Teach for America has a sudden decrease in interest after years of continuous growth. Max Ehrenfreund from the Washington Post reports.

Why Teach for America is suddenly having trouble recruiting college students

Teach for America, the well known program that recruits college kids for teaching gigs in disadvantaged schools around the country, said recently that it had experienced a sudden decline in applications for this school year. And the program has received fewer applications for the next school year than it had at this point a year ago, after many years of rapid expansion since the program began in 1990. The decline is once again raising questions about the program’s model, which has always been controversial.

The program’s critics say it doesn’t train its recruits adequately. They say that since Teach for America recruits only commits teachers to two years of teaching, it undermines the idea that teaching is a profession and a career. Proponents say pupils who are assigned to Teach for America staff perform better on standardized tests than their peers, and Teach for America has recently made changes in responses to claims that it puts naïve — if intelligent — college graduates in front of children whose great educational disadvantages they aren’t prepared to address.

In 2013, Teach for America experienced a high number of applicants, but that was due to the program’s efforts to persuade older people with experience in other professions to give teaching a try, according to a Teach for America representative. The number of applications declined by 12 percent the following year, and as of last month, there have been 10 percent fewer applications to teach in the next school year than there were last year, although the final deadline hasn’t yet passed. The decline in applications was primarily among college students. Whether that decline is only temporary, or whether it shows that the group has reached some kind of limit, remains to be seen.