Teach For America California Capital Valley

All children deserve the chance to reach their full potential, and we believe an excellent education is the most effective way to give them that chance. However, millions of children growing up in poverty lack access to a high-quality education. As a result, just 8 percent of kids from low-income communities will graduate from college by the time they are 24, compared with 80 percent of kids from more affluent areas. This not only limits students’ life opportunities, but families, communities, and our nation as a whole suffer when vast numbers of children fall behind. Teach For America is playing a role in eliminating this injustice by recruiting, developing, and supporting leaders committed to creating change. There are three parts to Teach For America’s mission:

1. We recruit diverse recent college graduates and professionals with demonstrated leadership ability to teach for a minimum of two years in low-income public schools.
2. We provide intensive training and support so they can have an immediate positive impact on students and deepen their own understanding of what it takes to dramatically increase student achievement.
3. We foster their leadership as alumni as they work at every level of education and across other professional sectors.

The most recent California Standards Test (CST) scores show that only 37% of Sacramento children living in poverty read at grade level by the end of third grade. Just 41% of children living in poverty in Sacramento scored proficient or higher on their state standardized math tests, compared to 74% of their more affluent peers. In science, the statistics are similarly disheartening—just 47% of low-income kids scored proficient or higher, compared to 77% of their wealthier neighbors. Even more troubling, Latino and African American students are, on average, 100 points behind their White and Asian peers on the Academic Performance Index (API). When Teach For America – Sacramento opened its doors in the fall of 2012, we started with 16 teachers in six schools working to change the dynamic for nearly 1,000 underserved students. This year, we have more than doubled our footprint to include 39 corps members teaching at 13 schools reaching 3,000 students in the region from pre-k through 12th grade. These individuals begin their path with a two-year commitment to teach in low-income urban and rural public schools. Deeply affected by their experience in the classroom, many corps members join our alumni network and continue to advocate for students from many different roles in education and other fields.

There isn’t one type of person who fits this profile, and the individuals who join our program come from diverse backgrounds. We place special focus on attracting corps members who share the racial and socioeconomic backgrounds of the students they will teach. 50% of the Sacramento teaching corps identifies as people of color and 50% identifies as coming from a low income background. Teachers who share their students’ backgrounds serve as powerful role models and we are committed to recruiting local talent into our teaching corps. In the Sacramento region, half of our corps members are originally from this area. Due to the national shortage of qualified math and science teachers, we also concentrate on recruiting individuals with a background and knowledge of these subjects and STEM teachers account for 35% of our placements in Sacramento.

Based on end of school year data, 80% of our corps member achieved at least solid gains with their students, meaning that on average their students made at least one year of academic progress. In addition, of this group, more than 50% of our entire corps achieved significant academic gains with their students, meaning that on average students made at least 1.5 years of progress during the school year. These results have created a solid foundation for our region.