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June 19, 2007

Teach for America's Performance Questioned

Teach for America has a noble mission, but it is unclear how much students — beyond recent college graduates burnishing their résumés — actually benefit, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the program, participants teach high school for two years, usually in poor urban districts with failing schools that otherwise would have trouble filling positions. At some colleges, the article reports, Teach for America is the top employer of graduates.

However, some studies — which Teach for America contests — indicate that students in classrooms run by the charity’s teachers do worse than their peers, and other critics fault the program for making students commit for so little time.

Still, one-third of the program’s 12,000 alumni since 1990 have remained in the classroom and another one-third have remained in education in some capacity, which the article says indicates that Teach for America has changed the landscape of education in the country.

The lengthy article also delves into the history of the program, the five weeks of training that graduates undergo before entering the classroom, and statistics about its overall impact.

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