Nominee's Background:
In 1989, Wendy Kopp proposed in her undergraduate senior thesis the creation of a new national corps called Teach For America that would enlist her generation's most promising future leaders in the movement to end educational inequity. Teach For America would inspire outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors and career interests to commit two years to teach in the nation's neediest urban and rural public schools and to become lifelong leaders for expanding educational opportunity.
Kopp made her plan a reality. Today, Teach For America fields 3,000 corps members in 22 communities across the country and involves nearly 9,000 alumni who exert continuing leadership in educational and social reform.
In her book, One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (Public Affairs, 2001), Kopp describes how she created and built Teach For America as well as her thoughts about what it will take to realize Teach For America's vision that one day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.
Kopp serves on the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, the Boards of The New Teacher Project and the KIPP Foundation, and the Advisory Boards of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Kopp holds honorary doctorate degrees from Pace University (2004), Mercy College (2004), Smith College (2001), Princeton University (2000), Connecticut College (1995), and Drew University (1995). She is the youngest person and the first woman to receive Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award (1993), the highest honor the school confers on its undergraduate alumni. In 1994, Time Magazine recognized her as one of the forty most promising leaders under 40. Kopp has also been recognized with the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award (2004), Child magazine's Children's Champion Award (2003), the Clinton Center Award for Leadership and National Service (2003), the Schwab Foundation's Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003), Aetna's Voice of Conscience Award (1994), the Citizen Activist Award from the Gleitsman Foundation (1994), and the Jefferson Award for Public Service (1991).
Kopp holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University, where she participated in the undergraduate program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She resides in New York City with her husband Richard Barth and their three sons, Benjamin, Francis, and Haddon.
Nominating Speech:
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Progressive Criteria:
The Education Department will
Support true academic standards and reject punitive standardized testing that deprives schools of funding solely because of low test scores;
Support not penalize school districts that need extra help because they have many poor, minority or immigrant students;
Work to restore public education as an effective vehicle for social mobility, as it has been for so much of our country's history;
Open up many routes to higher education;
Improve teacher pay, dignity and respect;
Reject voucher systems and other privatization schemes;
Protect our students from commercial influences and marketing in their schools;
Understand that in addition to training for good jobs, the public education system must educate responsible, engaged citizens.
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