Giving Compass' Take:

• Jeffrey Walker interviewed Wendy Kopp, CEO of Teach For All as she shared her thoughts on the education system and collective leadership. 

• Wendy Kopp says that collective leadership is about building coalitions with both people in power and people who experience inequity.  What are the ways to bring these two parties together? How is Teach For All doing this?

• Read the RAND Corporation's piece on the importance of teacher collaboration. 

Jeffrey Walker, Chairman of the non-profit venture philanthropy fund New Profit, interviewed Teach For All’s CEO Wendy Kopp for the latest installment of his series on system entrepreneurs, Ensembles, Not Soloists. The discussion focused on how Wendy’s vision for addressing the injustices facing disadvantaged children has evolved over the course of her leadership journey. The following excerpt highlights some of the convictions at the core of the work of the organizations across the Teach For All network:

Jeffrey Walker (JW): Over 25 years of leadership in social problem solving, how has your vision for changing the education system evolved?

Wendy Kopp (WK): In the early years of Teach For America, I was thinking that we needed to focus on building capacity inside the education system; my view was that we could affect all the policy change we want, but in the end it wouldn’t matter without the capability to enact new policies in the system.

W: Can you explain "collective leadership,” the central systems change approach at Teach For All?

WK: I think of collective leadership as having three parts.

First, it requires leadership around the whole ecosystem around children. For each individual child, we need to think about whether she attends school regularly or whether there are family responsibilities or other social issues that keep her away. Second, collective leadership involves a coalition between the current members of the establishment— the most privileged people who currently hold the power—and, as I mentioned above, those who have experienced inequities themselves.Third, collective leadership is about making space to build the relationships necessary to reflect together, learn together, grow the collective wisdom, develop shared vision, and collaborate.

Read the full article about Wendy Kopp's vision for education at Teach For All