Teaching the Teachers

Teach for America’s founder talks about education in America
Wendy Kopp is the founder and president of Teach for America, the national non-profit teaching corps. She also serves as CEO of Teach for All, an organization that works to introduce Teach for America’s methods around the world.

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW: What are your thoughts on charter schools and do you think is it feasible to implement them on a wider scale?
WENDY KOPP: I think what we are seeing in charters are the possibilities when you enable people who are pursuing incredible results for kids and give them flexibility over where the resources go. We’ve seen many driven TFA alums move into charters because they feel it gives them greater freedom and flexibility to meet the needs of their kids.
And I think the question, as we think about the scalability of charters, is really whether we can move to a situation where we have whole systems of charters. We’ve seen in the last few years school systems actually try to replicate that approach within their system by giving principals greater flexibility and freedom over where their resources go in exchange for greater accountability for results, so I think we’re learning a lot from charter schools that we can apply more broadly within school systems.
HPR: Recently, in Rhode Island, all the teachers at an underperforming school were laid off. Is that the way that teacher accountability should be enforced?

WK: This is such a tough dilemma. There are schools in our country which have literally single-digit graduation rates, schools where that has been the case for years and years and years. You can’t just leave the kids in schools that are completely dysfunctional. But systems have really struggled to figure out how to turn these failing schools around. So, as a matter of policy, there are a lot of people trying to figure out how we can turn that small handful of dysfunctional schools around.
And I think in this case, asking all the teachers to reapply, bringing in a new leader, and giving that person flexibility over who to hire might be an appropriate solution. When you talk to any successful principal and ask them what the key to success in their school is, they’ll say that it’s their teachers. And what you realize when spending a lot of time with good principals is that they spend an enormous amount of energy working to surround themselves with good people. So I think that one path in turning around the schools is to bring in new leadership and give them the flexibility they need to determine who is on their staff.
HPR: How do you propose that the American school system find talented, energetic teachers?
WK: I think that our school systems need to do what any successful organization does: recruit talent aggressively in order to find enough people with the personal characteristics necessary to succeed, and then invest in their training and development over time. Ultimately we need our school systems to develop the same kind of “people development” human capital systems that successful companies or other successful organizations have built.
HPR: Are standardized tests good benchmarks for measuring the quality of a teacher?
WK: This is another incredible dilemma. Ultimately, I think we need clear, rigorous standards towards which our teachers can teach. We do need strong assessments, both to inform teachers of what their students don’t understand so that they can teach more effectively, and to hold teachers accountable, and to hold their schools accountable. At the same time, you need a balance because the last thing I want to do is convey that I think meeting low-level standardized tests is all we need to do.
In terms of how teachers should be evaluated, I think we should give principals flexibility in determining who is on their staff. If we hold principals accountable for school-level results, give them more freedom over who they hire and how they retain their teachers, and invest in the development of principals, I think we’ll move toward a better system. And different principals will want to approach that in different ways.
HPR: Another issue that’s been in the news lately is national education standards. Should the same curriculum be mandated for Boston and for Houston?
WK: I think it would conserve a lot of resources if we all came together around a common set of standards because then we could do a lot better at capturing and evaluating what the best practices are, across different contexts. We could make investments in truly sophisticated standardized tests once, rather than fifty times. I think we could gain a lot by coming together around common standards.
Meredith Baker ’13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photo Credit: Flickr Stream of Hekerui