Dive Brief:

• Teach for America has teamed up with several districts to allow teachers who are undocumented immigrants to work legally under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and Denver Public Schools is thus far leading the pack.
• DPS currently has 11 educators authorized to work under the program, a significant increase over last year, when it had two.
• Hiring teachers from the DACA program is meant to inspire and encourage the students of DPS, of which an estimated 20% are undocumented and 33% are English language learners.

Dive Insight:

Last April, ThinkProgress spoke with DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg, who explained that DACA recipient teachers are able to create important bonds with students not just because they are bilingual, but because they "have a deep personal understanding of the challenges that many of our students face who similarly came to this country in undocumented status as young children.”

At the time, Teach for America also received flack from critics who argued that the DACA recipients were taking jobs away from Americans, to which TFA issued a statement explaining that this was false, since the DACA recipients were applying for open jobs and go through the same scrutiny and interview process as any other applicant.

The decision to hire DACA students is one that follows the need for “culturally responsive pedagogy.”