Teach For America and Teach For All: Creating an Intermediary Organization Network for Global Education Reform

Abstract

Locally and globally among policymakers and edupreneurs, what constitutes “good teaching and learning” is highly contested, and prototypes that seem to embody “what works” are highly valued. In the United States, many accept Teach For America (TFA) as an exemplar of “what works.” As its U.S. operations continue to grow, TFA has recalibrated and expanded into Teach for All, an international organization with extensive reach. Teach For All not only finds historic roots in TFA, but it reflects TFA’s intentional expansion of its theory of change and implementation on a global scale. This exploratory essay investigates the linkages between TFA and TFAll, focusing on theory and implementation of education reform by comparing domestic TFA ideology and practices with those of TFAll. Also, we conceptualize the dimensions and anatomy of a global network of IOs engaged in global education reform. In addition to providing insight on TFAll, our broader goal is to build the knowledge base around what we are calling global Intermediary Organization Networks (IONs).

Alternative routes to teacher professional identity: Exploring the conflated sub-identities of Teach For America corps members

“…Programs associated with the Teach For All network-including Enseñá por Argentina, Teach for Armenia, Teach for Australia, and Teach for Austria, to name a few-now operate in more 45 countries around the world, and additional expansion plans are underway (Teach For All, 2018). Although these programs vary in the extent of their adaptation to the different sociocultural and political contexts in which they operate (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015), they share remarkable similarities in their structures, discourses, and ideologies, in that they generally recruit primarily 'highly-selective' recent graduates to complete condensed teacher training programs and 'close the achievement gap' (Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015;La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015). Furthermore, and most closely connected to the focus of this paper, the programs themselves aim to strongly shape perceptions of what it means and feels like to be a teacher.…”

A failed marriage between standardization and incentivism: Divergent perspectives on the aims of performance-based compensation in Shanghai, China

“…In neoliberal globalization, quality needs to remain nimble to the unforeseen and ever-changing demands of educational markets. 'Quality' retains a vague yet convincing character in policy due to its "common-sense" appeal, as well as appeal to teachers to elevate themselves in the name of individualistic, economic competition (see La Londe et al., 2015). Yet as we see in the implementation of PBC in School M1, many teachers remain unconvinced about the potential of standardization and incentivist principles to propel teaching quality forward.…”

Globalization, privatization, marginalization: Mapping and assessing connections and consequences in/through education

“…The fifth article, by Sam Oldham and Katherine Crawford-Garrett, address a particularly influential international non-governmental organization-namely, Teach for All. While this organization now represents a network of teacher education organizations operating in approximately 50 countries, its origins can be found in the work of Teach for America (La Londe, Brewer & Lubienski, 2015). Begun in 1990 by Wendy Kopp, the focus of Teach for America, and all subsequent iterations in other countries, has been to recruit high achieving university graduates into the teaching profession and then to work together with local school districts to place these teachers in high-poverty schools for a period of two years.…”