Dive Brief:

• For the second year in a row, Teach for America has seen a decline in applicants, continuing the halt on 15 years of growth with a 10% drop over the last year.
• Teach for America leaders told the New York Times that the decline is the result of a more prosperous economy and that potential applicants are now getting offers to join the likes of Facebook or Wall Street firms.
• Leaders of the organization didn't acknowledge changing perceptions of TFA as a reason for the slump, but the article does point to criticism over the program's hasty five-week training, the short time teachers are required to remain in the classroom, and an overarching agenda that has been tied to a more corporate vision of education reform.

Dive Insight:

A September article by "The Teacher Wars" author Dana Goldstein, published by Vox, laid out some of the criticisms of the organization and how the leaders intended to deal with them. According to Goldstein, some ways TFA is acknowledging criticism include increasing corps diversity, offering a pre-service year of training for college juniors who apply to the program early, and creating incentives for corps members to teach longer than their two-year commitment.

A month after the article came out, the organization was hit with a wave of bad press when Harvard University students sent a letter to university president Drew Faust, asking that the institution sever ties with TFA if it did not commit to making massive changes. The ensuing back-and-forth between the university's United Students Against Sweatshops and Teach for America were then published by The Washington Post, leading to even more people weighing on on the role TFA plays on public education.

While Matt Kramer, a co-chief executive of Teach for America, told The New York Times he was worried about the drop in applicants because "the demand from districts is extremely high and we’re not going to meet it this year," critics of the program cite the fact that shortages are no longer an issue in many of the large urban cities where it places teachers.