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Teach for America's Wendy Kopp

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We speak with Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, about the state of America's teachers.

Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, receives the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2004. (AP)
Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, receives the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2004. (AP)

Everybody’s back to school, and education is hot.

President Obama’s talking about it. He wants a longer school year. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is chipping in a hundred million for schools.

But hottest of all right now, maybe, is Teach for America, the program that puts brand new college grads in tough schools to teach. How hot is it? Teach for America is the top employer of new grads from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Spelman College, Yale, and more.

Does it work? We ask Teach for America founder and CEO Wendy Kopp.
-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Jay Matthews, education columnist for the Washington Post.

Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America. Her book “A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing Excellent Education for All” will be published later this year by PublicAffairs. She has already authored “One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way.”

This program aired on September 28, 2010.

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