Top 66 Wendy Kopp Quotes

I think the way to understand Teach for America is as a leadership development program.

I’ve heard a number of our alumni – people who are running schools and school systems – think a lot about different models for the teaching profession.

We believe strongly in transparency and accountability, which is why Teach For America encourages rigorous independent evaluations of our program. Our mission is too important to operate in any other way.

More often than not, the most effective leaders have been shaped by teaching successfully in high needs classrooms. Because of their experience, they know that it is possible for low-income children to achieve on an absolute scale and understand what we need to do to allow them to fulfill their potential.

I think people are attracted to teaching because they want to make a real impact.

We are working essentially to build a leadership force of folks who will, during their first two years of teaching, actually put their kids on a different trajectory – not just survive as a new teacher, but actually help close the achievement gap for their kids.

We’re trying to be the top employer of recent grads in the country. Size gives us leverage to have a tangible impact on school systems.

Charter laws do something really important. They give educators the freedom and flexibility that they need to attain results. But we also have to invest a lot in the leadership pipeline to take advantage of that freedom and flexibility.

I had been very focused on the issue of education disparities in our country, and literally, by the time kids are just nine years old, in low-income communities, they’re already three or four grade levels behind nine-year-olds in high-income communities.

The mission that unites all of the programs of the Teach For All global network is that of cultivating the leadership capacity critical to ultimately ensuring educational opportunity for all.

When kids are met with the highest expectations and given the extra supports they need, they can be as motivated as kids anywhere.

When I started Teach For America as a college senior, I sensed that there were thousands of talented, driven college students and recent grads who were searching for a way to make a real difference in the world.

If we’re going to see sustainable results from all the other investments we’re making in education, we need to build leadership capacity in each and every country.

All around the world, we send our top talent into finance, technology, medicine and law – everywhere but towards expanding opportunity for our most marginalized children.

Whenever we’ve seen the kids in the most disadvantaged context truly excel, always it’s been in classrooms and in whole schools where there is a clear vision of where the kids have the potential to be.

Countries have largely been left alone to handle or ignore their educational problems as they see fit. In part, this was because we assumed that the contexts and challenges were so different from nation to nation that education could not be tackled at the international level.

Education is the most powerful tool countries have for boosting economic growth, increasing prosperity, and forging more just, peaceful and equitable societies.

There’s no how-to guide for how to change the world. But it’s easy to get hung up by misconceptions about what it takes to make an impact.

The idea that computers can ever replace teachers and schools reveals a deep lack of understanding about the role leadership plays in student success.

Mindsets, skills and leadership, experience and access, and critical consciousness – we need all four of these things for our students to be the leaders, people and citizens we want them to be.

Education is the gateway to the American Dream. But today our immigration laws make higher education – a virtual requirement for financial security – out of reach for more than one million undocumented students.

As a founder of two organizations that recruit top college graduates to expand educational opportunity, I’ve spent a lot of time examining what’s at work in successful classrooms and schools over the past two decades.

Kids who live in low income areas face extra challenges and show up at schools that were not designed to meet their extra needs.

People think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people.

We have found that the most successful teachers in low-income communities operate like successful leaders. They establish a vision of where their students will be performing at the end of the year that many believe to be unrealistic.

Fostering the leadership necessary for transformational outcomes in education is hard work, and in countries around the world, there is a constant search for easier solutions.

I’m happy to admit that I’m a hopeless optimist.

Imagine how different those classrooms could be if hundreds of Nigeria’s most talented recent graduates and professionals channeled their energy not only into the country’s banks, but into making education in the country a force for transformation.

It’s Teach For America’s responsibility to ensure that all alumni know their voices are heard and valued, and to surface the range of opinion they represent.

Common Core results finally give families an accurate barometer of whether our kids are mastering the skills they need to succeed in a knowledge-based global economy, early enough that we can intervene.

We’re looking for people out there who have demonstrated that they are leaders, have track records of achievement, and want to be part of a force… of a much larger force of determined people who want to bring about, ultimately, institutional change.

We are looking for a set of personal characteristics that predict success, the first and foremost of which is perseverance in the face of challenges. We also look for the ability to influence and motivate others who share your values, strong problem-solving ability, and leadership.

Few things are more important to our country’s future than recruiting and keeping great teachers in our schools.

It gets to whether we’re a teacher-education model or a movement for social justice. I would say we’re about the latter.

Across the globe, disadvantaged children are not living up to their potential because if they attend school at all, the schools are usually not designed to meet their extra needs.

The teachers are trying to build the same culture in the classroom as we’re building in the organization.

Kids in urban and rural areas face so many challenges, and they show up at schools that don’t have the extra capacity or extra resources to meet their needs.

Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching ‘One Day’ is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.

Persistent inequality costs the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year, undermining our global competitiveness, our democracy, and our ideals as a nation.

Where educational deprivation exists, it breeds conflict and enables repression.

When I started Teach For America, I wasn’t trying to come up with an idea that would change the world. I was trying to solve a problem much closer to home: I was a senior in college, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life!

There is a perception in our communities that we have low educational outcomes in low-income communities because kids aren’t motivated or families don’t care. We’ve discovered that is not the case.

You will find it will almost always be more comfortable to sit on the sidelines and critique the builders from afar. But at the end of the day, the people who make a difference, the people who shape history, are not the haters.

While I started out with a vague understanding that diversity would be important, my own observations have led me to realize that achieving greater levels of diversity is in fact vital to our long-term success.

People are everything in education, just as in the corporate world.

Teach for America recruits top recent college grads, young professionals, people we believe are the U.S.’s most promising future leaders, and asks them to commit two years to teach in high-need urban and rural communities.

Common Core reminds us what testing can do right. Modeled on standards of the world’s education superpowers, questions demand critical thinking and creativity. Students are asked to write at length, show their work, and explain their reasoning.

We go around and talk about what are each of the kids most proud of from the previous week.

I usually don’t really have breakfast.

Our laws guarantee all students the right to a K-12 education, regardless of their immigration status.

If we freed up all the money in the certification process, think about how much more money we’d have to put into teacher salaries.

We should be individualizing instruction, utilizing that data to actually give teachers the tools necessary to meet the needs of a very diverse group of kids which exists in every class.

If the world’s leaders are serious about improving collective well-being, we’d better get serious about prioritizing education in our nations and in our global discussion.