative résumé-boosting experience but burdens
schools with disruptive turnover cycles.
In the interview, Chovnick referenced the extent to which Teach For
America manufactured its public image, explaining, “Instead of engaging
in real conversations with critics, and even supporters, about the
weaknesses of Teach For America and where it falls short, Teach For
America seemed to put a positive spin on everything. During my tenure on
staff, we even got a national team, the communications team, whose job
it was to get positive press out about Teach For America in our region
and to help us quickly and swiftly address any negative stories, press
or media.”
An internal media strategy memo, obtained by The Nation,
confirms Chovnick’s concerns, detailing TFA’s intricate methodology for
combating negative media attention, or what it calls “misinformation.”
Given that TFA takes tens of millions of government dollars every year,
such strategies are troubling. According to its last three years of
available tax filings, Teach For America has spent nearly $3.5 million
in advertising and promotion. As the strategy memo indicates, much of
this promotion goes toward attacking journalists, including ones
previously published in this magazine. The memo details the numerous
steps TFA’s communications team took in order to counter Alexandra
Hootnick’s recent piece for the The Nation, “Teachers Are Losing Their Jobs, but Teach For America Is Expanding. What’s Wrong With That?”
