Day after day low-income children all across the country are struggling to master the simple basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Many of these children are already three to four grade levels behind students in higher income areas. Overcrowded classrooms, under-stocked supply cabinets and a shortage of qualified teachers only add to what is quickly becoming a nationwide emergency. However, there is hope. For over a decade one organization has been working to bring good, dedicated teachers into lower-income and rural classrooms in 15 American cities. That organization is Teach For America.
Teach for America is a national non-profit organization that grew out of a college thesis paper. In 1989, Tammy Kopp was a senior at Princeton University. For her senior thesis Tammy wrote a proposal for the forming of a national teacher corps (similar to the Peace Corps of the sixties). This corps would gather together the best and the brightest from America's Ivy League colleges and place them for a two-year tour of duty as teachers into some of the country's neediest classrooms. The graduates would be hired at regular teachers wages and benefits, and be allowed to put off payments of their student loans for the duration of their service. As an added incentive they would also receive a cash bonus at the end of each completed year.
Once a student's thesis paper is finished, most students tend to move on and work at finding themselves a high paying job after graduation, especially during the "greed is good" eighties. But Tammy made a different choice after her graduation. Tammy Kopp was inspired by her paper, and set out to make a difference in the world. With a lot of hard work she was able to secure enough monies from corporations, private individuals and federal grants to turn her proposed teachers corps into a reality. In 1990, one year after she had written her thesis, Tammy saw 2,500 men and women from over 100 colleges apply to become Teach for America volunteers. Of those 2,500 men and women, 500 made their way into the school systems of New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and rural North Carolina and rural Georgia.
Since its inception Teach for America has placed over 6,000 college graduates as teachers into some of America's most impoverished classrooms and changed the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of children. It is the organization's hope that they will be recruiting, training and placing over 2,000 graduates a year into schools by 2004. It is also their hope that at that same time they will have expanded their operations into at least 10 new regions across the country. Currently they can be found in 15 urban and rural areas throughout the United States.
To learn more about Teach For America please visit their website. 
