SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Teach for America

The latest addition to our lending library is A Chance to Make History: What works and what does't in providing an excellent education for all, by Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America. The mission of Teach For America is to eliminate educational inequality by recruiting recent university graduates and professionals to teach in low-income classrooms for two years. With their energy and dedication, these teachers are proving over and over again that disadvantaged kids can succeed in school. Thirty years ago, the prevailing assumption in educational circles was that socio-economic circumstances determined educational outcomes. Twenty years ago, this belief was starting to be challenged by a few examples of teachers and schools that were changing the trajectories of their low-income students. Today, there are too many schools like this to count. Knowing that low-income children can succeed in school and fired up by their sense of injustice, the Teach For America corps are now pushing the frontiers of educational reform. This excerpt (pp 183-184) elaborates on the implications of the tens of thousands of indignant Teach for America alumni on a rampage.

The transformative experience of leading children in low-income communities to great progress plays out across our corps and alumni force. While Teach for America asks for a two-year commitment from its recruits (the vast majority of whom were not education majors and not, they tell us, headed into education), more than 60 percent of our 20,000-plus alumni are working in education, with about half of those still in the classroom. Those working in education from outside the classroom are mostly working in schools or districts, or in organizations meant to support them. Of those alumni who leave education, going into a vast array of careers from law to medicine, from governmennt to journalism to business, more than 60 percent have jobs that relate in some way to schools or low-income communities - for example, as doctors practicing in public health or policy advisers working on education issues.

Many of the new models of excellence on the front lines of the fight against educational inequity were founded or are being driven by current or former teachers whose conviction, determination, and leadership were developed in the classroom. Today, virtually all KIPP school leaders proved their mettle and built their skills by putting children on a new academic path in their classrooms - and nearly two-thirds of the network's principals started their careers as Teach For America corps members. (A little fewer than one-third of the network's current teachers are Teach For America corps members or alumni.) Similar stories play out at YES Prep, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and many of the most successful traditional district schools in the country. The path to transformational leadership is through the transformative experience of seeing and fulfilling the promise of children in low-income communities.

I think the reasons for this phenomenon are complex but clear. First, teachers who have taught successfully develop an unshakable conviction about what is possible through education for children growing up in economically disadvantaged circumstances. Their personal knowledge of the potential of their students and of teachers and schools, and their love for their students, drives a deep and personal motivation to right the injustice of educational disadvantage. This understanding becomes the root of their career choices and professional decisions and the driving force behind their bold goals, perseverance in pursuit of them, and persuasiveness with others.