Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill
Teach for America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 by Princeton graduate and noneducator, Wendy Kopp. TFA was granted nonprofit status in June 1993. According to its 2013 990, TFA’s end-of-year total assets were $494 million, with $73.5 million of its 2013 revenue designated as “government grants” and $31.6 million of its 2013 revenue earmarked as “service fees revenue.”
Interestingly, TFA’s 2013 990 also includes $4.7 million tagged as “bad debt expense” as part of its total functional expenses.
For eight hours of work per week, TFA chair Wendy Kopp drew a 2013 salary of $176,657. Co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard drew salaries of $381,946 for 42 hrs/wk (Kramer) and $342,134 for 40 hrs/wk (Beard).
TFA began as a Peace Corps-like temp agency that sends college graduates outside of the field of teaching into classrooms for usually two years. However, by 2001, TFA had established a second goal: To move former TFA corps members into positions of influence in education, business, and politics in order to solidify and expand TFA’s influence over public education.
Louisiana is an excellent case of TFA in action. The current state superintendent,John White, was in TFA in a New Jersey classroom teaching English for a couple of years. He eventually became TFA executive director of the Chicago area; did a stint as an assistant superintendent in New York under Joel Klein, and then moved on to cosmetically become superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) before being politically placed into the position of Louisiana state superintendent.
(In this May 2011 nola.com article reporter Andrew Vanacore writes that three days after becoming RSD superintendent, White– who had zero school administration experience– was already being considered for state superintendent.)
In January 2012, with the help of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Chiefs for Change leader, Jeb Bush, White did indeed become Louisiana state superintendent. Moreover, in March 2013, White took over as leader of Chiefs for Change so that Jeb! could run for president.
One of White’s key aims is to expand the TFA presence in Louisiana, and especially Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill | deutsch29: