TFA was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton University undergraduate thesis. Members of the founding team include value investor Whitney Tilson; former U.S. Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Douglas Shulman; and Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) President and CEO, Richard Barth. Since the first corps was established in 1990, more than 42,000 corps members have completed their commitment to Teach For America.[4] In September 2015, the organization reached a milestone of 50,000 corps members and alumni, who have collectively taught more than 5 million students across the nation.[5]
The first 10 years of the organization are chronicled in Kopp’s book “One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way” . In January 2011, Wendy Kopp released her second book, “A Chance To Make History”, which outlines what she has learned over the last 20 years working in American education.
Notable Teach For America alumni include:
Gregg Costa (Mississippi Delta ’94), United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Mike Feinberg (Houston ’92), KIPP Co-founder
Bill Ferguson (Baltimore ’05), Maryland state senator
Smokey Fontaine (Baltimore ’93), An American writer, music critic and editor
James Foley (Phoenix ’96), Photojournalist killed by an ISIS militant in 2014[29]
Peter Hermann (New York ’90), American actor and husband of Mariska Hargitay
Kevin Huffman (Houston ’92), Tennessee State Education Commissioner from April 2011 to January 2015
Mike Johnston (Mississippi Delta ’97), Colorado state senator
Jason Kamras (Washington, D.C. ’96), 2005 National Teacher of the Year
Ezra Koenig, Lead singer of indie rock band Vampire Weekend
Dave Levin (Houston ’92), KIPP Co-founder
Mark D. Levine (New York City ’91), New York City Councilmember
DeRay Mckesson (New York City ’07), Black Lives Matter Movement activist and candidate in the 2016 Baltimore mayoral election
Tim Morehouse (New York ’00), Silver Medal winner in the men’s sabre as a member of the United States fencing team at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Michelle Rhee (Baltimore ’92), Former Chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools and founder of The New Teacher Project and StudentsFirst
Alec Ross (Baltimore ’94), Senior Adviser for Innovation for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Zeke Vanderhoek (New York City ’98), Founder and Chairman, Manhattan GMAT; Founder and Principal, The Equity Project
John C. White (2010), Louisiana state superintendent of education since 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America
Image By World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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