Privatizing Principal Preparation: Examining Teach For America's Principal Pipeline Initiative in the Chicago Public Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 56
  In Roundtable Session: Principal Preparation Programs: Examinations and Evolutions

Abstract

Drawing on previous work that provided an examination of Teach For America's (TFA) use of Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) to contractually secure teaching position for the organization's corps members, this paper employs critical policy analysis to interrogate TFA's Principal Pipeline Initiative in the Chicago Public Schools. Drawing on the theoretical lens of Strategic Action Fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), discourse and document analysis show that TFA has leveraged its political clout to move TFA alumni into principal positions as TFA's organizational aims have shifted from a focus on teachers to a focus on school leadership.

Author

• T. Jameson Brewer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign