The Teach for America founder takes stock of her revolution and discusses the makings of great teachers. Excerpted from the Innovating California Series program, sponsored by Chevron, “Wendy Kopp,” April 21, 2011.

WENDY KOPP, Founder and CEO, Teach for America; Author, A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All

DR. COLLEEN WILCOX, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Alliance for Teachers – Moderator

 

WILCOX: I thought we’d start with a chicken-and-egg question. What came first: the dream for Teach for America, or the assignment to write a thesis and think about what you would be doing?

KOPP: The dream, to use your terminology. Honestly, I was in a total funk my senior year of college. In fact, I think I was the last senior in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs to actually determine a thesis topic. But I was unconcerned with that; I was just literally lost. The notion that I needed to find something I could do for the rest of my life – I was searching for something I just wasn’t finding.

Supposedly my generation just wanted to go work on Wall Street, and I always thought that [assumption] was misplaced. I thought I was one of thousands of people who were just searching for some way to make a real difference in the world. I thought the problem wasn’t the generation; it was the recruiters. Which was great, if that’s what you wanted; it was just not what I wanted to do. There were all these companies that were trying to recruit [us] to commit two years to work on Wall Street or work with management-consulting firms. I’d been really focused on this issue of educational inequity. I organized a conference on it my senior year. It was really at that conference where I thought, Why aren’t we being recruited for two years to teach in our highest-poverty communities in the same way we are being recruited to work for two years on Wall Street?

Ultimately, I realized this is the answer to all of my problems: my career, my thesis, everything. Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed. 

WILCOX: The folklore is that you didn’t do so well on that thesis. I thought maybe you could tell us what grade you got on that thesis and why you suspect it wasn’t an A+.

KOPP: Well, I did OK on the thesis. The funny thing was, I couldn’t find a thesis advisor, really, because I was such a delinquent senior and everyone was booked up. People sent me to an incredible man, Marvin Bressler, who was the chair of the Sociology Department. He was just legendary for his extraordinary personality and brilliance. When I met with him, he said, “No, you can’t propose an advertising campaign for teachers in your senior thesis, but I’ll tell you what: If you propose mandatory national service, I’ll be your thesis advisor.” Because this was his obsession and, at that point, I just looked at him and said, “OK, fine.”

He agreed to be my advisor. I didn’t talk to him again until I turned it in. It was called “A Plan and Argument for a National Teacher Corps.” I didn’t care how I did on it; I was going to go make it happen by that point – and [Marvin Bressler] called me up four days later and said, “I need you to come in here.” He tells people he said I was deranged, which he basically did [say]. But he loved it and I got an A.

WILCOX: You wrote one book some time ago. Why a second book, and why now?

KOPP: My first book I wrote in [Teach for America’s] 10th year. The first decade of Teach for America, from the idea to not only the reality but also to keeping the thing afloat, [saw] lots of near-death experiences. The whole learning curve and saga on how you [take] this idea, make it happen, and create a stable institution. At that point I felt I had to write the book for all the poor social entrepreneurs that will come after me asking, “How do we do this?”

I realized two or three years ago that if I could write a book now, it would be about something else. It would be about what I’ve learned over time about the actual issue we’re addressing, its solvability and what I think are really the lessons I’ve learned from our teachers and alumni about what it would actually take to solve the problem.

WILCOX: The title, A Chance to Make History. Did you choose the title?

KOPP: Megan Brousseau is a second-year teacher; as of last year, she finished her two years teaching in the Bronx. She was teaching 112 ninth graders in her first year. She was teaching biology. Her kids were coming into her room far behind. Almost all of her kids were below the poverty line. Almost all of her kids had learned, or were learning, English as a second language. Twenty percent of them were coming in behind their grade level in reading; they were significantly behind and had very little exposure to science. Yet, she walked in to them on the first day and said, “This is your chance to make history,” and called upon them to take and pass the New York State Regents Exam in Biology, something few kids in the Bronx do. She was convinced that if they did that, it would be important in their lives. They’d realize they could be on a college track; it would also prove to others that they were college material, and it would improve their course selection.

