Teach for America has become embedded in New Orleans education
Published: Sunday, November 27, 2011, 7:00 AM
They're everywhere: The superintendent of the state's Recovery School District. Two of his top deputies. The head of a local nonprofit that acts as gatekeeper for millions in federal dollars earmarked to start new charter schools. And when a new state school board is seated in January, the board member who will represent most of New Orleans.
View full sizeGrace Davis of Teach for America instructs her first-grade class at Akili Academy in New Orleans on Nov. 10.At every corner of the city's education establishment, you'll find alumni ofTeach for America, a group founded two decades ago to channel some of the country's most promising and ambitious college students into underserved urban classrooms.
As with so much else that defines the post-Katrina school system, the group's ubiquity in New Orleans sets the city apart, but also places it squarely at the center of national debate over the future of the teaching profession. With its profile in Louisiana growing, the same questions that have dogged the