The District of Columbia Public Schools historically has been the lowest-performing major urban district in America. In 2007, eight percent of DCPS students who started ninth grade eventually graduated from college.
Against this abysmal backdrop, Michelle Rhee (Baltimore Corps '92) took over the system as Chancellor and continues to lead efforts to completely overhaul the city's education system. Michelle has hired and joined forces with hundreds of alumni and corps members working to change the quality of education for low-income kids in the nation's capital.
- This year, more than 550 corps members and alumni are effecting change in classrooms across the D.C. Region.
- 31 alumni lead schools in Washington and five alumni manage district principals or hold a charter leadership position.
- At Rhee's request, Scott Cartland (Baltimore Corps '92) left his job as principal of Janney Elementary in Georgetown — the most successful DCPS school — to take over the lowest-performing elementary school in one of the city's highest-poverty neighborhoods.
- Susan Schaeffler (Baltimore Corps '92) is the founding principal and CEO of KIPP D.C., running four schools — including the highest-performing schools serving low-income students in the region - and opening six more schools over the next ten years.
- 60 percent of the DCPS senior leadership team members are Teach For America alumni, including Deputy Chancellors Kaya Henderson (New York City Corps '92) and Richard Nyankori (Baltimore Corps '93).
- Sekou Biddle (New York City Corps '93) is an elected member of the D.C. state board of education.
- Veronica Nolan (D.C. Region Corps '98) serves as Executive Director of The Urban Alliance Foundation, Inc, an organization which seeks to prepare young adults from under-resourced neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. for the world of work and a life of self-sufficiency through education, mentoring and meaningful paid internships.
- Nine alumni work for the Office of the State Superintendent for Education.
While there is much more work to be done, since Rhee has taken over leadership of the system, test scores have risen and the academic achievement gap between African American and white students has narrowed. In 2009, D.C. was the only major school district in the country where fourth- and eighth-graders made significant gains on a national reading exam. The results in math are similarly strong.
The New York Times reported in April 2009 that 85 percent of students in the Greater New Orleans region are still at least a year and a half to two years below grade level. Even more alarming is that a third of these students are up to four years below grade level, a challenge that Superintendent of the Recovery School District, Paul Vallas, calls "extreme." To combat these dire statistics, Teach For America has massively increased its presence and made New Orleans our second-largest site in the country.
- More than 500 corps members and alumni teach in the Recovery School District, surrounding districts and charter schools, reaching more than one-quarter of the city's public school students:
- Alumni lead 16 schools across the city
- Alumni have assumed leadership roles in the broader effort to reconstruct public education.
- Sarah Usdin (South Louisiana Corps '92) is the founder and CEO of New Schools New Orleans, developing and supporting new charter schools across the city. Since its inception in 2006, NSNO has helped transform public education in New Orleans, filling 25 percent of the teaching vacancies following Katrina and building the infrastructure of more than two dozen of the highest performing charter schools in the city.
- Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise (Houston Corps '92) is the executive director of KIPP New Orleans, leading the city's top-performing open enrollment schools.
- Michael Galdi (Mid-Atlantic Corps '03) is the Director of Recruitment and Human Capital, Recovery School District, leading the system's efforts to build a strong human capital pipeline.
- Teach For America alumni are working at the federal, state, and local level on policy issues driving the reconstruction of the city.
- Ramsey Green (South Louisiana Corps '01) helped oversee the distribution of $11 billion in federal funding as education policy director for the state of Louisiana Recovery Authority and currently works as the budget director for the New Orleans Recovery School District.
- Chris Meyer (Greater New Orleans Corps '04) and Jacob Landry (Hawaii Corps '06) are working as Special Advisors to the Superintendent, Department of Education and Elizabeth Shaw (Rio Grande Valley Corps '03) is the Director of Human Capital for the Department of Education.
Looking Toward the Future
We believe that in the next two decades we have the potential to dramatically increase our impact.
Most of the alumni currently holding leadership roles across the country came through Teach For America in the 1990s — a decade in which we produced around 4,000 alumni which is less than the number of corps members that join Teach For America every year. Our current alumni base numbers more than 20,000 and they are working in communities across the nation, as leaders to addressing the challenges that prevent our students from achieving at the highest levels. Learn more about our alumni impact »
Because of the impact our corps members and alumni are having in the short and long term, there is tremendous demand within communities and larger education reform circles for Teach For America. In the 2010-11 school year we will open four new sites in Alabama, Detroit, Rhode Island, and San Antonio.
