Teach for America Founder to Speak at Penn

Posted by on April 14, 2006

Teach for America Founder to Speak

On Thursday, April 27, Wendy Kopp will be on campus to speak on “Insights from the Frontlines of America?s Achievement Gap.”

Kopp is the president and founder of Teach For America, a national corps of recent college graduates from all academic majors willing to commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools. Founded in 1989, TFA today has corps members teaching in more than 1,000 schools across the country.

Her address, the Penn GSE 2006 Gordon S. Bodek Lecture of Distinguished Educators, will focus on the achievement gap in American schools. For years, education and policy leaders have debated whether schools can affect student achievement levels in the face of abject poverty. TFA members, working in classrooms that some consider hopeless, conclude that even poor children who have fallen behind academically can succeed.

But Kopp argues that giving those children the education they need and deserve will require a national commitment to train and employ better teachers and improve the quality of school leaders ? while simultaneously ensuring that teachers, principals and parents expect the kids to meet challenging academic standards.

The lecture, which runs from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., will be held at the Harold Prince Theater in the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut Street.

For more information, contact revella@ben.dev.upenn.edu or call 215-898-9792.

For more information, please visit http://www.gse.upenn.edu/announce/BodekLecture2006.pdf