In a recent article by Alissa Quart for TheNation.com, she discusses the phenomenon that is teachers being forced to take second jobs because annual pay doesn’t cover living expenses. A frequently covered topic, Quart focuses on one company that is capitalizing on teachers’ need to find quick work: Uber.

Quart takes a look at Uber’s initiatives that have targeted teachers making to look extra money, extra money that Quart points out is hard won as teachers struggle to grade papers and plan lessons between acting as chauffeurs.

"For the last two years, the company has sponsored initiatives to encourage teachers to moonlight as chauffeurs. The campaigns differ from city to city and from year to year. In 2014, the Uber campaign’s discomfiting motto was 'Teachers: Driving Our Future,’” Quart points out.

"In 2015, Uber offered teachers in Chicago a summer job; to sweeten the deal, the ride-share company gave a $250 bonus to any teacher who signed up to drive by a certain date and completed 10 car trips. In Oregon, Uber notifies riders when their driver is a teacher and trumpets the fact that 3 percent of each fare goes back to the driver's classroom. The company also offers a $5,000 bonus to the school with the most active drivers.”

But Quart wants to expose this apparent “civic altruism,” this “feel-good veneer” as she calls it.

”... [S]tripped of their gloss of generosity, Uber's teacher/driver campaigns also share in a more twisted Silicon Valley fantasy: low taxes, good schools—and your kid’s teacher might drive you home after your expense-account meal with a venture capitalist!”

Quart urges her audience to see the real problem at hand—that already hard-working teachers have to work even harder on nights and weekends and vacations to make ends meet.

Read the full story.

Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

9/8/2016