Despite what has been accomplished since our inception in 1990, we have never felt more acutely the potential of Teach For America to contribute still more. Each day we see the realities of educational inequity, juxtaposed against concrete evidence that when students in low-income communities are given the opportunities they deserve, they excel. And so, in 2005 we launched an ambitious growth plan, resolving to build a truly effective movement to eliminate educational inequity by becoming bigger and better. Reaching these goals will enable us to realize the potential of our mission and theory of change.
We feel an imperative to grow given the enormity of the problem we’re addressing. Every additional recruit is another corps member who has the potential to have a life-changing impact in the lives of children growing up today and another alumna/us who can be a lifelong leader for fundamental change. Moreover, attaining critical mass within communities increases our leverage and fosters a sense of collective impact that motivates corps members and alumni to do still more. And, we believe reaching the point when many of our nation’s future leaders have this experience in common will ultimately influence our national priorities and the prevailing ideology that undergirds policy and practice.
At the same time, we aim to increase the racial, ethnic, and economic diversity of our corps and organization. Since the problem we’re addressing impacts low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately, we believe that our collective, long-term efforts will be strongest if we maximize the degree to which our corps, staff, and boards are inclusive of individuals who reflect these communities.
Read more about our commitment to diversity
Ensuring that corps members attain high levels of success with their students is the linchpin of our work. This is what creates our short-term impact, and it is also the most important thing we can do to ensure our longterm impact—because highly successful corps members are most likely to learn the right lessons and complete their two years more committed to working for change.
Given the fact that the students we reach are often years behind those in more affluent areas, corps members must advance their students more than is typically expected in a year to put them on a level playing field. Teach For America measures the percentage of corps members who can point to evidence that they have moved their students forward at least a year and a half’s worth of progress in a year’s time.
In hundreds of classrooms across the country, we have seen that the hard work pays off—that when children growing up in low-income communities are given the opportunities they deserve, they can and do excel. As we grow, we continue to rigorously evaluate our programmatic approach and work to improve our teacher training and support so that corps members increasingly impact their students’ educational prospects.
Read more about corps effectiveness
While our alumni are likely to do great things even without Teach For America’s ongoing engagement with them, we believe there is more we can do to maximize their ongoing engagement and leadership in education and social reform. By building the community among our alumni, who are a tremendous source of inspiration and collaboration for each other, and streamlining and clarifying the path to leadership, we can build a still stronger pipeline of future educational and civic leadership. We are focused on achieving measurable progress in three high-impact areas for alumni leadership: school leadership, political leadership, and social entrepreneurship.
While pursuing ambitious programmatic goals, it is also important to ensure the strength of our organization so that we can thrive as long as the needs we are addressing persist. To make our work easier and more sustainable, we aim to increase the depth and strength of our staff, enlist our alumni in supporting our organization, build brand awareness, and grow a still more diversified funding base. In addition to the goals listed, we have internal measures on staff diversity and organizational strength that we believe to be essential to catalyze our growth.
History
Corps and Alumni
