"Teach For America exists to address the incredible gaps in educational outcomes that persist along racial and socio-economic lines in our country. We believe this is the greatest civil rights issue of our generation."

By Stephanie Simon Aug 16 (Reuters) - When Wendy Kopp, just out of Princeton, founded Teach for America in 1989, she d...

In the past two years, Teach For America has nearly doubled the number of African American corps members from 390 to 720, and has increased the number of Latino corps members from 300 to 550.

We will have to learn to hold two ideas at the same time: We must both reduce poverty and improve our schools. We cannot fix our schools without strengthening the teaching profession and addressing the social conditions that shape their outcomes.

Now that there's more concrete evidence than ever before that it is possible to give our nation's most disadvantaged children an excellent education, we have a moral imperative to step up.

Matt Damon and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, have declined a nomination for the Friend of Education award from the National Education Association'...

MIAMI -- In a distressed neighborhood north of Miami's gleaming downtown, a group of enthusiastic but inexperienced instructors from Teach for America...

A month or so ago, I speculated about the most influential person in American education, then put forth four nominees -- Wendy Kopp, Big Bird, Arne Duncan and Joel Klein.

Some hail it as the solution to our need for highly qualified teachers in every classroom. Others define it as a stopgap measure based on a model so transitory to make it dangerous at best, and racist at worst.

On May 11, the University of Washington's College of Education announced it would sponsor Teach for America at its teaching college, providing the missing component to the deal that TFA, Inc.

The thought that people with "higher" degrees can aimlessly teach the most at risk children without proper preparation and training is false and cruel.

There's no question that Wendy Kopp and Teach for America have changed the landscape and made a significant contribution. But let's not pretend that it's all good or all bad.

There are no silver bullets or 100 percent solutions. In reality, we need 100 1 percent solutions -- and TFA is clearly one.

Wendy Kopp sat down Tuesday night with writer Malcolm Gladwell at the New York Public Library, to talk about education as a way to overcome poverty.

Individuals who yield greatest influence on what happens in our schools are not actually in our schools. This schism causes a separation between what should happen and what does happen.

I can't help but wonder if it isn't an intentional Catch 22 that some people are trying to trap our public schools in: setting them up to fail, making it impossible for them to be creative or independent.