To the Editor:
I wish to thank Emily Chenel for her recent commentary ("Improving Teach For America," May 10). I welcome her thoughtful suggestions for improving our admissions process and I share much of the sentiment she expresses. It is my strong hope that applicants not accepted to our program will take their energy, talent and commitment to other service and teaching-related activities. This is why we provide an additional resource list to applicants, but there may be more we can do; I appreciate hearing from Emily that she believes this could have a real impact.
Teach For America is highly selective and that fact is not likely to change. The particular challenges associated with our program -- among them a short training period and often the most difficult placements in schools not equipped to closely train beginning teachers -- and the ambitious goals to which we hold ourselves accountable require that we select corps members carefully. Although our approach to selection is rooted in research regarding effectiveness in our program, I also believe we can improve. For this reason, our research continues and our admissions process will surely adapt as we learn even more. Lastly, I appreciate Emily's desire for individual feedback. Still, given the potential volume of requests (17,000) and our available resources, we have determined that a policy of not providing individual feedback is the only one fair to all applicants. We attempt to minimize the frustration we know this can cause by being upfront about this policy in our application and sharing our rationale with applicants.
