Organization hopes to eliminate educational inequality
Teach for America gives recent college grads job experience
by Beth Yeary
Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: Connections
"Of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, about half will graduate from high school. Those that do graduate will perform on average at a eighth-grade level. Educational inequity is our nation's greatest injustice. You can change this."
These are the words that appear in a short slide show on the home page for Teach for America, an organization focused on eliminating the problems caused by children growing up in low-income situations. Teach for America believes these problems exist because of three factors. First, children in low-income communities have challenges, like insufficient nutrition, housing and health care. Second, schools and school systems have inadequate capacity to meet the needs of students, such as enough hours to service children who need to catch up to others or enough teachers and leaders to help them.
The third factor present by Teach for America has to deal with an ideology that hasn't led to necessary action against educational inequality. According to the organizations Web site, "there is unfortunately a societal belief that schools can't make a significant difference in the face of socioeconomic disparities, that children of color cannot meet high expectations, and that it is not worthwhile to invest in mitigating the challenges of poverty that make it harder for students to focus at school."
However, Teach for America is solving these problems by enlisting recent college graduates of all majors and fields to become teachers, or corps members, as Teach for America calls them, in low-income communities.
The organization is looking for individuals who display a degree of leadership and excel in records of achievement in work, school and/or extracurricular activities.
Those wishing to become a corps member must have a least a high school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate, bachelor's degree, a 2.50 minimum cumulative GPA, and be a U.S. citizen or have gained national or permanent status. Applicants also have to go through both a phone interview and a final in-person interview. Although applications for 2009 are now closed, the website currently invites visitors to check back soon for information on the 2010 applications.
Teach for America began in 1990. Wendy Kopp proposed the idea for the organization in her undergraduate thesis while at Princeton University and raised the money to get it started. In its first year, Teach for America had 500 members in 6 low-income communities throughout the U.S. According to their Web site, Teach for America now encompasses 29 regions in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and represents 1,800 cites and 500 colleges. In 2008, 3,700 individuals out of almost 25,000 joined the organization.
These are the words that appear in a short slide show on the home page for Teach for America, an organization focused on eliminating the problems caused by children growing up in low-income situations. Teach for America believes these problems exist because of three factors. First, children in low-income communities have challenges, like insufficient nutrition, housing and health care. Second, schools and school systems have inadequate capacity to meet the needs of students, such as enough hours to service children who need to catch up to others or enough teachers and leaders to help them.
The third factor present by Teach for America has to deal with an ideology that hasn't led to necessary action against educational inequality. According to the organizations Web site, "there is unfortunately a societal belief that schools can't make a significant difference in the face of socioeconomic disparities, that children of color cannot meet high expectations, and that it is not worthwhile to invest in mitigating the challenges of poverty that make it harder for students to focus at school."
However, Teach for America is solving these problems by enlisting recent college graduates of all majors and fields to become teachers, or corps members, as Teach for America calls them, in low-income communities.
The organization is looking for individuals who display a degree of leadership and excel in records of achievement in work, school and/or extracurricular activities.
Those wishing to become a corps member must have a least a high school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate, bachelor's degree, a 2.50 minimum cumulative GPA, and be a U.S. citizen or have gained national or permanent status. Applicants also have to go through both a phone interview and a final in-person interview. Although applications for 2009 are now closed, the website currently invites visitors to check back soon for information on the 2010 applications.
Teach for America began in 1990. Wendy Kopp proposed the idea for the organization in her undergraduate thesis while at Princeton University and raised the money to get it started. In its first year, Teach for America had 500 members in 6 low-income communities throughout the U.S. According to their Web site, Teach for America now encompasses 29 regions in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and represents 1,800 cites and 500 colleges. In 2008, 3,700 individuals out of almost 25,000 joined the organization.
Be the first to comment on this story