I recount the extraordinary act of leadership that she engaged in to reach that goal. She convinced her kids that if they worked hard enough, they could get there and that would matter in their lives. She re-wrote her entire curriculum and went to great lengths to maximize every second she had with them, realized it wasn’t enough time and got many of them to come to class at seven in the morning and leave at six at night. She got three-quarters of them coming to school every Saturday. A year later, 112 kids passed the New York State Regents Exam in biology with nine percentage points higher than the New York City average, and not every kid has to take this test, so that includes all the specialized high school kids, et cetera. So the book’s title, A Chance to Make History, comes from her story, because I think we can see from the microcosm of her example that this is a solvable problem.

Most people think we have low educational outcomes in low-income communities because the kids aren’t motivated, because their parents don’t care. Megan shows us that’s not the case. We saw her kids work harder than most kids in America, and we saw their parents getting them there on Saturdays. So we saw that when you meet kids with many other challenges with high expectations and the extra support they need, they excel. That’s probably the most salient lesson from the last 20 years; it is within our control to solve this problem.

WILCOX: One of the things that is the most impressive is that you’ve studied those teachers who have been successful. You talk about three things you’ve learned from studying those teachers. One is the recruitment process. [Another] is the professional development and training you put them through, and the third is supporting them.

Those of us who have been in education for so long are particularly interested in the secrets that you’ve learned about changing the processes for recruiting.

KOPP: What we learn in Megan’s example, and in many other teachers like her, is that teaching successfully in our most under-resourced communities is an act of leadership. What great teachers do, great leaders do. Megan stepped back and created a vision for where her kids were going to be at the end of the year, motivated others to work with her, and operated in a very goal-oriented way. If you spent time in her classroom, you would not see a teacher going through the motions of a lesson plan, but rather see someone maximizing every second from one point to another. Ultimately, someone who, despite whatever challenges she met, figured out a way around the challenge.

There is something very encouraging about that, because you realize that this isn’t about being born to teach, or having some special charisma. It’s about all the basics. There is nothing elusive about this; it’s something we can replicate. Understanding that has, as you say, informed all of [what we do] at Teach for America. It’s led us to go out to college campuses and say, “We need every additional person out there with real leadership ability to channel their energy in this direction.” We do recruit aggressively; this year we had 50,000 people apply at Teach for America. We get, I don’t know, 18 percent of Harvard business class and 20 percent of the Spelman senior class to compete, to channel their energy this way, and we do that by recruiting just as aggressively as any company and maybe more aggressively.

WILCOX: I want to talk a bit more about the interview process. If I’m sitting in front of you and want to become a Teach for America teacher, what are you looking for?

KOPP: We’ve done a lot of research on the characteristics that you can see on the front end, whether they’re successful in the classroom with their kids. We’ve seen that people who demonstrate records of achievement, that demonstrate perseverance in the face of challenges, the ability to influence and motivate others – basically, leadership characteristics – have the abilities to succeed. There are a whole other set of characteristics that fit with this mission – people that are coming out with high expectations for kids from low-income communities, respect and humility for others working on this issue, and a desire to work relentlessly. So we test new criteria and new screens every year, and have developed a predictive selection model.

WILCOX: Is that public information?

KOPP: Selection models need to be – we share constantly with school districts and other partners. The one thing I would say though is – I think Megan teaches this a lot – we can solve this problem and there is nothing elusive about it, but there is something else in her example that’s really daunting. That is, I have met very few Megans in my life. Teach for America doesn’t have 8,000 Megans. Megan’s the best of the best teachers in terms of our success levels. The truth is, if you’re a kid stuck in today’s system, you hope to meet enough teachers who will go above and beyond traditional expectations to the extent Megan did.

What is ultimately evident from her example is that this isn’t the solution. We’re not going to solve the problem through tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of Megans. They don’t exist. We need to change the whole system. There are limitations to the lessons we’ve learned. We’re helping to build a leadership forum for teachers to put more kids on a different trajectory, and then who will themselves take the lessons from that: the conviction, the determination, the grounding in what it takes to succeed with kids who are growing up in our urban and rural areas. We need those people to take their lessons and go out and change the system.

