Teach For America Comes to Tulsa

Teach For America, an organization modeled after the Peace Corps, is a national corps of outstanding recent college graduates who are committing to teach for at least two years in under-resourced schools and become lifelong leaders in the pursuit of educational equity. Teach For America currently has 6,200 corps members teaching in more that 1,600 schools in 29 regions across the country. Each corps member goes through a rigorous application and training process with 11 percent of applicants including all Ivy League seniors and the nation’s most promising future leaders.

An Urban Institute study published in 2008 found that high school students taught by Teach For America teachers outperformed their peers, including those taught by fully certified teachers. The positive impact of having a Teach For America teacher was three times that of having a teacher with three or more years’ experience.