Anna Eastman, Charter Schools, and Discrimination Against Older Working People

Houston oil industry titans who sponsor two charter school networks are funding several candidates for the Houston Independent School District governing board. It is not clear what their ultimate goal is since the charter schools lay outside of Houston public school governance.

One of the three candidates supported by charter-school advocates, who seek to recruit 10,000 new students in the coming years, is Anna Eastman, a liberal activist married to an oil industry attorney.

This link between Ms. Eastman and charter schools in Houston raises some interesting questions and potent contradictions regarding age discrimination.

KIPP and YES PREP charter schools favor hiring young, inexperience teachers, rather than career teachers.

The average Texas KIPP-YES teacher has less than five years of experience.

The average teacher in these schools remain there for less than three years.

KIPP schools reportedly prefer hiring Teach for America kids right out of college.

I tried an experiment two years ago.

I applied for several KIPP jobs to see if I would get a call back. I was 46 years old, and had 13 years of experience, and a Master's degree in History.

In that time, one year I had 28 students in a working-class, Hispanic neighborhood pass Advanced Placement exams. Another year, I had 24 students pass, and in another, 16.

Advanced Placement courses are college level courses in high school. I had achieved something--we had achieved something--no other teacher-student team had in the Houston Independent School District.

Since KIPP and Yes pride themselves on serving mainly Hispanic working-class youth, I thought I would be a prime candidate at least to get an interview.

I did not think I would get a job because they supposedly prefer chrarismatic individuals.

I did not get an interview. Or a call back. Or a thank you e-mail or letter.

One fear career teachers have about the charters is charter managers will not even be considered them for work. Their experience will not be respected.

This summer I observed TFA teachers, twenty-two year olds who had just received their B.A.s. Two of them already had jobs in the charter schools that would not interview me.

Ms. Ana Eastman has been quiet about what her alliance with the charter schools will mean in terms of her school board activities.

Ms. Eastman puports to be a liberal Democrat and advocate of public education, in spite of her apparent popularity among oil industry execs who favor charter schools.

She should be open and speak up on the issue of ageism and age discrimination against older teachers by charter schools.

Is she going to want to import this sort of behavior into HISD?