Before San Francisco schools superintendent Carlos Garcia set foot in his new office last fall, he already had a meeting scheduled with Eric Scroggins, Teach for America’s sprightly local chief. Although TFA had tried—and failed—to partner with the city’s school district in 2004, the stars were better aligned this time. Teach for Amer­ica’s founder, Wendy Kopp, had been on The Colbert Report and featured in Fortune, explaining how TFA became the hottest recruiter of young talent in America; the organization had earned kudos for its contributions to the Oakland school district’s progress; and the city’s philanthropic elite, many with deep Ivy League and especially Princeton ties (Kopp is Princeton ’89), had been in the process of forking up almost $6 million over the past two years to cover the expansion of TFA’s local footprint. Garcia, who likens TFA’s teachers to an urban American Peace Corps, had successfully introduced the group into Las Vegas’s schools. And in San Francisco, the need was becoming more pressing. Ours may be the top-performing urban district in the state, but the achievement gap between poor black and Latino kids and everyone else is now larger here than almost anywhere else.

So the school board struck a deal with TFA for 50 teachers, finally adding San Francisco to the list of cities where TFA sends its troops. By now, TFA has little trouble recruiting top graduates from prestigious universities to teach at the schools most teachers try desperately to avoid; up to 10 percent of graduates at many top-tier colleges routinely apply, and only about 15 percent of applicants make the cut. Once they’re fed the Kool-Aid (“relentless pursuit” is just one of many doctrines that TFA teachers constantly repeat), these inexperienced but supremely talented young people—most of them accomplished artists, scientists, scholars, athletes, activists, or world travelers before they could legally drink—are turned loose on a classroom where the average student is drastically behind his or her grade level.

Technically, these new teachers are mere interns, but you can’t tell it from the goal TFA gives them: Each year, all of their students are expected to progress 1.5 to 2 grade levels in every subject, and to score at least 80 percent on standardized tests. Astoundingly, that’s usually what happens. The recruits’ rigorous indoctrination into the organization’s teaching methods, the raw brainpower they bring to the cause, and the 70-to-80-hour weeks they expect (and are expected) to work make most of them effective fast. In their off-hours, they tutor and visit their students and conduct Saturday school. Although they’re paid the same $39,774 rate as other new, noncredentialed teachers, Garcia says, “they’re basically volunteering. They see it as their calling.”

It’s a calling that’s meant to last years, a career, even a lifetime. Recruits sign on to impart their brains and passion to the classrooms that need help most; strongly consider becoming lifelong educators (rather than the lawyers, bankers, and

doctors they could have been); and get so inspired that even if they leave the field to master other universes after their two-year commitment (which one-third of them do), they never escape the ultimate cause.

Whether the recruits go on to become prin­cipals or school board members, run corporations or nonprofits, TFA sees its goal as salting America with tens of thousands of soldiers (officers, really) in the long fight for equal access to quality education—and fueling a new kind of civil-rights movement. The city’s public-school leaders welcome such an overtly political force for a reason: Three-quarters of African American students and 68 percent of Latinos score three or more grade levels behind on standardized tests, compared with 21 percent of Asian students and 30 percent of Caucasians.

At first, though, these teachers face a steep learning curve, especially since they’re in potentially hostile work environments. “Their energy and enthusiasm can be seen by teachers, principals, and administrators as naïve,” concedes former human resources director Deborah Hirsh, who was instrumental in helping Garcia bring in TFA. Colleagues who would like to see increased professionalism in their field don’t easily abide 21-year-old interns; principals in elementary schools, where continuity is crucial, sometimes hesitate to spend time breaking in teachers who won’t be around for long. “The turnover is the number-one drawback,” Hirsh says. “So you emphasize TFA’s 65 percent retention in the field of education”—and the raw talent of the teachers joining the corps.

San Francisco’s recruits spent the summer in an intensive teaching program in Los Angeles, and this fall, all of them must take classes toward earning a credential. From TFA staffers, they receive critiques and advice about lesson plans. They can ask TFA alums for help via online posts, and the district will try to place at least two TFA teachers at each school, so they can support each other.

These tactics can’t hurt, but the fledgling teachers—nearly all of whom sought Bay Area placements, and many of whom have ties here—don’t seem to require much hand holding. After earning a master’s in public affairs, 26-year-old Masharika Prejean spent two years traveling the globe with Condoleezza Rice as part of the secretary’s public affairs team. In Afghanistan, she witnessed the horrors of war; in Colombia, she saw children wandering the streets midday and wondered, “Why aren’t these kids in school?”

“You see the struggles,” she says, “but then you remember there are people right here in America who struggle with the same things.” As she pondered her next move toward the end of her tour of duty with Rice, Prejean says, the answer hit her “like a ton of bricks.” She is now teaching fourth graders in Bayview/Hunters Point.

The district will be monitoring Prejean’s school closely—it is one of the city’s lowest scoring on standardized tests. But if TFA’s track record is any indication, the district will be glad to have Prejean

there. In one study, TFA teachers lifted student achievement levels in core high-school subjects nearly three times faster than their experienced peers did. That’s why Hirsh expects drastic improvements in classrooms headed by these 50 newbies. “We were looking for a quick win here,” she says.

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JESSICA KELMON is San Francisco‘s editorial fellow.

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