WILCOX: If there is one criticism that you have received from educators, it’s that you put these very capable young people through a five-week training period. What happens within those five weeks?

KOPP: I know it sounds a little crazy. It’s fascinating, because when you survey our school principals and ask how they would rate the Teach for America training versus the training of the other teachers they hire, they rate [Teach for America] more highly.

I think that’s because its not actually five weeks. There’s a huge amount of knowledge, skill and [effective] mindsets that differentiate the most successful teachers. Teach for America sort of reformed the training. We don’t try to train our teachers in every service program. We select people who are ready and then we invest a great deal, not only in their pre-service preparation, but in their ongoing professional development. They come to us having read our Teaching Is Leadership text, having observed other teachers and gone through a set of reflections, engaged in local orientations in their communities in which they’ll be teaching. They come together for intensive national institutes where they actually gain teaching experience. We run summer school programs in partnership with districts, and they get lots of feedback on their teaching while going through the curriculum that we’ve developed and continue to refine over time. Then they’re clustered in schools and we provide two years of ongoing support and professional development, all aimed at helping people develop the mindsets and skills we’ve seen to differentiate the most successful of our folks.

WILCOX: I’m still stuck on these five weeks. Could you outline what the curriculum looks like and the subject matter that’s covered?

KOPP: One of the key points of A Chance to Make History is that we’re not going to solve this problem through recruiting, selecting and training teachers differently. We need to change the way our schools function and our school systems function. Part of that is changing the way we think about and invest in our human capital.

I can continue to talk about Teach for America, but I really do believe there are limitations of this, as we think about: What is it really going to take to fix the whole system? We need as many of our future leaders as possible to not only channel their energy in this direction, but to be transformational teachers. How do we ensure that more of them become Megan?

What do we do in our training institute? First, they’re surrounded by examples of the Megans of the world. Now, unlike 15, 20 or even 10 years ago, we can say, “Here’s what Megan’s doing.” A third of our teachers – in fact, Megan was one of these folks – I asked, “How did you come to teach this way?” She [said], “I read Teaching Is Leadership.” Some of our people can read that and walk in and do it.  It’s a rare person who can, and what we’ve learned is that there are certain mindsets and certain things you need to be able to do to actually make it happen in your classroom.

WILCOX: And professional development: Is that just a continuation of the orientation, or can you describe that in more detail?

KOPP: We use the same framework, and we’re trying to move our teachers to excellence on this teacher excellence rubric.  We have program directors on our staff who spend their time out in classrooms observing our teachers and reflecting with them on the root causes of what is holding them back from being all the more successful in their classroom. That is probably the core of our program, but we do lots of other things as well. We have groups of teachers based on their subject areas and grade levels. We have a whole online resource community. We have a searchable database of teaching resources that our teachers use to share lesson plans [and] things they’ve discovered from other sources. We have quite a powerful set of supports around them.

WILCOX: Another criticism that you receive that I think that you have been fairly successful in addressing is the notion that it’s just two years. I think you’ve said the 60 percent – is it? – of your –

KOPP: Actually 65 percent of our 20,000 alums are working full time in education, half of them teaching; we have 600 school principals, growing numbers in district leadership and such. That’s important. We’re never going to solve the problem unless we have long-term, sustained, committed leadership from within the system. All you have to do is teach to realize [that] we’re not going to solve this problem from within classrooms alone. We need some of these folks to leave and go out and change our policies, go into business and influence our policies, and go into journalism and change the public consciousness around this problem. I share in A Chance to Make History the story of my eight-year-old interviewing me for a school paper – you’re supposed to interview someone who solved a problem – and I think we’re done, when he says, “You know, Mom, one more question. I don’t really get it. If the poor quality of education in high poverty communities is such a big problem, why would you get people who are so young to just commit two years to solve it?” This is literally from my eight-year-old. I could not believe it.

