Teach for America, a corps of recent college graduates who sign up to teach in some of the nation's most troubled schools, has become a campus phenomenon, drawing huge numbers of applicants willing to commit two years of their lives.

But a new study has found that their dedication to improving society at large does not necessarily extend beyond their Teach for America service.

In areas like voting, charitable giving and civic engagement, graduates of the program lag behind those who were accepted but declined and those who dropped out before completing their two years, according to Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, who conducted the study with a colleague, Cynthia Brandt.

The reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, McAdam said, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America's approach to the issue of educational inequity, among other factors.

The study, “;Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Youth Service: The Puzzling Case of Teach for America,”; is the first of its kind to explore what happens to participants after they leave the program. It was done at the suggestion of Wendy Kopp, 42, Teach for America's founder and president, who disagrees with the findings. Kopp had read an earlier study by McAdam that found that participants in Freedom Summer—the 10 weeks in 1964 when civil rights advocates, many of them college students, went to Mississippi to register black voters—had become more politically active.

“;There's been a very clear and somewhat naive consensus among educators, policy folks and scholars that youth activism invariably has these kinds of effects,”; said McAdam. “;But we've got to be much more attentive to differences across these experiences, and not simply assume that if you give a kid some youth service experience it will change them.”;

Teach for America is nearing its 20th anniversary. Of its 17,000 alumni, 63 percent remain in the field of education and 31 percent remain in the classroom. (This reporter took part in the program from 2003 to 2005.)

Financed by the William T. Grant Foundation, the study surveyed every person who was accepted by Teach for America from 1993 to 1998. It is being published this month in Social Forces, a journal published by the University of North Carolina.

The study compared “;graduates,”; who completed their two years; “;dropouts,”; who entered the program but left before the two years were up; and “;nonmatriculants,”; who were accepted but declined the offer. It included 1,538 graduates, 324 dropouts and 634 nonmatriculants. Nearly 45 percent of those sampled returned the 34-page survey.

While Teach for America graduates remain far more active than their peer group, the findings indicate that the program neither achieves an earlier organizational goal of “;making citizens”; nor produces people who, in great numbers, take their civic commitments beyond the field of education.

“;To find that Teach for America graduates are more involved in education but are not serving in soup kitchens is interesting but not surprising—it's consistent with their current mission,”; said Monica C. Higgins, an associate professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education who studies organizational behavior. “;They're not trying to make global citizens. They're focused on education.”;

McAdam's findings that nearly all of Freedom Summer's participants were still engaged in progressive activism when he tracked them down 20 years later have contributed to the widely held notion that civic advocacy and service among the young make for better citizens.

Kopp was curious to know whether something similar was occurring with her corps of teachers. But McAdam, 57, said that Freedom Summer was the exception, not the rule.

“;Freedom Summer is the odd civic experience, and hardly representative of what happens when young people do service,”; he said. “;A lot of the impact of any experience is where it's historically situated.”;

Rob Reich, 40, an associate professor of political science at Stanford, shares that view.

“;Back in the '60s, if you signed up for Freedom Summer, it was perceived to be countercultural,”; said Reich, who taught sixth grade in Houston as a member of the Teach for America corps. “;But unlike doing Freedom Summer, joining Teach for America is part of climbing up the elite ladder—it's part of joining the system, the meritocracy.”;

Last year, 35,000 people applied to Teach for America, 42 percent more than in 2008. Further, at more than 20 colleges and universities, Teach for America was the top recruiter. At Harvard, 13 percent of graduating seniors applied. At Spelman College, in Atlanta, 25 percent did.

“;It's hard to see the incredible outpouring of interest among this generation and think of it as a lack of civic engagement,”; Kopp said.

“;Unfortunately,”; she added, “;it doesn't seem as if this study looked at Teach for America's core mission, by evaluating whether we are producing more leaders who believe educational inequity is a solvable problem, who have a deep understanding of the causes and solutions, and who are taking steps to address it in fundamental and lasting ways.”;

Cami Anderson, 38, who taught in Los Angeles as a corps member in 1993 and participated in McAdam's study, is among the graduates who, relative to their peer group, already exhibited high levels of service before stepping foot in a classroom. “;Not many of us are heads of large public systems, but we're starting to be,”; said Anderson, who is the superintendent of alternative high schools and programs for New York City's Education Department. “;Just give us a few more years.”;