Wendy Kopp Quotes

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

— Wendy Kopp

The U.S. has a long history of walking up to the precipice of rigor and then walking away. As voters, let's support leaders who were courageous enough to make the hard decisions necessary to move our system forward. And as parents, let's put our faith in our educators, our children and tests that hold them to their highest potential.

— Wendy Kopp

“Research confirms that great teachers change lives. Students with one highly effective elementary school teacher are more likely to go to college, less likely to become pregnant as teens, and earn tens of thousands more over their lifetimes.”

— Wendy Kopp

“All over the world, children facing the challenges of poverty attend schools that aren't designed to meet their extra needs; across country lines, the lives of marginalized kids look far more similar than they do different.”

— Wendy Kopp

“In the long run, we need to build a leadership force of people. We have a whole strategy around not only providing folks with the foundational experience during their two years with us, but also then accelerating their leadership in ways that is strategic for the broader education reform movement.”

— Wendy Kopp

Education must be the only sector that hasn't already been completely revolutionized by technology.

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

“It's time to declare a cease-fire in the education arms race. We have far more to gain from collaborating to solve our common problems than competing for higher rankings.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“Research shows that whether you are low-income or not, mindset is a bigger predictor of success than academic skills, and how students gain great academic skills and persevere in the face of challenges.”

— Wendy Kopp

“A core part of Teach For America's mission has always been affecting positive change in the traditional public school system.”

— Wendy Kopp

“Effective teacher support in my mind is the same thing as effective management. Our teachers need strong management, just like anyone in any profession.”

— Wendy Kopp

“Technology has enormous potential to address educational needs more efficiently, help teachers improve their performance, and enrich and individualize student learning.”

— Wendy Kopp

In a society that glorifies the pioneers, it's easy to think that an endeavor is only worth pursuing if you can be the first to pursue it.

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

“Dartmouth is such a special college with its rich history, dedicated student body, and, as I've been learning more recently, colorful customs.”

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

“I usually don't really have breakfast.”

— Wendy Kopp

“It's possible to train great people, but a person with great training who doesn't have certain characteristics is only going to go so far.”

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it.

— Wendy Kopp

Teach For America is working hard to be one significant source of the leadership we need.

— Wendy Kopp

“We aspire to be equal opportunity, but all across the country where a student is born, their race, their class affect where they end up.”

— Wendy Kopp

“We collaborate with other countries on issues like public health and climate change because we understand these issues affect our collective welfare.”

— Wendy Kopp

“We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.”

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

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

— Wendy Kopp

“As a senior at Princeton, I felt like the whole world was open to me. In our country, that's not a given. We aspire to be a place of equal opportunity, and yet where you're born determines your prospects.”

— Wendy Kopp

“As a white woman with a privileged education, I'm keenly aware that I founded an organization that can only realize its goal if it enlists many more leaders who share the backgrounds of the students and families we work with.”

— Wendy Kopp

“Cultivating more leaders who reflect our heterogeneous society depends on universities' transparent use of race as one of many factors in an admissions process that is accessible to all.”

— Wendy Kopp

“I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.”

— Wendy Kopp

“I think Teach for America has suffered from the fact that I did not teach, in a major way. I also think if I had taught, I wouldn't have started Teach for America.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“In every case where I've seen a transformational school, there's a principal who really has the foundational experience of having taught successfully.”

— Wendy Kopp

In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students' parents and community leaders.

— Wendy Kopp

“It's easier to poke holes in an idea than think of ways to fill them. And it's easier to focus on the 100 reasons you shouldn't do something rather than the one reason you should.”

— Wendy Kopp

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.

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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!”

— Wendy Kopp

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.

— Wendy Kopp

“Inexperience is an asset. Embrace it.”

— Wendy Kopp

“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.”

— Wendy Kopp

“Creating a high-functioning education system requires all the strategies involved in building high-functioning organisations anywhere. It requires a deliberate and aggressive strategy to ensure extraordinary talent at every level of the system, from the superintendentcy to district offices to principalships to classrooms. It requires building systems for accountability; offering parents the ability to choose their public schools is the ultimate form of this. It requires building a strong culture at the system and school levels based on high expectations for student achievement.”

— Wendy Kopp

“As a country [USA], we can attract more talented people to teaching by raising awareness of educational inequity and getting the public to understand from individual classrooms, schools, and cities that this is an issue that can be solved.”

— Wendy Kopp

“The limitations of federal laws are able to create real progress at the local level. Ultimately, to effect not just incremental progress but progress that is transformational for students, we need committed leadership - people who believe deeply that their students can achieve at the highest levels and who know how to create the conditions at the classroom, school and system level to give them the opportunities they deserve.”

— Wendy Kopp