Is Teach for America Flunking Out?
As students head back to school in the coming days, the lowest number of new Teach for America (TFA) teachers since the start of the decade will go with them—just 4,100 new “corps members,” down from an incoming group of 6,000 in 2013.
For the past 25 years, the nonprofit organization has been recruiting young college graduates to spend two years teaching in low-income school districts after participating in a five-week summer training program. TFA’s growth over that period of time has been steady, increasing its operating budget straight through the Great Recession.
Key to its success has been substantial private and public funding. Wells Fargo is one of the group’s corporate partners and the Wal-Mart founders’ Walton Family Foundation has donated at least $5 million. TFA has also relied on “tens of millions” of public funds and, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Education gave the organization a $50 million Investing in Innovation grant.
But now, as TFA’s applicant pool shrinks and recruitment dips, its critics are claiming that alumni horror stories and ideological critiques of the organization are finally starting to take their toll. TFA, on the other hand, maintains that ongoing economic recovery is impacting their recruitment by driving top-tier applicants away from teaching. Whatever the case may be, this is the first major sign of faltering the organization has shown in over a decade.
Jameson Brewer is one of TFA’s most outspoken young critics. Unlike many TFA corp members, he majored in education as an undergraduate and initially pursued a traditional teaching career. But when teaching jobs proved especially scarce after the 2007 financial crisis, he turned to TFA to get his start. Suffice it to say, he did not have a good experience.
Now, alongside University of Georgia professor Kathleen deMarrais, Brewer is the co-editor of the new volume Teach for America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out. The book, he told The Daily Beast, was prompted by the dozens of e-mails he received from current and former TFA members after he began blogging about the organization a few years ago.
Brewer, now an Educational Policy Ph.D. student, firmly believes that the Is Teach for America Flunking Out? - The Daily Beast: