Teach For America is coming to Tampa Bay. Here’s what you need to know.

Ask Hillsborough assistant principal Demetria Geathers why her school received an F in last year’s state assessment, and she doesn’t hesitate to answer: They need teachers.

Geathers said Sheehy Elementary, a majority-Black, majority-low-income school in north Tampa, desperately needs educators willing to put in hours after school and over weekends to pull the failing school back on track.

Finding teachers with that kind of dedication can be difficult, she said. Retaining them is even more so.

Now, a potential solution — one Geathers has spent five years pushing — is arriving. This fall, Tampa Bay will receive its first cohort of 35 freshly trained educators from Teach For America — the organization’s first expansion since 2016 into a new U.S. region.

Hillsborough public schools have among the highest teacher vacancy rates in the state, with more than 1,000 positions unfilled on the district website. The highest vacancy and turnover rates are at schools in the district with the greatest needs, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of 2022-23 school year data.

The hand-picked teachers undoubtedly will fill much-needed positions in schools like Sheehy. Yet even as the organization has experienced some success in raising test scores, it has drawn critics who say the program’s historically high turnover rate harms school stability.

As it expands for the first time in Hillsborough, here’s what to know:

What is Teach For America?

Essentially a talent acquisition and training program, it is designed to funnel idealistic college graduates into some of the nation’s neediest schools, Teach For America Florida executive director LaKeisha Wells-Palmer said.

Founded in 1989, the organization typically recruits university students in their senior year and trains them to become educators in one of the 42 school districts where Teach For America operates across the nation.

The group has operated in Florida for more than two decades and plans to send 40 corps members to Jacksonville-area schools and 70 members to Miami-Dade this fall.

Recruits — or corps members, as they’re called — agree to spend two years teaching at their school in exchange for training and some financial support at the end of their service.

The program gets most of its funding through private grants, but received nearly $53 million in government funds in 2022, according to the organization’s latest tax form.

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Which schools will get a Teach For America teacher?

The organization partnered with Hillsborough County Public Schools to identify 30 high-needs public schools in the Tampa area, said district spokesperson Tanya Arja. The schools include Potter Elementary, Eisenhower Middle School and Freedom High School.

Hillsborough County Public Schools will pay the organization $5,000 for every new teacher placed in a district school.

Corps members can choose from one of three public charters programs: IDEA Public Schools in Tampa, RCMA Charter Schools in south Hillsborough and Dayspring Academy in Pasco.

From that list, corps members identify opportunities that interest them and apply like any other candidate, Wells-Palmer said. Interviews will take place until late July.

The organized has a 100% placement rate in Florida, she said.

What training do Teach For America members get?

Teach For America members receive two weeks of virtual training, then four weeks of hands-on classroom experience. Training covers the basics of classroom management and lesson planning.

Since most corps members will teach in schools with a high share of low-income and non-white students, the corps members be trained in cultural sensitivity and understanding racial biases.

The 35 Tampa Bay corps members will spend mornings teaching summer classes alongside experienced educators at RCMA Wimauma Community Academy in south Hillsborough. In the evenings, they’re back in the classroom — workshopping their teaching skills with RCMA teachers and Teach For America coaches.

Corps members must complete state teaching certification before school starts in August.

The 10-hour days are exhausting, said Bella DeLise, a recent University of Florida graduate who will be part of the Tampa Bay corps, but she’s already seen progress.

On her first day teaching, DeLise said, she thought she had nailed her prepared lecture on number recognition. She looked up from her notes to see a classroom full of squirming second-graders talking to one another.

“Were they engaged? No. So, we had to work on that,” she said. The next day she broke them up into smaller groups and based her lesson plan around activities. The squirming stopped — mostly, she said.

What do critics have to say?

Teach For America’s model of attracting idealistic college graduates has drawn criticism that it de-professionalizes the teaching industry and leads to high turnover rates.

A study in 2011 found that fewer than half of corps members remain at their schools past their two-year commitment with Teach For America and 85% leave by year five.

Critics of the program say that high turnover rate can harm school stability and student performance. It can end up costing the district more to continue to replace teachers who leave after their second year.

“I’m not going to lie, retention was awful 5, 10 years ago,” Wells-Palmer said. But the organization has worked to increase support and development of the young teachers to encourage them to stay, she added.

Part of that strategy is to recruit candidates closer to home, she said. Two-thirds of this year’s Tampa Bay group are from Florida, 11 from the Tampa Bay area.

From 2019 to 2022, 89% of corps members in Jacksonville and Miami stayed three or more years, on average, Wells-Palmer said.

Critics point to the organization’s extensive ties to the charter school movement, from high-dollar donors to an alumni network of charter founders and advocates.

The organization received more than $30 million from the Walton Foundation in 2022, according to the foundation’s tax documents. Money from the longtime school choice ally accounted for more than 15% of non-government grants received by the organization that year, a Tampa Bay Times analysis shows. That’s up from about 8% a decade ago.

KIPP Public Charter Schools, which has three locations in Jacksonville, and IDEA Public Schools, which operates in Jacksonville and Tampa, were founded by Teach For America alumni.

Almost 40% of Teach For America corps members taught at a charter school nationally in 2018, according to ProPublica.

Do Teach For America members make good teachers?

Research suggests that they do, with some caveats.

A 2024 Brookings Institute study of Miami’s Teach For America program from 2010 to 2021 found that students taught by a corps member had marginally higher math and reading scores compared to classes taught by other early-career educators. Some students taught by a corps member improved their attendance and grades.

The study was supported by the Knight Foundation, which also provided funding to Teach For America.

A 2023 RAND Corporation study of Teach For America corps members in Indianapolis found that the program’s positive impact on test scores outweighed any negative effects caused by higher turnover. That study was funded by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that funds health and education initiatives across the country. The group also financially supports Teach For America.

Results are uneven based on where the corps member is placed. Former Duval superintendent Diana Greene said that data from Jacksonville didn’t show positive results for corps members placed in Jacksonville’s low-income elementary schools.

When she resumed the district’s agreement with the program in 2019, she allowed Teach For America members only in the city’s middle and high schools, she said.

The energetic and idealistic corps members can help add some “fresh boldness and a renewed sense of hope”, Geathers said. “They’re enough to disrupt, to start a conversation, and that becomes contagious in the school building.”

Those spillover effects are difficult to measure. While classrooms led by a corps member saw higher math scores, corps members didn’t change other teachers’ performance, according to a 2011 study on Miami-Dade schools

The 35 corps members are a drop in the bucket, said Geathers, who got her first classroom experience as a Teach For America teacher in 2007. But she hopes they can make an impact larger than their numbers suggest.

“Most teachers, I don’t think they know how hard it would be” at a school like Sheehy, she said. But people attracted to Teach For America: they “signed up for hard,” she said.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the charter school programs that will be part of the Teach For America cohort and the year Teach For America was founded. The story has been corrected.