Since its founding in 1990 to help staff classrooms in low-income communities, Teach For America has been attacked for devaluing public education by recruiting teachers to spend a minimum of two years in the classroom. A member of the Philadelphia City Council recently called TFA a “gimmick.” But TFA’s most recent information about its more than 50,000 alumni tells a different story. Over 14,000 are working in classrooms, some of the many alumni still in education. Another 1,260 are principals. Hundreds more are in education policy and advocacy roles, including teacher union leaders. Six current state education chiefs have TFA on their resumes.
