| Founder(s) | Wendy Kopp, Founder |
|---|---|
| Type | Nonprofit organization |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Location | New York, NY |
| Key people | Wendy Kopp - Founder & Chief Executive Officer Matthew Kramer - President Elisa Villanueva Beard - Chief Operating Officer |
| Focus | Eliminate Educational Inequity |
| Revenue | $176 million (FY 2010) |
| Motto | One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. |
| Website | teachforamerica.org |
Teach For America (TFA) is an American non-profit organization that aims to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting the nation's most promising future leaders to teach for two or more years in low-income communities throughout the United States. The organization aspires for these "corps members" to gain the insight and added commitment to tackle the root causes of America's achievement gap throughout their lives.
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The organization was founded by Wendy Kopp after she developed the idea to help eliminate educational inequality in the United States for her senior thesis at Princeton University in 1989. Members of the founding team include value investor Whitney Tilson, U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue Douglas Shulman and KIPP President and CEO Richard Barth. Since its beginning in 1990, more than 20,000 corps members have completed their commitment to Teach For America.[1] The first ten years of the organization is chronicled in Kopp's book "One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way" . In January 2011, Wendy Kopp released her second book, "A Chance To Make History", which outlines what she has learned over the last 20 years working in American education.[2]
Applying to Teach For America has become very popular among seniors at some of America's elite colleges. In its first year, Teach For America placed 500 teachers; in 2010, the organization received more than 46,000 applications resulting in 4,500 new corps members. These applicants included 20 percent of the senior class at Spelman, 12 percent of all Ivy League seniors, 7 percent of the graduating class at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and 6 percent at the University of California-Berkeley.[3]
In February 2011, Teach For America celebrated its 20th anniversary at a summit in Washington D.C. that attracted 11,000 corps members, alumni, staff and supporters of the organization. Among those in attendance: Congressman John Lewis, feminist Gloria Steinem, political consultant James Carville, Presidential Advisor and Harvard Kennedy School Professor David Gergen, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, AFT President Randi Weingarten, CEO of Harlem Children's Zone Geoffrey Canada, author Malcolm Gladwell, and singer John Legend.
Teach For America recruits recent college graduates and professionals to teach for two years in urban and rural communities throughout the United States. The goal of Teach For America is for its corps members not only to make a short-term impact on their students, but also to become lifelong leaders in pursuing educational equality. Corps members do not have to be certified teachers, although certified teachers may apply.
Uncertified corps members receive alternative certification through coursework taken while completing the program. Corps members attend an intensive five-week summer institute to prepare for their commitment.[4] Teach For America teachers are placed in schools in urban areas such as New York City and Houston, as well as in rural places such as eastern North Carolina and the Mississippi Delta. They then serve for two years and are usually placed in schools with other Teach For America corps members.
Teach For America teachers are full-fledged faculty members at their schools, receiving the normal school district salary and benefits as well as a modest AmeriCorps "education voucher" (which can be used to pay for credentialing courses, cover previous student loans or fund further education after the two-year commitment).
Since the founding of the organization, several independent studies have been conducted to gauge the effectiveness of Teach For America corps members relative to teachers who entered the teaching profession via other channels. Recent teacher pathway studies in three states — Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee — suggest that Teach For America corps members have a greater impact on student achievement than new teachers from more traditional certification programs.[5][6][7] Additionally, Teach For America won the largest grant out of nearly 1,700 applications to the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition in 2010. The i3 scale-up grants required applicants to provide demonstrated evidence of success through objective, methodologically sound studies (e.g., experimental and quasi-experimental research designs) of student achievement.[8][9]
In a study published by the Urban Institute and the Calder Center in March 2008, and forthcoming in the Journal of Public Policy and Management, the authors found "TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in-field. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science."[10]
Mathematica Policy Research also addressed this question in a study published in June 2004 using random assignment of students to teachers. The study compared the gains in reading and math achievement made by students randomly assigned to Teach For America teachers or other teachers in the same school. The results showed that, on average, students with Teach For America teachers raised their mathematics test scores 0.15 standard deviations more than the gains made by other students. This is equivalent to students having received one extra month of instruction. In reading, students with Teach For America teachers performed similarly to students with other teachers.[11]
According to an independent study by Policy Studies Associates, in 2009, 94 percent of principals who work with Teach For America teachers contend that Teach For America corps members make a significant and positive impact in their classrooms. 91% of principals expressed that Teach For America teachers are as well-prepared to teach as other beginning teachers. 63% believed that Teach For America's training is "better than average."[12]
