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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

How old are your cousins? Americorps seems to recruit (only recruits?) twenty-something, recent college grads. The people I know who've gone to work for them were certainly in that age group. Other teachers I know (15+ years of teaching) seem to have a fair amount of freedom in their lesson plans and materials so I wonder if this is an issue with Americorps, younger teachers, or perhaps I've just known some fortunate teachers.

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Confirming this. The experience of a Americorps recruit is barely comparable to the average experience of a professional teacher. Americorps recruits are sent to the worse schools, partly because those schools cannot afford more professional teachers.

"Worse" translates to "urban" or "rural" schools.

Think about what that means. (Hint: It's not a money issue)

>"Worse" translates to "urban" or "rural" schools. Think about what that means. (Hint: It's not a money issue)

Duff, please spell it out for us? What are you implying the problem is?

Poor governance, which is allowed to persist due to lower involvement by parents.

That black people and white people are stupid? I'm really not sure what forbidden truth you're supposed to be getting at here.

The forbidden truth is about poor people ("rural"=white and poor, "urban" = black and poor.)

I'm curious how you exclude the "money issue". Don't "rural" and "urban" districts correlate remarkably well with "poor" districts?

What subjects do the teachers you know teach, and where are they teaching?

After edit: The Americorps website is a mess, so I'm still looking around for information about where Americorps members might work as teachers.

The teachers I know (and remain in regular contact with) are mostly high school teachers and a couple of middle school teachers. I believe the Americorps teachers I know are both HS teachers, both are in Mississippi.

As to the other, more experienced teachers, they teach in various parts of Georgia. Rural districts in both north and middle GA, as well as the Atlanta area (in a variety of school types: a few in financially well off districts; others in financially poorer districts).

Subjects taught:

- Math by most of the Atlanta area teachers

- The rural teachers are a combination of foreign languages and english and a couple math/science teachers

22 & 24, I think.

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