Groundwork for Change

Introduction

For 35 years, Teach For America (TFA) has sought to supply and develop talent for the education sector. While best known for its corps member program, in which recent college graduates and professionals commit to teach for at least two years in schools serving low-income communities, TFA’s model rests on a longer-term theory of leadership development: that many corps members, given their impact and experiences acquired in the classroom, will go on to advance educational opportunity and social change as alumni, often through leadership roles in the education sector. Since the first cohort of educators was assembled in 1990, approximately 72,000 individuals have gone through the program, and many now occupy leadership positions in their communities.¹

As TFA’s alumni network has matured and expanded, cities and states across the country have been pursuing ambitious efforts to transform their education systems. TFA alumni have been present across the education ecosystem in many of these places. To date, 10 alumni have served as state chief school officers — Angelica Infante-Green (Rhode Island), Lily Laux (New Jersey), Jake Steel (Kansas), Victor Wakefield (Nevada), Levi Bachmeier (North Dakota), John White (Louisiana), Kevin Huffman (Tennessee), Penny Schwinn (Tennessee), Christina Grant (D.C.), and Hanseul Kang (D.C.) — where they and their teams have influenced the design and direction of education systems serving millions of students. Alumni have also held senior leadership roles in major cities that have undergone significant education change, including Denver (where Mike Johnston currently serves as mayor); Newark (where Cami Anderson served as superintendent); Washington, D.C. (where Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson served as chancellors); and Chicago (where alumni currently occupy several executive positions). In addition, tens of thousands of alumni have served in other roles with substantial capacity for influence as classroom teachers, school principals, district and charter network administrators, nonprofit leaders, advocates, and state and local policymakers. The presence of so many alumni leaders up and down the education system raises the question of how, and to what extent, this leadership pipeline has contributed to education reform and systems change efforts.²

Groundwork for Change provides a first-of-its-kind examination of whether and how TFA alumni contributed to education change across three cities that emerged as bright spots in urban education reform over the past two decades: Denver, Camden, and New York City.

These three cities were earlier profiled in Bellwether’s Eight Cities project (originally published in 2018 and updated in 2020), which described how systems leaders in eight urban communities pursued systemic transformation and expanded access to educational opportunity. While each of the eight cities varied in their local context and specific reform pathways, all of them shared elements of a portfolio-style approach to district improvement—emphasizing measurable student outcomes, school-level autonomy, family choice and new school options, accountability for school quality, unified talent strategies, and a focus on continuous improvement—ultimately emerging as nationally prominent examples of academic progress in the first quarter of the 21st century.

The three cities profiled in this analysis were selected because each possessed a large or visible TFA alumni footprint during a period of major education reform and systems change activity; evidence of improved student outcomes during or since that time period; and local change contexts that were varied enough to surface cross-site differences yet similar enough to test more general hypotheses about whether, how, and to what extent TFA alumni may have contributed to change. This analysis of Denver, Camden, and New York City also explores the role TFA alumni played in shaping, advancing, and institutionalizing education reforms in these communities and the shared skills, capabilities, and mindsets that equipped them to advance change individually and collectively.

Investigating A Theory of TFA Influence on Education Change

TFA’s model is rooted in leadership development: the organization aims to cultivate leaders who, first as corps members and then as alumni, advance educational opportunity and social change, often beyond the classroom. TFA does this first by intentionally recruiting and selecting corps members who exhibit potential as changemakers. Some of the traits that TFA leaders describe their organization as seeking during its corps member selection process are: long-term commitment to reaching goals; ability to set and attain ambitious goals; ability to think critically about any situation; innovation in the face of challenges; openness to feedback; and ability to work in partnership with others. TFA then supports selected corps members’ placement, hiring, and development as full-time teachers in schools serving under-resourced urban and rural communities. The model anticipates that, through this experience, alumni will develop and hone critical leadership skills, capabilities, mindsets, and beliefs that they will bring to future work and use to take action to transform education systems and improve outcomes for all children and communities, especially those furthest from opportunity.

Research backs up the view that serving as a TFA corps member has a profound impact on the later mindsets, attitudes, civic participation, and career trajectories of alumni (Figure). Most notably, research has found that compared with a similar group of applicants who did not serve in the TFA corps, alumni were more likely to attribute unequal educational opportunities and outcomes to structural and systemic factors rather than individualistic ones. Experience in the corps also appears to increase alumni’s belief in the potential of low-income students and in their own capacity to drive change, while more broadly cultivating “political participation,” “racial tolerance,” and a “worldview more reflective of disadvantaged communities.” TFA reports that 75% of alumni work full time in mission-related work in education, nonprofit and philanthropic fields, public policy, government, advocacy, law, healthcare, and social services. Some research suggests that TFA alumni historically have been more likely to be drawn to educational solutions that focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, and performance accountability — often with an aspiration of transforming existing systems of education delivery.

