ERIC Number: EJ960473
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 8
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-9664
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Creating a Corps of Change Agents: What Explains the Success of Teach for America?
Higgins, Monica; Robison, Wendy; Weiner, Jennie; Hess, Frederick
Education Next, v11 n3 p18-25 Sum 2011
While much of the debate around Teach For America (TFA) in recent years has focused on the effectiveness of its nontraditional recruits in the classroom, the real story is the degree to which TFA has succeeded in producing dynamic, impassioned, and entrepreneurial education leaders. From its inception as Wendy Kopp's senior thesis project at Princeton more than two decades ago, TFA has sought to bring more teaching talent to some of the nation's most disadvantaged communities and create a corps of change agents like Rhee, Feinberg, Levin, and Johnston. How well has TFA fared on that second score? In this article, the authors seek to answer this question. They also pursue the question of whether corps members become the kind of change agents envisioned in TFA's mission of eliminating "educational inequity by enlisting the nation's most promising future leaders." Research finds that TFA is producing a large number of entrepreneurial leaders. How and why this is so, and what might be learned from TFA's success, are questions that deserve careful scrutiny. (Contains 2 figures.)
Descriptors: Change Agents, Educational Change, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Employment, Employees, Teacher Recruitment, Educational History
Hoover Institution. Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Tel: 800-935-2882; Fax: 650-723-8626; e-mail: educationnext@hoover.stanford.edu; Web site: http://educationnext.org/journal/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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