WENDY KOPP proposed the idea for creating a national teacher corps in her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University in 1989. She then did just that, creating Teach For America (TFA) shortly after graduation. Ms Kopp tells the remarkable story behind the early days of the organisation in her book "One Day, All Children...". Today TFA attracts many of the brightest college graduates to teach in America's neediest communities. In the most recent school year, the organisation placed some 7,300 corps members in schools across the country. They join nearly 17,000 TFA alumni, many of whom have become leaders in the education-reform movement. We close out education week by asking Ms Kopp about TFA's success and what lessons it holds for America's public-education system.
DiA: You have done a lot of research on the characteristics of successful TFA teachers. What is the magic formula and do you think it holds for non-TFA teachers as well?
Ms Kopp: 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. They invest their students in working harder than they ever have to reach that vision, maximise their classroom time in a goal-oriented manner through purposeful planning and effective execution, reflect constantly on their progress to improve their performance over time, and do whatever it takes to overcome the many challenges they face.
It follows that the characteristics our research has shown to differentiate our most successful teachers are leadership characteristics--perseverance in the face of challenges, the ability to influence and motivate others, organisational ability, problem-solving ability. All of our insights around successful teaching have come from our work in the nation's most economically disadvantaged communities so I can't say that this is the approach or that these are the characteristics that differentiate successful teachers elsewhere.
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