Teach for America, which has a 15 percent acceptance rate, does not require its members to have a background in education. Instead, it puts high-achievers through at least five weeks of a summer training program before placing them in a classroom. | Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo Teach For America — except for California

SACRAMENTO — Backed by powerful teachers unions, Democrats are pushing to ban Teach For America from California amid a wave of teacher’s strikes and a heated debate over charter schools in the nation’s most populous state.

The push comes as education policy becomes an increasing point of tension, putting the national nonprofit and its recruits — promising college grads eager to teach in poor communities — in the crosshairs of the state's supermajority Democratic legislature.


Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), a Democrat in the state Assembly pushing legislation to ban the nearly 30-year-old organization in the state, says Teach For America’s goal of closing the achievement gap in public education actually hurts the poor and minority students it seeks to serve.

Teach For America fast-tracks teacher training for ambitious young people straight out of college and places them in the country’s most struggling school districts, committing them to a two-year teaching stint.

“Our most vulnerable students are getting our least trained teachers. If they’re good enough for poor, low-income schools, why aren’t they good enough for the Beverly Hillses of the world?” Garcia told POLITICO. “Why do low-income schools have to be the guinea pigs?”

It doesn’t help that during a recent teacher strike in Oakland — which followed a teacher walkout in Los Angeles and garnered support from national figures ranging from NBA star Stephen Curry to Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) —Teach For America seemed to encourage its California members to cross picket lines, prompting a backlash from its alumni.

It’s far from the first time Teach For America, which has enjoyed support on Capitol Hill, has faced resistance. In 2016, San Francisco school board members voted down what would have been a routine approval of TFA teachers, citing concerns similar to Garcia’s. In 2013, a group of Teach for America alumni organized in Chicago to speak out against the organization they once took part in, saying they had felt unprepared to help the students they were put in charge of.

More broadly, states including Minnesota and Nevada have resisted efforts to expand TFA’s presence in their schools over the years, backed by unions who say the corps members do not compare to traditionally trained teachers.

In California, unions have long opposed what they call “quick fix” programs, and both the California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association voiced support for the Garcia bill in a preliminary hearing in late March — the first sign that the unlikely legislation has legs.

The stakes are higher now, says Matthew Hardy, spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, pointing to momentum built by teachers across the state demanding lower class sizes, better salaries and more support staff. Sacramento teachers announced Tuesday that they, too, plan to walk out next week.

“Every student deserves a highly qualified teacher, and Teach For America placements get five weeks of training. There’s no way that’s high quality,” Hardy said. “I think that people across the country are finally really taking a look at public education and the need to fully invest in it. We need to invest more in teachers, and make sure we bring people into the profession and keep them there. This is the opposite of that. … From West Virginia to Oklahoma to L.A., what you’re seeing is teachers standing up and saying enough is enough.”

Lawmakers who so far support the California bill insist that it’s not banning the organization from the state. New amendments to CA AB221 (19R) remove any specific mention of the organization, but would prohibit school districts from hiring teachers via third-party organizations for less than a five-year commitment at low-income schools — regulations that are contrary to the cornerstones of TFA.

More than 700 TFA members are currently in California classrooms.

“It would gut us, and our mission,” Lida Jennings, executive director of Teach For America Los Angeles, told POLITICO.

The competitive program, which has a 15 percent acceptance rate, does not require its members to have a background in education. Instead, it puts high-achievers through at least five weeks of a summer training program before placing them in a classroom.

Proponents of the national nonprofit say that it boosts learning in communities that need the most help, including schools in Mississippi, Chicago and New Orleans. Nearly half of TFA’s do-gooder recruits are people of color, a fact that the organization touts given that the national teacher workforce is predominantly white.

But critics say the program is a Band-Aid for problems like teacher shortages and high turnover rates that can only be solved by people who plan to make teaching their life’s work; many view TFA recruits as more likely to use the experience as a resume-builder for other careers.

And the bill comes at a time when California unions are pushing for another alternative approach to education to be put on the chopping block: charter schools. About a third of Teach For America members work in charter schools — a fact that concerns critics who say that corps members often leave the program with ideas about education reform that hurt traditional public schools, or move on to start their own charters.

Moreover, TFA teachers have been influential in education policy overhaul efforts that have opened public schools to private competition.

TFA’s association with charter schools could be a death sentence in California, where union-backed Democrats have introduced legislation that aims to not only curb the growth of the schools, but also crack down on how they’re regulated, citing concerns that they are plagued by financial mismanagement because they don’t have to abide by the same rules as traditional schools.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who took office in January, recently signed into law legislation that would require new transparency standards in the administration of charter schools. During his campaign for governor, Newsom was supported by teachers unions and highly criticized by the California Charter Schools Association, who endorsed his opponent, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

TFA says it does not prefer charter schools to traditional schools, and that members wind up there because charters are often located in the low-income communities that are the program’s focus.

Jennings said the organization’s affiliation with the charter school movement is misguided, and that the timing of the bill is no coincidence.

“I think this has a lot to do with the fact that we tend to be inappropriately and inaccurately associated with organizations or movements that are privatizing education, that folks think could be a threat to public education,” she said.

Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), the only Republican on the California Assembly Education Committee, was the lone “no” vote on the bill at its first hearing in late March. A TFA alumnus, Kiley called the bill unconstitutional.

Debate over the legislation led to a heated exchange between Kiley and the Democratic Assembly Education Committee Chair, Patrick O’Donnell. A former teacher, O'Donnell said Teach For America benefits the adults in the program more than it does the students they teach.

“They’re using this as a resume-builder because they want to go on to some elite grad school or law school,” O’Donnell said.

Following the hearing, Kiley’s office was moved to a smaller room known as “the dog house,” after he said Speaker Anthony Rendon cussed him out on the Assembly floor for his comments criticizing the Democrats in support of the bill.

When asked for comment, Rendon’s office simply said that the speaker has the authority to determine office assignments. "No assembly member is guaranteed a particular office,” a spokesperson told POLITICO.

TFA, which has called the bill an “unenforceable, misguided, legislative overreach,” points to people like Marcus Hughes.

Hughes, 39, trains teachers in needy communities in L.A. and had just graduated with a business degree when he joined TFA in 2003 to teach for the first time in an Atlanta school.

He hasn’t left education since.

“I wouldn’t have entered a classroom had it not been for Teach For America. Since then, my whole life has been about education,” he said. “They find the right people that want to be there, who have the right mindsets and come in and work hard.”