FIGURE: BELLWETHER SYNTHESIS OF TFA’S THEORY OF INFLUENCE

Note: This is a simplified and synthesized visualization of how TFA alumni contribute to education reform and systems change, developed from TFA documents and leadership materials for the purposes of this report. It is not meant to be interpreted as a formal, codified theory of change offered directly by TFA.

Bellwether set out to investigate this model of alumni impact in three cities that have undergone significant education reform and systems change over the past two decades — Denver, Camden, and New York City — assessing the role and contribution of TFA alumni in those cities’ stories of change. To do so, Bellwether:

• Reviewed extensive literature on each city’s history of education reform and systems change, including over 400 publicly available documents, news media reports, and research articles.
• Conducted more than 50 interviews and focus groups with system leaders (current and former district leaders, school leaders, elected officials, nonprofit leaders, advocates, and other key stakeholders) in these communities, including conversations with TFA alumni and non-alumni to gather diverse viewpoints on alumni impact.
• Analyzed proprietary TFA alumni employment history data from the early 2000s to the present day.
• Analyzed publicly available data from state and federal sources about enrollment trends and academic outcomes in each city, including NAEP data, state department of education data, and data from the Stanford Education Opportunity and Recovery Projects.

This analysis does not evaluate TFA’s process for recruiting and developing leaders, nor does it examine the role and impact of corps members in each city. It is also not designed to provide a comprehensive accounting of every line of alumni impact in these cities, and there are many more stories that could be told. Instead, it focuses exclusively on assessing how TFA alumni shaped and sustained major moments of systems-level change in these three cities associated with improved student outcomes.

Summary of Findings

Across the three case studies, a common story emerged. When conditions for change were ripe in each city, TFA alumni provided an influx of leadership talent that played an influential role in sparking, accelerating, and sustaining change. At times, they even helped shape those conditions. In some cases, alumni held formal authority as superintendents, deputy superintendents, legislators, or school board members. Many times, they served in relatively less visible but highly consequential roles as district office staff, school and network leaders, community advocates, and civic leaders — exercising influence and power across the system to shape the design of reforms, build will for them, and support implementation and sustainability over time.

In the words of two systems leaders we interviewed for this project, TFA alumni were “extraordinary lieutenants” and “missionaries for change” who brought critical and additive leadership capabilities and mindsets to the efforts to transform education in these communities.

Within and across these cities, alumni did not always align or agree on the direction to take, and they did not often appear to operate through a highly managed or formally organized network of alumni, but their shared experiences, aligned values, and common orientation toward change made them a cumulative and consequential force for change. While some changes in these cities’ education systems would have occurred even without TFA alumni, given the presence of other leaders or favorable local conditions, without those alumni, the design, pace, depth, and impact of those reforms would likely look different today.

Patterns of TFA Impact Across the Three Case Studies

Across Denver, Camden, and New York City, the cumulative contribution of TFA alumni leaders to education reform and systems change was substantial. Alumni supplied a pool of leadership talent with a shared orientation to change and a common set of skills, capabilities, and mindsets that enabled them to launch, amplify, and accelerate change individually and in collaboration with others.

The size and shape of the alumni footprint differed across the three cities: in Denver and New York, thousands of TFA alumni provided an influx of cross-sector leadership talent, while in Camden, a small but concentrated group of alumni served within the central office, and others launched and staffed schools central to the district’s turnaround strategy. In all three cities, alumni played critical roles across the education ecosystem, as school founders, leaders, and educators; district office and charter network administrators; nonprofit leaders; community advocates; and, in at least a few cases, state and local policymakers.

Four major themes of TFA alumni influence emerged, though their prominence and expression varied by city:

• Establishing a vision and architecture for reform.
• Executing a vision for change as district lieutenants.
• Founding, leading, and staffing high-quality school options.
• Leading advocacy and public will-building efforts around change.

A Common Set of Leadership Traits

Denver, Camden, and New York City implemented different reforms in different political environments and on different timelines. Yet interviews with dozens of systems leaders across all three cities uncovered a strikingly consistent set of skills, capabilities, mindsets, and beliefs held by TFA alumni that positioned them to drive change: relentless drive, mission orientation toward educational opportunity, humility and continuous learning, relationship and coalition leadership, and data-driven decision making. These skills, capabilities, mindsets, and beliefs also appear related to the traits that TFA aspires to select and develop in its leaders.

RELENTLESS DRIVE

Relentless drive is an unyielding commitment to improving educational opportunity and student outcomes, characterized by a sense of urgency, willingness to innovate beyond the status quo, and a “whatever it takes” mentality in the pursuit of educational excellence for all students. 

