Teach For America (TFA) is a non-profit whose mission involves addressing and eliminating the racial achievement gap in education. To that end, TFA recruits and trains thousands of teachers each year, mostly recent college graduates, to spend two years teaching in low-income neighborhoods across America. The theory of change publicly espoused by TFA, however, includes a second component that is predicated on the notion that participation in TFA will be a “transformational experience” for those who join the organization – an experience that will turn participants into lifelong advocates for educational equity, and inform and influence their future endeavors. While TFA has long been a magnet for controversy, the criticisms have come to include the organization’s place in a policy context awash with neoliberal influences. Researchers have looked at the impact of TFA teachers on student outcomes with increasingly sophisticated research designs, but much less has been written about the second half of TFA’s theory of change. Further, while the exploits of TFA and its alumni in policy are increasingly the subject of both academic and popular articles, little of this research examines the role that the TFA experience is playing in the current work of TFA alumni in policy. Using data gathered from 45 semi-structured interviews with TFA alumni who now work in public policy, as well as news sources, public statements and press releases from TFA and its leadership and other publicly available materials, this dissertation examines the ways in which TFA and its alumni are involved in education policy, and how the TFA experience factors into the lives and work of these alumni. This study also examines the ways in which TFA and its alumni are engaged in matters of charter schools and school choice, teacher evaluation and accountability, and teacher preparation policy, as well as the ways in which alumni credit their TFA experience for influencing their views. Further, this work looks to separate the influences that come directly from TFA, such as TFA messaging or TFA-planned events, and those that are the result of joining TFA, but that fall outside of TFA’s immediate control.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-218).

Black men make up roughly 2% of the national teaching corps, and as Brockenbrough (2012) reminds us, there are recurring themes within Black Masculinity Studies that are central to bear in mind when looking at the lived and teaching experiences of these Black male teachers. The major one is to recognize and acknowledge the unique psychological, emotional, and spiritual toll of Black male marginality on Black men. “Oft-cited statistics on incarceration, homicide, unemployment, high school dropout, and HIV infection rates, among other chronic blights (Dyson, 1993; Noguera, 2003), illustrate not only the systemic marginality of Black men in American society, but also their distance from patriarchal definitions of manhood that rely on White supremacist and capitalist power to reinforce male domination” (p.5). The intention of this study was to engage with these Black male teachers’ narratives, stories, and commentaries and learn from their life and teaching experiences as Black men. The aim was to gain insight into how they were recruited, how they were supported, and also what their understandings and thoughts are around retaining Black male teachers in the classrooms. This is a small qualitative study is a sample of four Black Male teachers within the 2013 Teach for America Corps in NYC. As Lewis (2006) suggests, many of these Black male teachers consider their role bound to some form of social justice. This inquiry aimed to talk across the struggles and challenges of Black men in the NYC corps of the TFA program and to reach an understanding of their lived and teaching experience, and of the ways ideologies and narratives are negotiated and navigated in schools and classrooms. The questions of inquiry were aimed to provide insight into the recruitment, retention, and professional support of the Black male teacher, both in TFA and outside this program. Participation in this study was limited to Black male educators with one year of elementary or middle school teaching experience, in order to draw on and speak to the greater presence of male teachers at those levels to help teacher preparation programs navigate toward better recruitment processes, and supporting and sustaining more Black males in the classroom.