At Teach For America, we are working with a great sense of urgency to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort. We recruit aggressively to attract outstanding recent college graduates of all majors and career interests to commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools, and we invest in the training and professional development necessary to ensure their success as teachers in our highest-poverty communities. Our teachers, also called corps members, go above and beyond traditional expectations to lead their students to significant academic achievement, overcoming the challenges of poverty despite the current capacity of the school system.
We cannot, however, expect teachers alone to compensate for all the weaknesses of the system. We believe our best hope for a lasting solution is to build a massive force of leaders inside and outside education who have the conviction and insight that come from teaching successfully in low-income communities. We need such leadership working at every level of our school system, working outside the system to address the socioeconomic factors that contribute so significantly to the problem, and working in policy and the sectors such as journalism and business which influence policy. After our corps members complete their two-year commitments, we continue to foster their ongoing commitment to and leadership in effecting the fundamental changes necessary to expand educational opportunity.
Our nation's greatest injustice
Corps and Alumni