Ivy Leaguers Seek Teaching Jobs
More than 17,000 recent college graduates—including 10 to 12 percent of the graduating class of 2005 at such elite schools as Dartmouth, Yale, and Spelman—applied last year to Teach for America (TfA), a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in poor rural and urban schools. This record number of applicants is up nearly 30 percent from the previous year.
What's behind the surge? Are they giving something back, as their proud families might like to think, or putting something off, as school loan creditors or military recruiters might suspect? That's like asking whether the glass is half empty or half full. Such existential questions aside, here's what is known:
- Teach for America accepts one in six who apply—last year, almost 2,200. (Rate for Ivy Leagues is one out of three.)
- The average GPA of those accepted in 2005 was 3.5.
- They go through a five-week training program over the summer, often putting in more than 70 hours a week, and then into real schoolrooms in the fall.
- The challenge is tough; Teach for America trainees go into poor and needy rural and urban school systems. About three out of four trainees return for the second year.
- The salaries are not high—the same as for other beginning teachers in these disadvantaged schools—but those Teach for America trainees who finish the two-year commitment can get about $9,500 toward school loans or future tuition.
- Several independent studies of TfA trainees' results in the classroom have found them similar to or slightly better than for other beginning teachers, though rarely a match for what veteran teachers' classes accomplish.
Teach for America was started 16 years ago by Wendy Kopp, who developed the basic plan as her senior thesis at Princeton and then launched it for real with start-up financial backing from ExxonMobil. The first class had 500 fledgling teachers. Today it's more than four times that many.
So what's behind the recent surge in applicant numbers? Since September 11, 2001, Peace Corps applications have had a similar rise, which suggests that it's a mix of post-9/11 desire to do something worthwhile and the $10 million Teach for America spends on recruitment and selection.
About the Author
Mollie Ann Smith often writes on education and politics.
This article originally appeared in NRTA Live & Learn, Winter, 2006.
