Our mission and approach

Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort.

We recruit outstanding recent college graduates from all backgrounds and career interests to commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools. We provide the training and ongoing support necessary to ensure their success as teachers in low-income communities.

Our teachers, also called corps members, go above and beyond traditional expectations to lead their students to significant academic achievement, despite the challenges of poverty and the limited capacity of the school system. In succeeding with their students, corps members show that students in low-income communities can achieve at high levels, offering further evidence that educational inequity is a solvable problem.

Yet we know that enlisting additional high-quality teachers is not the ultimate solution. We believe that the best hope for ending educational inequity is to build a massive force of leaders in all fields who have the perspective and conviction that come from teaching successfully in low-income communities.

During their two-year commitments, Teach For America corps members see firsthand that educational inequity is solvable and gain a grounded understanding of how to solve it.

Beyond these two years, Teach For America alumni bring strong leadership to all levels

of the school system and every professional sector, addressing the extra challenges facing children growing up in low-income communities, building the capacity of schools and districts, and changing the prevailing ideology through their examples and advocacy.

Read about Teach For America's impact
Read about corps members’ views on the solvability of this problem ()