Teach For America would not be able to continue recruiting and developing an ever-more diverse and impactful group of corps members and alumni if the nation's leading colleges become even less diverse.

Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching 'One Day' is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.

On average, our corps members stay in the classroom for eight years. But again, given the systemic nature of educational inequity, we know it is vital that some of our alumni take their experience outside the classroom.

When you think of the typical Teach For America corps member, soldiers and ex-bankers are probably not the people who come to mind. In fact, there is no such thing as a typical corps member. They can't be neatly pigeonholed or painted with a broad brush.

I think the way to understand Teach for America is as a leadership development program.

We should be individualizing instruction, utilizing that data to actually give teachers the tools necessary to meet the needs of a very diverse group of kids which exists in every class.