Systems leaders across Denver, Camden, and New York City described the TFA alumni they worked alongside as urgent, persistent, and unwilling to accept low expectations as inevitable. They harbored a deep belief that all kids can learn and worked relentlessly to improve educational opportunities. As Nicholas Hernandez, executive director of Transform Education Now in Denver, explained, “The trademark of TFA folks of that era is a relentless commitment to progress for kids … someone who has this laser focus on outcomes for kids.” In Camden, KIPP network leader Anne Kadowaki stated that this mindset meant that TFA alumni strove to do “whatever it takes, and whatever we need to do … to drive student results in a way that it hasn’t been done before.” That drive mattered because reforms often required leaders to open new schools, manage school turnarounds, and keep work moving through resistance and uncertainty. Across sites, this mindset helped alumni push through roadblocks, build coalitions, and turn ambitious reform goals into action.

MISSION ORIENTATION TOWARD EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY

Mission orientation toward educational opportunity is an unwavering, deeply internalized belief in the potential of all students, coupled with a fierce commitment to changing structures and systems so that all students have pathways to thrive.

Systems leaders in each site said that TFA alumni’s mission orientation helped keep reform work centered on improved opportunity for students rather than status quo preservation of existing institutions. In New York, current Gray Foundation President and former TFA–New York Executive Director Charissa Fernandez captured the sentiment of many systems leaders when she explained, “The thing that still distinguishes TFA teachers [and alumni] is really the equity lens [focused on expanding educational opportunity]; they are always thinking about who is being left out, and how we bring them in.” Joe Amundsen, a longtime district leader in Denver, summarized the connection between the mission mindset and sense of purpose, saying, “These are people who are deeply equity-driven leaders that you know are doing this work because they know that public education is about civil rights, it’s about human rights.” Across sites, systems leaders pointed to that mission mindset as a driving force behind TFA alumni’s efforts to transform systems to expand access to excellent educational opportunities for all students.

HUMILITY AND CONTINUOUS LEARNING

Humility and continuous learning is the capacity to recognize the limits of one’s own perspective, maintain an openness to feedback, and exhibit the adaptability required to pivot strategies when presented with new evidence or community needs. 

Systems leaders frequently identified an orientation toward humility and continuous learning as an important element of TFA alumni’s effectiveness as leaders. Alumni consistently demonstrated a willingness to listen, ask for advice, adapt, and recognize the limits of any one person’s role in a large system. For example, Paymon Rouhanifard described how this capability shaped his own leadership approach as superintendent in Camden: “… There’s this sort of humility of recognizing that you have a role to play here, but that we need to honor the local community and we need to work collaboratively with those who were here for a very long time.” Brett Alessi, co-founder of Empower Schools and one of the architects of Denver’s innovation zones, named a similar theme when describing shared traits of TFA alumni school leaders in Denver’s innovation zones: “Continuous learning comes to mind; they were humble enough that they didn’t think they already know everything; they wanted what was best for students and were willing to push each other, and the system, to learn and improve, which was huge.” Across sites, this capability helped alumni navigate complex politics, build trust with communities, adjust strategy when conditions changed, and pair bold advocacy with a clearer understanding of what they still needed to learn.

RELATIONSHIP AND COALITION LEADERSHIP

Relationship and coalition leadership is the ability to build deep, authentic trust and forge collaborative partnerships across diverse stakeholder groups ranging from parents and community members to district leaders and policymakers.

Relationship and coalition leadership helped alumni build trust, navigate complex politics, and bring people together around shared goals. This trait showed up especially in alumni’s advocacy work, where building trust across differences was necessary to enact complex policy. In Denver, Leslie Colwell, a TFA alum and longtime vice president at the Colorado Children’s Campaign, reflected on the necessity of relationship and coalition building locally and statewide in a multiyear effort to overhaul Colorado’s inequitable school finance system: “We had to build understanding among other advocates, the business community, rural communities, and people who didn’t always see the problem the same way. It just wasn’t enough to be right about the substance and how unfair it was; they really had to trust our analysis too.” In New York, early childhood leader Hope Lesane observed that what made TFA alumni successful was their ability to build relationships and “… take a risk and say … I’m from an entirely different part of the country, but I’m committed to being in this community and showing up with my whole self.” Across sites, systems leaders reported that this skill helped alumni advance change through complex systems while creating space for families, educators, and community partners to have an authentic voice in the work.

DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING

Data-driven decision making is the rigorous, systematic use of quantitative and qualitative evidence to drive instructional decisions, measure student growth, and ensure accountability for academic success. 

