What does Teach For America do to
increase the racial and ethnic diversity of its corps?
Teach For America is strongly committed to ensuring the racial and ethnic diversity of our corps. (Learn more about diversity in the corps.) Currently, people of color made up 29 percent of our 2008 corps. Our diversity compares favorably to the diversity of graduates of the nation’s top schools.* 10 percent of the corps is African-American, 6 percent of the corps is Latino/Hispanic, and 6 percent of the corps is Asian-American, compared with 5.2 percent, 5.1 percent, and 8.8 percent respectively, of the college seniors who graduate from the nation’s top colleges and universities.** Our approach to maintaining and growing this level of diversity is to invest heavily in the upfront sourcing of talented applicants of color. To that end, we recruit from over 400 public and private colleges and universities across the country, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and schools with a significant Latino/Hispanic student body. On the campuses where we recruit, we present to campus-based student organizations and governing bodies (e.g., black student union, Latino student union, minority Greek organizations) and seek referrals from influential faculty and staff.
We make a particular effort to hire undergraduate recruitment representatives who are people of color and to engage corps members of color in our recruitment efforts at their alma maters. We also attend on-campus and off-campus career fairs and conferences that are aimed at students of color such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Annual Convention and the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government. On a national level, we work with organizations that have a broad reach among students of color, such as the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and the Gates Millennium Scholarship Fund.
To further support our recruiters as they work to build a diverse pool of applicants Teach For America’s director of diversity outreach provides national assistance; partners with national organizations to help increase awareness of Teach For America in communities of color; develops national initiatives such as hosting prospects of color in our regions; and spearheads research that helps us identify opportunities and barriers in our efforts to recruit more people of color.
* "Top colleges and universities” refers to the universe of schools listed as “most selective” or more selective” by U.S. News & World Report, 2008. Teach For America recruits at almost all of these schools and also at some that are rated “selective.”
** Source: Dept of Ed, Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System, 2006 cohort
What role does race/ethnicity play in the corps
member selection process?
Because the stakes are so high for our students and corps members, we spend considerable time researching and validating our selection model and process to ensure that all accepted applicants have a high likelihood of making significant academic progress with their future students.
From this research, we have found that a set of personal characteristics, and not one’s race or ethnicity on its own, best predicts the extent of academic progress attained by corps members’ students. Given this, final selection decisions are made on the basis of an applicant’s likelihood to impact student achievement, as determined by their levels of competence on our selection criteria and the proven effectiveness of those scores in predicting corps members’ success.
At the same time, because of our commitment to ensuring the diversity of our corps, we take special precautions to review the admissions decisions of applicants of color, to make sure that they have been made in accordance with our selection model.
Learn more about who we look for.
Learn more about our commitment to diversity.
What does Teach For
America do to increase the socioeconomic diversity of its corps?
Recognizing that achieving financial stability is important for most college graduates, Teach For America is committed to making teaching a viable option for everyone, regardless of their financial situation. To make Teach For America more accessible to individuals of all socioeconomic backgrounds, we, together with Visa, our National Corporate Partner, offer transitional funding packages that range in value from $1,000 to $6,000, student loan deferrals, and student loan interest payments on qualified loans during the two-year commitment. Over the past few years, we have significantly increased our financial assistance program from $1 million to more than $5 million.
Currently, corps members of low socioeconomic backgrounds make up 26 percent of our corps, as compared to approximately 18 percent of the student body at the nation’s ‘most selective’ and ‘more selective’ schools.*
We measure this percentage by the number of corps members who were Pell Grant recipients, a key indicator of socioeconomic status that is also used by colleges and universities.
* Selective Schools refers to the universe schools listed as “most selective” or “more selective” by U.S. News & World Report, 2008.
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