Fewer Top Graduates Want to Join Teach for America

Teach for America, the education powerhouse that has sent thousands of handpicked college graduates to teach in some of the nation’s most troubled schools, is suddenly having recruitment problems.

For the second year in a row, applicants for the elite program have dropped, breaking a 15-year growth trend. Applications are down by about 10 percent from a year earlier on college campuses around the country as of the end of last month.

The group, which has sought to transform education in close alignment with the charter school movement, has advised schools that the size of its teacher corps this fall could be down by as much as a quarter and has closed two of its eight national summer training sites, in New York City and Los Angeles.

“I want the numbers to be higher, because the demand from districts is extremely high and we’re not going to meet it this year,” said Matt Kramer, a co-chief executive of Teach for America. But, he added, “it is not existentially concerning.”

Last year, the highly selective program accepted about 15 percent of its applicants. Mr. Kramer said there were no plans to lower standards for the current year simply to yield a larger corps of teachers.

Some say the decline in applicants could point to a loss of luster for the program, which rose to prominence through the idea that teaching the nation’s poorest, most needy students could be a crusade, like the Peace Corps. Teach for America has sent hundreds of graduates to Capitol Hill, school superintendents’ offices and education reform groups, seeding a movement that has supported testing and standards, teacher evaluations tethered to student test scores, and a weakening of teacher tenure.

“We are sort of at 2.0 of education reform, and its future direction seems a little bit uncertain at this point,” said David M. Steiner, the dean of the Hunter College School of Education in New York.

In response to some criticisms, Teach for America has started providing fellowships to corps members who commit to more than two years. It has also begun recruiting college juniors so it can provide longer-term teacher training. At the same time, its ideas have spread, and there are now a number of alternate paths to becoming a teacher.

Charter schools, which receive public money but are run independently, are particularly reliant on Teach for America. At YES Prep, a charter network founded by a former Teach for America member, about 10 percent of all teachers in 13 schools are corps members; schools in the KIPP network, founded by two alumni, also frequently recruit new teachers from Teach for America.

Caleb Dolan, the executive director of KIPP Massachusetts, which oversees four schools in the Boston area, said that Teach for America was willing to debate with students who were unsure whether to join. “Ultimately, that willingness to engage will win over the hearts and minds of kids who should be teaching,” he said.

But on some campuses, students have started campaigning against the group.

“Teacher turnover really destabilizes a learning environment,” said Hannah Nguyen, a University of Southern California junior who aspires to be a teacher but has helped organize protests against Teach for America. “So having a model that perpetuates that inequity in and of itself was also very confusing for me.”

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article used an incorrect pronoun for Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust. She is a woman, not a man.

A version of this article appears in print on February 6, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fewer Top Graduates Want to Join Corps of Temporary Teachers. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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