ethics news & views: Teaching for America

June 01, 2001

Teaching for America

In October 1988, Princeton senior Wendy Kopp needed a post-graduation plan. "I was searching for a place to direct my energy that would give me…significant responsibility," she recalls. "I wanted this opportunity right away, not ten or twenty years down the road. More important, I wanted to do something that would make a real difference in the world" (3).

Kopp decided to dream big. She wanted to create a national corps of top college graduates who would teach in rural and inner-city public schools for two years. Kopp's early vision evolved into the nationally recognized Teach for America, which has placed over 5,000 college graduates into teaching positions across the United States. Teach for America's mission statement reads: "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education."

One Day, All Children is Kopp's account of how a "naïve" 21-year-old turned a big idea into concrete reality. Her story makes for impressive reading. We follow a persuasive yet terrified Kopp as she obtains multi-million dollar grants from major corporations and foundations. We trace her initial successes and setbacks. We marvel at her 20-hour workdays and her dogged determination to make the world a better place.

Kopp's accomplishments are clearly remarkable, particularly in light of her age and relative inexperience in the world of non-profit organizing. Thanks to her dedication, school administrators across the nation now employ talented college graduates in their classrooms without depleting their limited school budgets.

Remarkable accomplishments need more than an initial brainstorm, however. They also need people who can afford to make unusual or risky professional choices. Kopp excelled in that respect. While many recent graduates feel forced into pre-established professional tracks in order to pay off loans, Kopp somehow managed to throw financial caution to the wind. What if she had graduated not from Princeton, however, but from a normal state school? One wonders if CEO doors would have opened quite so quickly for her. What if she had finished college $25,000 in debt? Numerous young people would give their right arms to create a program such as Kopp's, but they cannot afford to forgo a stable income. They have loans to pay back, family members to support, or medical issues to address.

To read Kopp's book is to experience ambivalence. On the one hand, we marvel at her fortitude and tenacity. Not everyone can rise at three in the morning, work on grant proposals for three hours, go for a 60-minute run, and then start a twelve-hour day at the office. On the other hand, we wonder if Kopp's descriptions of her frenzied schedule eclipse more fundamental ethical conversations surrounding Teach for America. What counts as "excellent education," for example, and what kind of college graduate is qualified to provide it? Kopp fails to elaborate both her definition of "excellence" and her selection process for hiring corps teachers. How has Teach for America addressed the racial, economic and cultural gaps between its teachers and the low-income students whom they serve? Kopp's program has come under fire for failing to provide children with stability in mentoring relationships: corps members work for two years and then leave to pursue their own professions. What effect does a teacher's departure have on the students who became attached to him or her? Kopp mentions this concern in passing but does not provide a substantive response.

If Kopp's book were to follow the mission of her program, it should have squarely faced questions of privilege, cultural difference, and relational impact. While Kopp may well have addressed such questions in her early morning brainstorming sessions, she does not share her thoughts on these issues with her readers. As a result, we are left wondering what might have been her goal in writing. Did she write to inspire others to serve "the least of these"? Or did she write to get her name on the social and corporate map?

Kopp writes: "For years, whenever I was asked how I had accomplished this feat, I would reply that there was nothing magical about it. I simply developed a plan and moved forward step by step. Teach for America came together because my idea was good and my plan made sense. But now I see that this answer is insufficient. I once heard that when an idea is meant to happen, the laws of the universe are suspended to make way for it. When I look back over the first year of Teach for America, it's clear to me that had something to do with it. Here was evidence that even the most idealistic visions can come to be." (48)

Kopp's idea may well have been "meant to happen." It seems doubtful, however, that the universe needed to suspend its laws in order to make possible her success. In Teach for America's case, an Ivy League pedigree, a 20-hour-per-day energy level, and an uncanny ability to circumvent certain types of questions seem to have paved the way just fine.

[Kopp visited Emory June 5. More work with Teach for America is planned for the academic year.]

One Day, All Children...: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way. By Wendy Kopp. Public Affairs, 2001. 187pp. $23.

[ Posted by Stacia Brown at June 1, 2001 02:55 PM |