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Class Struggle
By Jay Mathews

What Wendy Kopp doesn't say about Rhee

It is rare that a social movement can be traced to one person, but it is hard for me to see how the excitement, distress and ferment revolving around public school innovation these days could have occurred without Wendy Kopp.

Her creation of the Teach For America program in 1989 led to an extraordinary and unexpected growth in interest in teaching among recent college graduates. That in turn filled thousands of urban and rural classrooms with eager and energetic teachers with only limited training, something those schools had not seen before in such large numbers.

The most ambitious of those Teach For America corps members sparked an explosion in public charter schools and innovative regular public schools in the same low-income neighborhoods. That brought to public attention the unexpected success of some schools and teachers in raising student achievement, and inspired several civic and political leaders, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, to adopt the charter school movement and organizations such as Teach For America as a cause.

All of that activity inspired a great debate, played out in conferences and the media every day. As just one example, consider how much has been said and written, both positive and negative, about the documentary "Waiting For 'Superman,’ ” full of people influenced by Wendy Kopp.

Kopp's new book written with Steven Farr, "A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Education for All," offers an intriguing summary and analysis of all she has wrought. She doesn't take credit. She says the heroes are great teachers and principals who shared her vision and took their ideas in the classrooms where Kopp, she acknowledges, has been a visitor, not a teacher.

I think Kopp would agree that someone who has been so successful so young (she started Teach For America at age 21, and is still only 43) must keep doing the unfinished work she started. So she won't mind if I skip her book's many virtues and focus instead on its one flaw.

She makes a strong case for promoting leadership skills in both classroom teachers and in principals. But having set that as a key goal, she never discusses the failure of her most famous protégé, former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, to find, place and support enough great principals in the nation's capital.

Rhee has been refreshingly honest about this lapse. Candor is a vital by-product of Kopp's pragmatic approach to school innovation. Most of the Teach For America veterans I know, including Rhee, have it.

Bill Turque pointed out to Rhee last summer that of the 91 D.C. principals she had appointed, 39 were no longer in those jobs. Her initial choices in 2007 were necessarily rushed and based on a new and untested recruiting system, but of the 46 new principals she assembled for the 2008-2009 school year, 22 did not last. Not all were failures. Some left on their own or were promoted to bigger jobs, but significant numbers flamed out. I personally know of at least three that were bad at their jobs, particularly in motivating teachers. Rhee was slow in replacing two of them, and the third is still at the same school.

"It's not ideal," Rhee told Turque. "I'd love to have a higher batting average. … We have some who have been great and some who have not panned out." She said much the same to me when I interviewed her last fall shortly before she left the district.

Here is a key lesson of Kopp's book. She printed it in boldface, all caps: "LEADERSHIP, LEADERSHIP, LEADERSHIP: SUCCESS WILL TAKE TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AT EVERY LEVEL." She mentions Rhee often. She describes leadership successes, but readers would have learned more from her analysis of failures, particularly those of someone as smart and as close to her as Rhee has been. Whatever you think of the former D.C. chancellor, star of “Waiting For ‘Superman’ ” and founder of the new political advocacy group StudentsFirst, Rhee was surprisingly successful streamlining central administration and closing underused schools. That cleared the way for improvements in achievement, although the gains were not as great as she and her admirers, including me, hoped.

What went wrong with Rhee's recruiting, selection and support of principals? Kopp doesn't say. Rhee told me she was working on getting more and better information on applicants, going deeper than résumés and recommendations from mutual friends. Given the fact that the failed Rhee principals were often clumsy with teachers, interviews with people who worked for principal applicants might be in order in the future.

Improvements could also be made in the use of assistant superintendents. When teachers complained about bad decisions by the principal at Spingarn High, Rhee was quick to investigate and make a change. But nobody explained why the assistant superintendent overseeing that school didn't address the problem earlier.

I suspect Kopp will get to this issue. She does not hide flaws. In the book she tells a story that may have caused gasps in some Teach For America offices. She quotes her son Benjamin, then 8, after he had interviewed her about her life's work for a school project. His final question was: "If this is such a big problem -- you know, kids not having the chance to have a good education -- why would you ask people with no experience right out of college to solve it?"

Many people still ask that question. Kopp's book makes many valid if counter-intuitive points about why Teach For America makes sense.

So I await her next book, which I hope goes deeper into the issue of how to find and support great principals. Rhee would make a fine co-author. So would Kopp's husband, Richard Barth, chief executive of the nation's most successful charter school network, KIPP.

KIPP has a splendid training program for principals, but it is trying to do more. In Houston, it is attempting to create new charter schools at a pace never seen before. That means putting many promising but inexperienced principals in place. I saw KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg, who runs KIPP's Houston schools, meet this challenge by staying in daily contact with his newest school leaders. I heard him dictate to one of them exactly what she should say to a coach who had cursed in class.