Headquarters
New York, New York

Year Founded
1989

Social Entrepreneur
Wendy Kopp, Founder and Elisa Villanueva Beard, CEO

Website
https://www.teachforamerica.org/

Teach For America is one of the largest and most diverse pipelines of educators for low-income communities. A recent Mathematica study found that corps members lead their students to 2.6 months of additional learning in secondary mathematics and 1.3 months of additional learning in pre-K through 2nd grade reading.

Approach:

• Enlist: Teach for America recruits remarkable and diverse individuals to become teachers in low-income communities. They commit to teach for two years and are hired by TFA's partner public schools across the country. During these two years they are called corps members.
• Develop: Teach for America trains and supports corps members in the practices of great teachers and leaders. With hard work, perseverance, and strong partnerships with their students, students’ families, and communities, corps members can dramatically increase the opportunities available to their students in school and in life.
• Mobilize: Corps members don’t just teach their students, they learn from them. At the end of two years, they use those lessons to choose their path forward. Many stay in the classroom. Others move into politics, school leadership, nonprofit work, advocacy, and more. All of their paths matter because together they form a network—connecting, expanding, and strengthening the movement to give all kids access to a great education.

Impact:

Corps Size and Diversity: TFA had 3,400 incoming corps members in 2016. Of those, 48% were Pell Grant recipients (a common indicator of low income background), and 34% are the first in their family to attend college. 62% were graduating college seniors, and 38% were graduate students/professionals, hailing from over 740 colleges and universities.

Alumni Size and Leadership:  65% of Teach for America alumni work full time in education, and 82% work full-time in roles impacting education or low-income communities. Of the alumni, there are 1,010 principals, 280 school system leaders, 90 elected public officials, 325 policy, organizing, and advocacy leaders, and 190 social entrepreneurs.

Classroom Impact: A recent math study found that corps members working in elementary grades with an average of 1.7 years teaching experience perform just as well as other teachers in the same schools who have an average of 13.6 years of experience. The same study shows that corps members who taught Pre-K through second grade boosted student reading scores by an amount equal to 1.3 months of additional instruction when compared to other teachers in the same school. Corps members that taught secondary math boosted student learning by an equivalent of 2.6 months of additional learning when compared to other teachers in the same schools.