By: Camille Galles
Take a recent college graduate, put them through a five-week crash course in teaching and then drop them in one of America’s highest-need classrooms to teach for two years. It sounds crazy, but that’s the model Teach for America has used to place its 11,000 corps members in classrooms all over the nation. TFA has faced harsh criticism, especially for its short certification program and lack of teacher retention. New TFA reforms address these concerns, but they can’t rescue an organization based on quick fixes.