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Before you read on, I have to warn you. This piece is not a critique of Teach for America. It's merely a question.
The two-year program that places recent college graduates into teaching positions at urban schools was initially started to fix a teaching shortage.
Teach for America is a nonprofit organization whose vision is that "one day, all children in our nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education" (Kopp 2001, 174). Its goal is to provide a corps of excellent teachers for inner-city and rural areas where chronic teacher shortages occur.
It's hard to have any objections to a program like this one. Reasonable class sizes are important to the quality of instruction, which is supported by research. In times of a teaching shortage, the only other option would be to allow class sizes to swell.
I truly do not understand why Teach for America sends recruits to cities like Chicago where 2,000 tenured teachers have been laid off since 2010. It seems that Chicago Public Schools could just fill