Teach For America - History

History

The organization 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 KIPP President and CEO Richard Barth. Since the charter corps was established in 1990, more than 28,000 corps members have completed their commitment to Teach For America. The first ten 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.

In its first year, Teach For America placed 500 teachers. The organization received more than 48,000 applications for its 2012 corps, resulting in 5,800 new corps members in 46 regions. Of these first-year corps members, 38% identify as people of color, including 13% who are African American and 10% who are Hispanic. 23% are the first in their family to earn a college degree. Among colleges and universities, the University of California-Berkeley contributed the greatest number of graduates to the 2012 teaching corps with 88 graduates.

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