Center for Social Innovation

Published: February 19, 2008 Download  27 minutes, 12.5mb, recorded 2008-02-01

Teach For America's goal is to encourage high-achieving college students to teach in low-income and underperforming schools across America. The organization has grown rapidly from its original class of 100 teachers to over 5,000 currently enrolled. In this audio interview, Wendy Kopp, founder and chief executive officer of Teach For America, tells host Sheela Sethuraman about the history, goals, and ideals of that program. She talks about the effect Teach For America has made on students' performance, and its relationship with the communities where it places teachers and the colleges from which it recruits. She also explains how the organization is funded. Finally, she discusses a  global organization called Teach For All, which seeks to replicate the methods and success of Teach For America in the developing world.

Wendy Kopp has spent the past 18 years developing the Teach For America corps into a prestigious, highly regarded program that attracts some of the nation's brightest young men and women. Kopp holds honorary doctorate degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Rhodes College, Pace University, Mercy College, Smith College, Princeton University, Connecticut College, and Drew University. She is the author of One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way, and is the youngest person and the first woman to receive Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor the school confers on its undergraduate alumni. In 2006, she was named one of America's Best Leaders by U.S. News and World Report.

Resources

• Teach For America