Arizona Teaching Fellows huge waste of time and money to attend Phoenix, Arizona

It sounds like sour grapes.  You weren't selected, and you're angry.  This doesn't make AZTF a bad organization, nor does it support any of your allegations.

I went through the interview process and was selected as a Fellow in 2011.  I am hardly submissive, young, or unskilled.  I am a recent retiree from a successful and lucrative career in business with strong and definite opinions.  I was selected, and like every other Fellow selected, I completed an extremely rigorous, thorough training before my placement.  That training prepared me in the most effective way possible for what I am facing in a high needs school right now.  I can't say enough about how fantastic, demanding, rewarding, complete and competent my training through AZTF was.  Data tells, and of 10 teachers in my district teaching what I teach, my students had the greatest success during the first semester of the 2011-2012 school year (second semester data is not yet available).  My students did better than those of veteran teachers and conventionally certified new teachers.

AZTF has only four full-time employees.  They are a non-profit organization.  They are not benefitting in any way from what they do, other than their regular (rather unimpressive) salaries.  Those who assist them in the selection process are highly performing teachers and former fellows who have distinguished themselves and know what it takes for success in the program and in the classroom.

If you tried to get in and failed, and still feel you have a deep committment to teaching in Arizona's highest need schools, there are certainly ways to do it outside AZTF, and I recommend that you look into them.

I had never heard Arizona Teaching Fellows criticized and so posted the complaint here.  Now that I heard from you that the organization is known for the deception and upside down logic that I brought forth, I did a search on them through the Yahoo search engine with 'criticism' and the group name.  I only got about six pages, one of which was wikipedia.org.  That article did list a section for criticism.  Great for them.  I go there frequently to read articles but hadn't thought to search before becoming involved with this group.  Even their article doesn't go into what I wrote on the impersonal nature of selecting candidates and misleading them, however.  Wikipedia pointed to newspaper editorials that criticized Arizona Teaching Fellows on putting unexperienced people in classrooms and such.

The criticism I brought out about the organization is not known much by many people.  I didn't emphasize that they hold their "interviews" weekly for months on end.  There are thousands of candidates it appears for a limited amount of jobs in a handful of districts, as far as I can tell. 

The organization treats you very much as a disposable worker.  They send out mass emails to say you have been selected and then remind you regularly of your upcoming interview.  I want people to not consider them or to at least ask questions about how many jobs there are compared to how many people will be interviewed.  I myself am experienced enough to know that I had too many dishonest happenings with the group to trust them. 

They actually seemed to have hidden from me on the phone the chance to tell me how unlikely it would be that I'd be selected because I had called to ask about how I should select a location to take my AEPA (standardized test that people in Arizona take in the teacher certification process).  Looking back, I realize that the woman gave me as little guidance as she could and would rather treat me in a discriminating fashion.  Imagine a landlord realizing that the caller had a child but didn't want a renter with a child.  It was that sort of behavior; I don't have a child and suspect she went into the deceptive behavior because corpaorations are so scared of being sued by candidates.

I had understood from their time table that I needed to immediately register for that AEPA test.  I also needed to pick Phoenix or Tucson for the location.  I would be in their little internship program at the time of the test according to the time line, if I were selected as a fellow.  I said to the woman on the phone who later answered my email and didn't even recall that I had called in the meantime, that I would select Phoenix since I would rather stay in Phoenix the entire time of the short internship.  I did all this to politely inquire in a discreet way my chances of ending up in their organization.  I believe this was even after my interview, so she should have told me how best to select my location.  It ended up that Arizona Teaching Fellows sent me a rejection email less than a week after my phone call, and faster than they told people they would likely do so.  At the interview it was said within the next month, we would hear back from them (gives them more time to interview hundreds more).  I had already picked Phoenix as my testing location by then of course and had to drive all the way back to Phoenix to take the test that I had selected but ordinarily wouldn't have because they only want teachers for three subject areas.  So besides rushing up there the morning of my interview and paying someone to take me, I had to go to Phoenix twice!

It's just a crummy organization that doesn't want to spend any time in getting to know a candidate personally.  I was upset to have my time and money wasted and imagine the thousands of others like me felt angry too.  The people in my little interview group were from the east and west coast and other scattered states that are thousands of miles away.  There has got to be even more sinister money connections to expain this crooked organization.  Maybe one is that they can make even more money for the big testing companies by making people think they will be in Arizona, so they had better register for the Praxis or AEPA here in Arizona.  Then, since they won't actually be here, the people will increase the profits for the companies when they don't show for the test they had paid $140 or more to take!

Your criticism is like past mainstream criticism of this program, but I don't know if I would classify this as a ripoff. This is more of a complaint about the structure of the organization itself. If you would like you can file a complaint with Teach For America which is the parent non-profit organization of Phoenix Teaching Fellows.