Seriously, at that moment, you just realize that there’s something so counterintuitive about this idea, and it really does come up against all of our traditional paradigms about the teaching profession, how teachers should be trained and all. We have a tendency to become immune to the crisis that is happening in our country. In Oakland, 14 percent of African-American boys graduate from high school. Fourteen percent. Right here in our backyards, in communities in this region, of all regions, right? We’re not giving our kids the chance to have any set of true professional options.

We’ve had this problem for decades. Fifteen million kids in our country grow up below the poverty line. By the time they’re in fourth grade, they’re three grades behind kids in high-income communities. Half of them will not graduate from high school and the half that do, the kids we celebrate for graduating, have on average an eighth-grade skill level. When we have the big crises in the history of our country, in the history of our world, what do we do? We channel our most talented minds against it.  That’s what Teach for America is working to do. It’s working to build a movement of our country’s future leaders to do something about it.

WILCOX: You refer to the leadership that a teacher brings to bear in the classroom. Can you define that, discuss that?

KOPP: In A Chance to Make History, I write about the sort of daunting realization when you spend time in classrooms like Megan’s that this may not be the solution, this may not be the realistic path to truly ensuring educational opportunity for all kids. What we have seen that I think is so encouraging [is] that we can create whole schools, that make it never easy but easier and more sustainable to attain that kind of result.

Now we’re seeing meaningful change for kids at a whole system level. In New Orleans and Washington, D.C., we had given up on [school systems] five years ago that are now the fastest improving urban school systems in the country. What’s happening in those places? What does it take to actually effect meaningful change for kids? When you think about the magnitude of the problem, we need a lot more than incremental change.

A few percentage points more for kids’ [proficiency] according to state standards doesn’t actually effect the kind of path change that we need for the kids growing up today. We need transformational change, and wherever we have it – whether it is at the classroom level, as we saw in Megan’s example, whether it is in these schools, whether it’s in the systems that are moving in meaningful ways – always, always you have a transformational leader.

When you get into the school and system levels, you realize more often than not there are people who themselves taught successfully in urban and rural areas, and as a result, believe so deeply in their kids and have such a deep understanding of what it would actually take as a result of their teaching experience, that they step up and operate in ways that few other folks in influential positions actually do.

What we’ve seen in the last 20 years is [that] there’s something so transformational about teaching successfully in this context, and it’s that experience that undergirds real educational leadership and educational advocacy. That fuels our sense of urgency to get much bigger and much better; we need to accelerate their leadership as alumni as well.

WILCOX: When we think of a social entrepreneur, we often think of a lone ranger with a great idea out to conquer or change the world. The question is about knowing that there are so many other educators in this space. How did you navigate those individuals on your way through this journey?

KOPP: You really ground yourself in the reality of our urban and rural areas and the school systems within them. Twenty years ago, when I was walking around meeting people in school districts and showing them lists of colleges where we were going to recruit, people were responding by simply laughing. “Really, you think you’re going to get students from Stanford who want to teach in the Los Angeles Unified School District? I’ll tell you what: You make that happen, we’ll hire all 500 of them.” That was truly the reaction.

Still today, we read all the headlines, all the teacher layoffs, and certainly we wouldn’t say that we have a teacher shortage today – and yet there are still schools in our urban areas, in our remote, rural regions, that are very, very hard to staff. So Teach for America is an incredible ally for school districts, schools and other institutions in our lowest-income communities who know that we have a huge need for talented, committed teachers who are not going to those schools as a last resort but because they want to be teaching in those schools. At the same time, when I think about all of the people out there – working in and around our school districts in pursuit of changing the system – always, there’s one limiting factor. Get any group of education reformers from inside the districts and outside of them together and ask them, What is the great constraint? What do you think? Always, it’s one thing.

WILCOX: Money.

KOPP: No. Talent. Leadership. That’s all. There’s plenty of money. People are getting results; people want to invest in them. Not that we don’t need to spend more money, especially in the state of California, on our schools and school systems. But honestly, it’s not the greatest constraint. It’s talent and leadership. We’re potential ally number one. That’s led to Teach for America’s growth.