Teach For America reports that nearly half of their alumni teach at their placement schools for a third year. Many others go on to teach elsewhere, especially at KIPP charter schools and other schools founded by Teach For America alumni. Still others train for administrative positions, and Teach For America now reports that 67% of its alumni are working or studying in education.[13]
Teach For America's geographical impact has also grown. Originally serving only 6 regions, Teach For America will be active in 43 regions in the 2011-12 school year:
According to a 2009 USA Today article, Teach For America has been criticized by opponents who claim that the program replaces experienced teachers with brand-new employees brought in at beginners' salary levels. John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, sent a memo in May 2009 stating that union leaders were "beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire Teach For America college grads due to a contract they signed." Wilson went on to say that Teach For America brings in "the least-prepared and the least-experienced teachers" into low-income schools and makes them "the teacher of record."[14]
In the same USA Today article it was reported that in March 2009, Peter Gorman, the superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina schools told board members that because of a commitment made to the program, 100 Teach For America teachers would be retained in spite of the fact that hundreds of other non-Teach For America teachers in the district would be laid off. However, Teach For America spokeswoman Kerci Marcello Stroud says it would be a mistaken notion to say that Teach For America corps members are displacing experienced teachers. "In every region where we send teachers, we're just one source," she says. "Once they land, corps members must interview for jobs just like everyone else."[14]
Critics of Teach For America have also cited the results of Mathematica Policy Research's 2004 study as an indication of Teach For America’s lack of efficacy (see Educational Impact). These critics claim that while the study shows that students taught by Teach For America teachers perform better in mathematics than those taught by non-Teach For America teachers, the improvement is very small, and that furthermore there is no difference in reading performance between the two groups.[11][14]
A 2010 article published by Campus Progress suggested that "TFA’s breakneck training course leaves TFA teachers—or 'corps members,' as they’re called—with insufficient classroom experience, before throwing them headfirst into some of the most disadvantaged school districts in the country."[15]
In a 2009 editorial for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Deborah Appleman, a professor of Educational Studies at Carleton College, wrote "Implicit in Teach for America's approach is the insidious assumption that anyone who knows a subject and is willing to be with kids can teach -- with little training." She also challenged TFA's "elitist" structure. "The story of TFA becomes a kind of master narrative, a story of heroic and altruistic young people that focuses much more squarely on them than it does on the lives of the children they are committed to serve. There is an elitist overtone to the structure of TFA, a belief that the best and the brightest can make a difference in the lives of children who are less fortunate, even when they are not professionally prepared to do so."[16]
Notable Teach For America alumni include:
Teach For America has witnessed sustained growth over the course of the past two decades. The chart below reflects this growth by highlighting the changes in various performance indicators.[17][18]
| Year | # of Applicants |
# of Incoming Corps Members |
# of Regions |
Operating Budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 15,708 | 1,646 | 20 | $29.8M |
| 2004 | 13,378 | 1,626 | 22 | $34.0M |
| 2005 | 17,348 | 2,181 | 22 | $38.4M |
| 2006 | 18,968 | 2,464 | 25 | $55.6M |
| 2007 | 18,172 | 2,895 | 26 | $77.9M |
| 2008 | 24,718 | 3,614 | 29 | $122.3M |
| 2009 | 35,178 | 4,065 | 35 | $153.4M |
| 2010 | 46,359 | 4,493 | 40 | $176.0M |
| 2011 | 48,000 | 5,200 | 43 |
In 2010, 46,366 candidates applied and 5,827 were initially admitted, making the acceptance rate 12.6%. However, that number does not include those who earned eventual acceptance into the program from the waitlist of 932 candidates. If all on the waitlist were given acceptance, the acceptance rate would be 14.6%. Since some but not all were accepted from the waitlist, the exact 2010 acceptance rate is unknown, but it ranges from 12.6-14.6%. [citation needed.]
Teach For America launched three special initiatives to help address urgent priorities within the education system.
In 2006, Teach For America created the early childhood education initiative because research has shown that the achievement gap begins before kindergarten. Teach For America started the ECE program with 20 ECE corps members in the D.C. Region. As of today, nearly 300 corps members are focusing on ECE in 22 regions.[19]
So far, the ECE program has placed over 1,100 teachers in schools and community organizations across 22 regions. It has also emphasized the importance of cultivating the different social, emotional and physical developments of children by developing several different methods of instruction to accommodate all types of students.[19]
The Math and Science Initiative was developed in 2004 to provide students across the United States, specifically those in low income areas with more Math and Science teachers. In the 2009-2010 school year, according to the statistics provided by Teach For America, nearly 2,400 corps members are teaching Math and Science to 150,000 students. This initiative recruits graduating college seniors, graduate students, and professionals with math, science and engineering expertise, and provides Teach For America Math and science teachers with training and support.[20]
Launched in 2010, the Native Achievement Initiative was created to directly impact and address the educational inequity that affects Native children in the United States. The goal of this initiative is to expand educational opportunity in schools serving predominantly Native American and Native Hawaiian students by providing 1,500 Teach For America corps members to Native community schools by 2015.[21]
The National Honor Fraternity Phi Sigma Pi adopted TFA as its national philanthropy.[22]