Controversy about "Teachers Rock"

There was a CBS TV special called "Teachers Rock" that supported several charities.  One of these charities was "Teach for America"  As a Josh Groban fan, I was very interested to hear about fans who were angry about Josh supporting Teach for America by appearing on this show.

Many of Josh's fans are teachers.  Some of them brought up objections that the teachers union(s) have to Teach for America. The latter group apparently starts charter schools. Charter schools apparently tend to hire less trained, less experienced cheaper, non-union teachers to teach at risk populations.

According to the people I've been in contact with, there is no proof that charter schools do better than public schools with these populations -- despite the claims of the charter schools that they are going to solve the problems in the public schools.  Moreover, the charter schools divert funds away from the public schools.

Teachers tend to get blamed for the poor performance of at risk kids, but in fact the teachers have no control over the conditions outside the school that make it impossible for those students to learn.

One fan called the charter schools in her area "lying thieves" because they took the money for special ed kids and then dumped the kids back into the public schools after the charter schools used up the money.

My kids certainly benefitted from master's degree special ed teachers, through the public schools -- and I'm very grateful that they got that help.  I also found that younger, less experienced, less well trained teachers were not as good at dealing with my special ed kids as those with more training and experience.

This is the first time I've seen several devoted fans get irate about something Josh was doing.

This has been a learning experience for me and I hope it has been for Josh as well. I hope he has been reading some of the very angry tweets that have been posted about this.