Colloquium Presented by Dr. Janelle Scott

Dr. Janelle Scott, Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will present a colloquium titled: A Private Pathway into Public Education: Teach for America and the Making of Educational Leaders. Teach For America (TFA) is a non-partisan organization, yet pundits frequently place it in the center of political and ideological debates about the best ways to improve education for poor children, and Black and Latinx students in urban and rural schools. In an era where venture philanthropists are investing in education reform and advocacy organizations (ERAOs), TFA remains the most well funded of these groups, and also functions as a de facto incubator for the staffing and leadership of many ERAOs that are influential in altering the structure and governance of school districts and informing state and federal education policy and politics.  In this presentation, Dr. Scott present findings from a collaborative three-year study of current, prospective, and alumni TFA members. She describes how TFA has defined the project to redress educational equity over time, most recently by inducing corps members to pursue leadership in entrepreneurial reform and policy organizations, public office, and other market-oriented settings. Drawing from document analysis and interviews, she discusses how informants diagnosed the causes of educational inequality, and how they advocated for particular educational reforms and social policy to redress it. She also discusses how corps members' dispositions toward education policies, leadership, and career paths were informed by several factors, including: TFA’s recruitment, induction, and post-service messaging, the corps members’ racial and socioeconomic identities, and the intersection of these identities with reform and policy networks. She argues that these dynamics were influential in shaping corps members’ career pathways after completing their two-year commitments to TFA.