A new look at Teach for America
Blog by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post
Around the country today thousands of young Teach for America recruits are getting a crash course in how to teach students in low-income urban and rural schools, a job they have promised to do for the next two years. The recruits are recent graduates from elite colleges, most of whom do not have a background in education, and they have been the subject of a running debate about how well they can serve needy schoolchildren. Teach for America began in 1990 with 500 teachers in six communities and has grown to more than 8,200 individuals teaching in 39 rural and urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, the Mississippi Delta, and the Washington D.C. region. (more...)