The National Teacher Corps: A Study of Shifting Goals and Changing Assumptions

This article investigates the lasting legacy of the National Teacher Corps (NTC), which was created in 1965 by the U.S. federal government with two crucial assumptions: that teaching poor urban children required a very specific skill set and that teacher preparation programs were not providing adequate training in these skills. Analysis reveals that, though these assumptions still undergird many of today’s current alternative certification programs, political and institutional issues prevented the NTC from realizing its full potential. Analysis also reveals that the NTC, because of changes, left a legacy of assumptions but never uncovered how to actually prepare teachers for urban schools.