In general, TFA's practices and theoretical framework like the AIM would appear to be in violation with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, in claiming that teachers can cause effective learning despite the physiological, safety, belonging, and self esteem issues students face.
TFA posits that the external realities faced by students living in low socioeconomic households are irrelevant and play no significant factor in student achievement. TFA teaches its corps members that a good teacher can overcome the ailments of poverty within the classroom if only they follow the prescribed methods for teaching. This line of thinking is in direct opposition to the 1966 Coleman Report that held socioeconomic realities of students as the largest predictor of academic success. The TFA uses Steven Farr's book, Teaching as Leadership (2010), as an introduction to teaching. The book states:
this [Coleman] report fostered a perspective absolving teachers and schools from responsibility for students' success or failure, encouraging a disempowering tendency to look 'outside their own sphere of influence for reasons why students are not succeeding.
