Teach for America - Quality v. Sustainability?

Some of the first exposure I had to the idea of social entrepreneurship or social innovation was Wendy Kopp's, founder of Teach for America (TFA), book One Day, All Children... outlining her identification of a need, the conception of what would become TFA, and how she and the organization have gotten to where they are today. Currently, in the United States, TFA is practically a household name - at least among college students where TFA does most of its recruiting. According to TFA's website, the organization is the "growing movement of leaders who work to ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education." The organization recruits some of the most talented college graduates, provides them with about five weeks of training, and asks for a two-year commitment in a high-poverty classroom. TFA is a rapidly growing non-profit with a staff of 1500, not counting the thousands of corps members (9300) currently teaching in classrooms ranging from pre-K to 12th grade. With all that the organization has accomplished during the past 20 years, it still has passionate opponents. While reading the article "A Social Solution Without Going the Nonprofit Route" and the comments that early childhood education might not be the best fit the for-profit model because quality could be compromised, it reminded me of some of Teach for America's criticism. Though TFA is legally a non-profit, it has a large budget and must maintain aspects of it's model to continue to experience the incredible success that it has had thus far in attracting donors.

For example, a 2010 article in the Washington Post highlighted several suggestions for TFA that emerged from a recent study on the program's effectiveness. One suggestion is that, due to the $70,000 cost per recruit to the school district, corps members should be required to make a five-year commitment. One of the bases for TFA's fundraising success is that the organization is an exclusive, highly selective program with a roughly 10% acceptance rate in the most competitive years. Many of its corps members would have other lucrative job options, but choose to contribute their first two years out of undergrad to public service. With a five-year commitment, undoubtedly it would be harder to convince these top students with dreams of law school and Wall Street to take a chance on teaching for the first five years of their career. If the pedigree of their recruits dropped, would the organization be as financially sustainable? Would their new, arguably less qualified recruits be able maintain the level of success that current corps members have had in the classroom based off of five weeks of teacher training? In addition, would they be able to uphold the costs of providing their corps members with five-years of support in the classroom instead of two? By not asking for a greater commitment, whether at least for three years or five years in the classroom, is TFA causing a greater disservice to the school districts that they are trying to help? I think that TFA is a good example of the conversation we had previously in class about "doing no harm" - but that is virtually impossible for any initiative or social innovation to not cause some harm to somebody involved. TFA has undoubtedly done a number of good things in it's existence. But in the current economic climate, with ramped layoffs of experienced teachers, is it still doing more good than harm for students and the education field as a whole? How is this determined, and how much harm does an organization have to do before it is no longer beneficial to society? These are tough questions and ones that TFA organization leaders may need to answer to justify their continued model. The Washington Post article is linked through the title of this post.

-Whitney Coble