Teach For America and the Dangers of Deficit Thinking

• In Event: Neoliberalism and the “New” Public School Reform Movement

Abstract

This paper will detail the findings of a thematic analysis of Teach for America’s (TFA) website in an attempt to add to the growing body of literature that documents the harmful effects of deficit thinking. The paper begins with a description of the current reform landscape, after which I provide a review of literature that documents the ways in which deficit thinking maintains asymmetrical relations of dominance. Next, I describe my commitment to postcritical ethnography and how my positionality informed the production of the deficit theme. I then outline the ways in which TFA both implicitly and explicitly pathologizes the communities, families, and students who experience its corps members.

Author

• Ashlee Anderson, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville