Perspectives on TFA in Its 20th Year
In its two decades, Teach For America has dispatched more than 20,000 young teachers to work in some of America’s poorest schools and communities. The nonprofit organization, which sprang from a thesis that founder Wendy Kopp wrote in college, now provides teachers for some 500,000 urban and rural students each year and is a major employer of recent graduates of elite colleges and universities. TFA is celebrated by many as an innovative force in K-12 education. But critics question its short-term teaching commitments—two years—and say its recruits, though well educated and well intentioned, aren’t sufficiently prepared for the classroom. In 2011, TFA boasts of ever-more-intensive work in teacher preparation and development and of what it sees as the organization’s long-term impact on policy and practice. To mark TFA’s 20th-anniversary year, 2010-11, °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳’s Commentary editors sought out a variety of perspectives on Teach For America and its effects on teachers, students, and schools. For more on TFA, read °ÄÃÅÅܹ·ÂÛ̳’s news coverage of the organization.
