Teach for America has spent most of its 25 years working to expand, growing from a concept outlined in a Princeton student’s honors thesis to an education-reform juggernaut that places thousands of idealistic college graduates in some of the nation’s neediest classrooms.
But that growth has stalled. Applications for TFA’s two-year teaching stints have plummeted 35 percent during the past three years, forcing the organization to reexamine and reinvent how it sells itself to prospective corps members. It has been focusing particularly on how to engage students at the nation’s most-selective colleges, where the decline in interest has been among the steepest. ...
TFA believes that some issues common to the teaching profession at large are affecting its ability to recruit. In an era of fierce debate about public education, morale among teachers has taken a nosedive, according to national polls, and with an improving economy, college graduates have more job options than they have had in years.
But Teach for America also acknowledges that it faces singular challenges, having been buffeted by critics who say that the organization does not address educational inequity but instead amplifies it, institutionalizing teacher turnover and saddling disadvantaged kids with novice instructors who won’t stay around long enough to really make a difference.
Jennifer Wolf, who teaches education courses at Stanford University, said those criticisms appear to have taken hold among students who are deeply concerned about social-justice issues. They seem less interested in applying to TFA now than they were several years ago, she said, and if they do apply, they are less likely to admit it publicly.
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