Dive Brief:

• Members of Harvard's Student Labor Action Movement sent a letter to the university's president, Drew Faust, asking that he sever ties with Teach for America if the organization does not make massive changes.     
• According to student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, the letter was "demanding the organization only send students to areas in which there is a teaching shortage, providing corps members more education and training, and cutting ties with corporations the students think threaten teacher unions, such as Exxon Mobil and JPMorgan Chase.”
• The letter was part of a bigger national movement started by United Students Against Sweatshops, who are vocally against the privatization of public education and feel TFA plays a large role in the neo-liberal agenda.  

Dive Insight:

It is probably unlikely that Harvard will heed the student request, as the university is very cozy with the organization. For example, the Graduate School of Education's webpage features a blog entitled “Stories by Teach For America." And according to the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss, "the Nonprofit Quarterly reported that 'nearly one in five seniors' have applied to join the organization in recent years, and 29 graduates from the university’s class of 2014 were accepted and joined TFA."

While President Faust is probably not going to severe ties with TFA, he and the rest of the ed world​ are forced to acknowledge growing dissatisfaction with the organization. In September, journalist Dana Goldstein published an article on Vox explaining the growing frustrations, as well as internal plans to try to fix them.