Teach For America is a non-profit organization whose mission is to "eliminate educational inequity by enlisting high-achieving recent college graduates and professionals" to teach in low-income communities throughout the country for at least two years.
"We will not stand by while corporate education reformers recruit college students into a deeply flawed organization that is undermining instead of supporting our public education system," Thomas said.
Jan Van Tol, a national organizer with USAS, said TFA is driven by a corporate agenda that doesn't treat teaching like a real profession.
"Public education is under attack by corporate-backed behemoths who pour millions into manufacturing a new pro-corporate education reform consensus on university campuses, propping up groups like Teach For America that treat teaching like a hobby, not a profession," Van Tol said in a press statement.
USAS is not alone in its opposition to TFA. Educators, activists and students around the country have begun voicing concern, even outrage, over TFA and its perceived connection to a corporate-driven education reform agenda.
The "TFA Truth Tour" stopped in Chicago last month for a panel forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Former and current Chicago educators came out to the panel to air their TFA concerns and grievances.
Osgood taught for years as a special education teacher at a Chicago Public School. She now teaches kids with severe emotional and behavioral disorders at an in-patient psych unit in Chicago.
Osgood took aim at TFA's expansion into places like Chicago. She said TFA corps members displace career teachers when they expand into areas, like Chicago, where there are no teacher shortages.
She said TFA's deep ties to a corporate-backed movement to expand charter schools in Chicago troubles her as well.
This is an issue that other TFA critics, including the Chicago Teachers Union, have been similarly critical of.
Last September, executive director for TFA Chicago Jon Anderson responded to a blog postthat accused TFA of quietly partnering with the charter movement and working to dramatically expand charter schools in the city.
Anderson took issue with the specific statistics that were referenced in the blog post but did not dispute the blogger's claim that TFA supports expanding charter schools in Chicago.
Anderson acknowledged that TFA alumni serve in leadership positions on "several high-performing campuses" in Chicago and said he would like to see more "great schools." However, he said TFA has a very limited role — namely, the role of providing a source of educators — in determining whether or not a school or network can grow.
Former corps members like Masharika Maddison see TFA's expansion as a necessary evolution, not a problem.
Speaking in a TFA promotional video "A New Mandate For Public Schools", Maddison describes a problem of "educational inequity" that runs along poverty lines in this country.
Despite these challenges, Maddison said TFA teachers are making amazing breakthroughs.
"Today, in a growing number of classrooms and schools, students are moving on to completely different trajectories," she said.
Maddison says TFA effectively provides quality education to children in low-income communities. Now, TFA is challenged to build on individual breakthroughs and translate that success across entire schools and districts, she said.
Jesse Sharkey, vice president of CTU, is critical of that notion. Speaking at the "Truth Tour" forum, Sharkey said TFA's belief that enthusiastic, Ivy-league graduates can "fix" struggling schools in the toughest neighborhoods ignores real policy issues and teaches a sense of undeserved superiority to its corps members.
TFA tells its corps members that bad teachers are to blame for failing schools, Sharkey said. This perpetuates a sense of superiority based on privilege and social background within the teaching corps, he said.
Like Maddison, Sharkey agrees that deep inequalities run along poverty and race lines in our public education system. But he says TFA is not helping erase those inequalities. If anything, its emphasis on blaming teachers distracts from real issues and necessary policy reforms, he said.
Sharkey said students and schools in wealthier communities excel while their poorer counterparts struggle largely because of resource imbalances, not bad teachers. Even great teachers can only do so much without the support and resources they need to teach the toughest kids, he said.
After 24 years in operation, TFA's overall effectiveness is still not entirely clear.
Some large studies, such as those done by independent research group Mathematica, show students with TFA teachers score at least slightly higher on secondary math assessments than of other new teachers. However, the studies showed TFA teachers were no more effective than other new teachers in elementary reading.
Another comprehensive review by the National Education Policy Center questions the accuracy of such studies. NEPC's review said it was not possible to draw conclusive results from existing research because many more factors must be included in any truly accurate comparison.
"The lack of consistent impact should indicate to policy makers that TFA is not likely the panacea that will reduce disparities in educational outcomes," NEPC reported.