Across all three cities, interviewees described data-driven decision making as the clearest technical skill TFA alumni brought to the work. It helped leaders track progress, identify what was not working, and make decisions based on student outcomes rather than assumptions. Former school leader and current TFA–Colorado Chief of Program Kate Berger attributed the impact of TFA alumni turning around struggling schools in Denver directly to their “laser-like focus on data and student outcomes” and the way they consistently “base decisions on student data.” In New York City, Bronx High School Superintendent Marcel Deans described alumni using data “to make really informed decisions, and to really measure how young people are moving.” This focus on assessing progress and achieving measurable results helped alumni in each city make strategic pivots, strengthen classroom practice, and hold reform efforts accountable to whether students were actually improving.

Together, these traits help explain why TFA alumni showed up repeatedly in major reform efforts across Camden, Denver, and New York. Their influence did not come from one skill, capability, or mindset alone, but from a combination that helped them move from belief to execution. Across cities, that combination positioned alumni to help lead difficult work while adapting to the communities and systems around them.

Implications for the Field: What Systems Change Requires

The patterns described above are specific to TFA alumni, but they point to broader lessons for educators, policymakers, advocates, and funders seeking to drive education systems change. Each of the three cities varied considerably in its reform strategies, governance structures, and school designs. Yet sustained progress depended on a common set of local capacities: a clear vision for change, aligned leadership talent, visible proof points, and community voice. Together, these capacities appear to form the foundation for a community’s ability to define, drive, and sustain change over time. Leadership pipelines like TFA can contribute to systems change by strengthening local capacity and developing and deploying the leadership skills, capabilities, mindsets, and beliefs needed to do so.

Systems change requires leaders who can both set a clear vision and translate that vision into aligned, executable action. Vision setting and execution are distinct capabilities, and in these cities, both appeared necessary. The ability of executive leaders like Rouhanifard to define a clear direction mattered, but so did the cabinets, central office teams, and district staff who translated that direction into policy, systems, and daily practice. A compelling vision without the leadership capacity to execute it, or a strong execution team without a clear vision to align behind, will be more challenged in achieving lasting results.

Systems change requires a deep pool of aligned leadership talent. Across these case studies, successful reform efforts required a robust pipeline of vision-aligned district, school, and community leadership. In each city, reform leaders strategically recruited, hired, and developed experienced administrators, principals, and teachers whom they believed would be well-equipped to execute the transformation they envisioned. This pattern signals that intentional investment in building a pipeline of leadership talent who are well equipped to champion innovative solutions is an important element of creating the conditions to support transformational systemwide change.  

Proof points can be a powerful way to build and sustain public will for change. In places like Denver and Camden, the high-profile coverage of successful charter and traditional public schools helped make an abstract case for reform concrete and visible. When people can see what high performance looks like and that high performance is possible, it becomes easier to build belief in a reform narrative and expand support for it over time.

Systems change is likely to be more durable when informed by authentic family and community voice. All three cities embraced some model of portfolio reforms that focus on expanding the number of high-quality school options for families. While high-quality schools and market dynamics can draw families on their own, the long-term sustainability of change also requires deep community engagement. In Denver, leadership turnover, a teachers strike, and growing concerns about uneven access and engagement of Black and Latino communities contributed to weakening support for the portfolio approach over time. Camden’s approach, by contrast, prioritized transforming neighborhood schools in place and paired difficult school closure decisions with an intentional community engagement approach focused on direct communication with families and deep partnership with local validators. That approach did not eliminate tension, but it helped Camden avoid some of the backlash seen in nearby cities during this same time. Bringing communities along in the design of reform, not just its rollout, is an important factor in a reform effort’s staying power.

Conclusion

Over the past 35 years, TFA has aimed to develop leaders who advance educational opportunity and social change over the course of their careers by identifying and supporting individuals with leadership potential and immersing them in classrooms serving students who face the greatest barriers to opportunity. While this research was not designed to evaluate that theory directly, the three case studies provide compelling evidence that TFA alumni in cross-sector leadership roles made meaningful contributions to education reform and systems change in Denver, Camden, and New York City in the past 15 years. Across different cities, roles, and political contexts, alumni consistently demonstrated a common set of skills, capabilities, mindsets, and beliefs — including relentless drive, mission orientation toward educational opportunity, humility and continuous learning, relationship and coalition leadership, and data-driven decision making — that positioned them to help shape, implement, and sustain change.

Looking ahead, the specific approaches to systems change championed by educational leadership across the country will almost certainly continue to evolve, just as they have over the past three decades. As Teach For America continues to cultivate leaders with these underlying capabilities, future generations of alumni may continue to play influential roles in education systems — not by advancing the same reform agenda as previous generations, but by applying those enduring leadership qualities to the distinct challenges and opportunities of their own time.