Letters to the Editor

Overwhelming majority of Teach for America teachers have positive experiences

We enthusiastically read your Jan. 22 article in which several of our current and former corps members discussed their experiences with Teach for America. We worry, however, that the overall positive experience shared by the vast majority of our corps members was overshadowed by your article's title, "Crash Course? Some say Teach for America sets up teachers for failure."

Your readers should know that 95% of second-year corps members say they'd join Teach for America again. Why are their experiences almost uniformly positive? Perhaps because our corps members are so successful. An average of 91% of principals surveyed ranked corps members as good or excellent on 23 key indicators essential to good teaching. 96% of those same principals said our corps members were assets to their schools and 92% said they'd hire another corps member if they had the chance. Rather than feeling that they've been "set up for failure," the vast majority of our corps members emerge having been successful, having made a powerful impact on the lives of their students and having gained an expansive store of leadership skills. Kyle Waide Director of Public Relations Teach for America