Teach for America - Definition and Overview

Teach for America was founded by Wendy Kopp in her senior year at Princeton University in 1988 in order to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity in the United States.

The organization mainly (but not solely) recruits exceptional college graduates to teach for two years in low income urban and rural school districts. Teach For America has 22 regional sites across the country including Las Vegas and South Dakota which were added in the fall of 2004. The goal of the organization is for corps members to not only make a short-term impact on their students but also to become lifelong leaders in pursuing educational equality. Teach for America relies on the teachers they recruit to carry out their mission: to insure that "One day, all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education."

Since the founding of the organization, there has been some question as to whether or not TFA teachers have brought about significant changes in the academic achievement of their students. A study done in June 2004 by Mathematica Policy Research (http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/teach.pdf) investigated this question and found that students of TFA teachers score higher on average in math than those in a control group. There was no such statistically significant difference found in reading, however.

External links

• Teach for America (http://www.teachforamerica.com/)
• A study done in June 2004 by Mathematica Policy Research (http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/teach.pdf)