Teach for America

Wendy Kopp. Wendy Kopp proposed the creation of Teach For America in her undergraduate senior thesis in 1989 and has spent the last 20 years working to sustain and grow the organization. In the 2009-2010 school year, some 7,300 corps members will teach in our country’s neediest communities, reaching more than 450,000 students. They join nearly 17,000 Teach For America alumni who—still… See full bio.

Read Annual Report	Overhead Ratio: 18.85%
Charity Navigator Rating: (profile)	Total Revenue: $159,187,936

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Website:	http://www.teachforamerica.org/index.htm	Address:	315 West 36th Street
E-Mail:	donations AT teachforamerica.org		New York, NY 10018, USA
Phone:	212-279-2080
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Story: This is Phillip Gedeon’s story, a TFA corps member: Phillip Gedeon is a TFA corps members teaching at Locke High School, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District and located in the historically troubled Watts neighborhood. The classes were too big and the school too dysfunctional for one teacher to effect real change in student achievement. Ten-week grades were due, and Phillip still didn't know exactly how many students he had. In his seventh-period class, only half of the 36 students enrolled ever showed up. In his fourth-period class, there were 45 names on his roster in a room that had only 41 desks. Most of the time it wasn't a problem—there were always at least five students absent; some of them he had never even seen. But it was annoying. Each day, one particularly good-natured student would come in, sit at the front table, and wait to see which desk would be empty. Then, satisfied that the real owner was a no-show, the student would take a seat and get to work. Phillip could have requested more desks, but that would have sent the wrong message to the administration. That would be saying that he was ok with an oversize class, and he was not ok with that at all. The way to raise student achievement was to lower class size, not to pack the kids in like sardines and assume there'd always be enough room because attendance was so poor. His most recent heartbreak was Darius. Darius had been absent from school for three or four weeks, and when he finally returned, Phillip asked him where he had been. "I was at home," Darius explained. "I got into this fight with this kid and he lost, so he came to my house several times with guns." "What else?" prompted Phillip. "He's been threatening to kill me and my family, so my mom wouldn't let me go out. We got a TRO [temporary restraining order]. Then she thought I should go back to school." "How is this going to come to a closing, a resolution?" asked Phillip. "One of us is gonna have to shoot the other," came his simple reply. Everyone else in the class just sat there. There was no outrage, no shock, no embarrassment. It was business as usual. Phillip didn't know what to do with what he had just learned. Who do I go to? He already has a TRO. Do I send work home? Who would pick it up? What should I do? Phillip had much in common with his students; he, too, was raised in a low-income community by a single mother. But he had never lived in a neighborhood like this. He had never experienced the kind of pressure or fear that Darius knew. He could sympathize, he could imagine, but he could never feel what Darius was feeling. The only answer for Darius's situation, he decided, was to make the time that he had with him meaningful, to make the moments in Mr. Gedeon's class the best moments of Darius's day. (Source: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/k-12/2008/04/11/two-teach-for-america-recruits-share-their-stories.html?PageNr=3)

Evidence of Impact Summary:

Teach for America is praised for enhancing the pipeline of young, talented, and energetic teachers into schools that need it the most. Their success is credited with elevating the need for quality teachers to the national level.
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Organization Strengths Summary:

The organization's top leadership, staff, and operations draw consistent praise from experts. Their branding and awareness were also mentioned by multiple respondents.
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Areas for Improvement Summary:

Experts believe the TFA recruiting and training model could be tweaked to enhance retention and teaching efficacy. Multiple respondents also note collaboration as an area in which the organization could be more helpful to the field.
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Wendy Kopp proposed the creation of Teach For America in her undergraduate senior thesis in 1989 and has spent the last 20 years working to sustain and grow the organization. In the 2009-2010 school year, some 7,300 corps members will teach in our country’s neediest communities, reaching more than 450,000 students. They join nearly 17,000 Teach For America alumni who—still in their 20s and 30s—are already assuming significant leadership roles in education and social reform.  Under Kopp’s leadership, Teach For America is in the midst of an effort to grow to scale while maximizing the impact of corps members and alumni as a force for short- and long-term change. Kopp also serves as the chief executive of Teach For All, which is supporting the development of Teach For America’s model in other countries.  She is the author of One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way, and holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University, where she participated in the undergraduate program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

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