Thursday, July 23, 2020

Archive: TNTP and The Opportunity Myth

While the Institute is away at a corporate retreat, far, mostly, from the interwebz, I've arranged for some dips into the archives.

TNTP first crammed the discussion of education with the Widget Effect, one of those faux white papers that thinky tanks pop out. Their new attempt to "inform" everyone's conversation is Th Opportunity Myth which, sadly, I see quoted far too often. Here's what I hd to say about it when it first reared its head.

The Opportunity Myth Myth

Who are these folks? TNTP used to stand for The New Teacher Project; She Who Will Not Be Named created it as a spin-off of TFA, designed to put older career-changers into the classroom. At some point it changed into an advocacy group pushing a redesign of teaching (current slogan: reimagine teaching). TNTP is led by Daniel Weisberg, who started out as a lawyer and then served as a labor specialist under Joel Klein in NYC. The board is packed with entrepreneurs, PR specialists, and reform CEOs. You can hunt through the whole list of TNTP leaders and find that this organization devoted to teaching has no teachers in leadership positions (just a few TFA temps and other alternative paths to one or two resume-building years in the classroom).

So this report comes straight from the heart of reformdom.

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