Wendy Kopp

Principle embodied: Excite Breakthrough Thinking – X-Principle #2

It's hard to know exactly what Wendy Kopp was expecting back in 1989 when she came up with a big idea for her senior year thesis at Princeton University. It's safe to assume, however, that she didn't expect her professor to call her "quite evidently deranged," which he did. Kopp, to her credit, chose not to listen. That turned out to be a very good thing for millions of kids.

The wild idea Kopp, now 40, had was to launch a U.S. national teaching corps, similar to President John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps, that would recruit young teachers straight out of college and sign them up for a two-year hitch working in some of the country's more disadvantaged schools. Since income too often determines where you live, and where you live too often determines whether you'll go to a failing school or a good school, Kopp saw more than a simple problem of educational inequity at work. She saw what she considered the most important civil rights issue of her generation.

In 1990, Kopp, then 23, raised $2.5 million to get her teaching corps started. From that beginning came Teach for America (TFA), a nationwide organization that today boasts more than 5,000 member teachers, who work in communities all over the country and reach 440,000 kids. Some 12,000 veterans of Teach for America have continued their teaching careers, often providing leadership for troubled schools in their own communities. This June, 10 percent of the graduating class of Yale University applied to the program, which accepts only about 1 of every 8 applicants. A 2005 study showed that 75% of school principals consider Teach for America teachers more effective than other teachers, and a 2004 study showed Teach for America students do better than other kids in math.

Wendy Kopp is not one to be deterred by a little word like "No." Not even by the reaction she got from one of her Princeton University professors in 1989 when she proposed starting a sort of Peace Corps for teachers. A program that would recruit fellow Ivy Leaguers to teach for two years in the nation's toughest schools. "My dear Ms. Kopp," responded Marvin Bressler, by his own account, "you are quite evidently deranged."

Believing that only dramatic efforts could produce acceptable results, Kopp had moved forward with her plans before she found the money to finance them. At first, the strategy worked: Union Carbide, Mobil, and other corporations stepped in with funding. But as TFA's novelty wore off and start-up grants expired, the money flow slowed. And then, with killer timing, came the Article.

Published in a prominent educational journal, then Columbia University Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond declared TFA to be "bad for the children ... [and] bad for teaching"; she cited a lack of training and support. The article didn't take long to reach benefactors' desks. Soon, Kopp was facing a $1.2 million deficit and a dire choice: cut back or cut out. Characteristically, she chose the first. "She doesn't let obstacles that would deter a lot of people get in her way," says Jerry Hauser, a former TFA staffer. "She just keeps fighting."

Kopp answered worried benefactors' phone calls by pointing out the article's inaccuracies and countering with a study of her own. She laid-off 60 employees and cut the budget by a quarter. "It was incredibly, incredibly stressful," she says.

Stressful, but instructive: No longer would dreams run ahead of money. Now, the staff designs a careful long-term plan every five years. United Negro College Fund CEO Michael Lomax, a TFA board member, says Teach for America is one of the best-run nonprofits he's seen. "We're learning so much from Wendy," he says.

Kopp has never been a schoolteacher, but she does have much to teach. "She's not charismatic necessarily," says Hauser. "But she leads by getting things done."

To read these articles in their entirety & to learn more about Wendy Kopp:

U.S. News & World Report: (This story appeared in the October 30, 2006 print edition) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061022/30kopp.htm

Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733754_1736227,00.html

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