Teach for America (TFA)

Background, History, and Mission

Teach For America selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. TFA exists to address educational inequity and it does so by enlisting academically talented young people and placing them in economically disadvantaged contexts.

Teach For America reports that the TFA corps members are a very diverse and talented group. They have been recruited from all disciplines of study and have no prior teaching experience, training, or formal education degree. They demonstrate strong leadership ability and evidence an ability to work with young people in a way that motivates them to learn. TFA tries to identify young people who have the skills and personal presence to enter high-needs classrooms in ways that will be both academically and culturally transformative.

Teach For America officials are quick to point out that their corps members possess the leadership skills needed to make a real impact over the short-and long-term. While TFA does not seek any single personal profile, corps members have an average GPA of 3.6, and 95% have held leadership positions on their college campuses. Their average SAT score approximates 1,300, which is considerably higher than the average SAT for students matriculating through traditional teacher education programs.

Some studies suggest that TFA teachers are more effective than other, “experienced” classroom colleagues. According to one study, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. Results from that same research suggest that [Page 881]the TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with 3 or more years of experience. In essence, researchers were able to document an academic performance advantage for students who had TFA teachers. Neoconservatives have used this type of research to argue for significant policy changes relative to the education of teachers for classrooms in the United States.

Making a Difference? the Effects of Teach for America in High Schools

Teach For America recruits and selects from some of the most elite colleges and universities across the country to teach in the nation's most challenging K–12 schools. Some would suggest that TFA is helping to address the crucial need to staff the nation's schools, particularly the acute need in high-poverty schools. Advocates for TFA graduates would suggest that TFA attracts higher quality candidates and such that they can have a more profound impact on student achievement. Many of the neoconservative think tanks have released policy papers arguing for ending the education monopoly relative to the preparation and licensure of teachers. However, TFA also has its critics. Criticisms of the TFA approach fall in two categories. The first is that most TFA teachers have not received traditional teacher training and therefore are not as prepared for the demands of the classroom as traditionally trained teachers. As a result, the students with the highest needs (i.e., students in high-poverty environments) are placed in classrooms with teachers with the least amount of formal preparation (i.e., TFA graduates). TFA corps members participate in an intensive 5-week summer national institute and a 2-week local orientation/induction program prior to their first teaching assignment, but this limited intensive preparation is viewed by many as too superficial to really prepare TFA teachers for the demands of a high-needs classroom. The second criticism is that TFA requires only a 2-year teaching commitment, and the majority of corps members leave at the end of that commitment. The short tenure of TFA teachers is troubling because research shows that new teachers are generally less effective than more experienced teachers. Those in TFA often point out that the tenure for traditionally prepared teachers is not especially long, with almost 50% dropping out of teaching by their fifth year.

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