February 24, 2013 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Wendy Kopp may be stepping down as CEO at Teach for America, but she’s not stepping away from the fight to ensure that children from poor families get a top-notch education.
For the past five years, Ms. Kopp has been the CEO of both Teach for America, which sends college graduates to teach in rural and inner-city schools affected by poverty, and Teach for All, a network of 26 nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunities in countries outside the United States. Ms. Kopp spoke with The Chronicle about her interest in helping entrepreneurs around the world develop programs similar to Teach for America.
Why is it now the time to shift your focus to Teach for All?
The main problem we’re addressing in Teach for America—that socioeconomic background predicts educational outcomes—is a pervasive problem throughout the world. The remarkable similarities in the nature of the problem also mean that the solutions are sharable. Teach for America has much to contribute, but perhaps even more to gain, from what will ultimately be a global movement to ensure educational opportunity for all.
How do you decide who can join the network?
They have to be committed to the same mission and vision: to recruiting future leaders to teach for two years in the neediest communities, and then investing in their development as teachers and alumni working for long-term systemic change. Once they’ve demonstrated that they’re committed to participating in the international network, and they’ve also shown that they have local support—they’ve raised funding and received placements for teachers—then we’ll bring them in.
Where are you succeeding?
It’s hard to point to any one country. The model is spreading across Latin America, where the first partners were in Chile and Peru. We also have a growing presence in Asia, where the early partners were India and China. Each of them faces their own challenges, just as Teach for America does in the United States.
But the model has a magnetizing power—a way of attracting extraordinary talent—that is playing itself out all over the world. At Teach for Pakistan, 600 recent Pakistani graduates applied for the first 30 spots.
