Wendy Kopp goes global

摘要

Two decades after launching Teach for America, the social entrepreneur is taking her disruptive education model abroad. ONE THURSDAY EVENING last August at an Alpine castle in Salzburg, Austria, Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp met Tatjana Oppitz, the head of IBM in Austria. Oppitz told Kopp that after 25 years at IBM, she is more worried than ever that Austria's grammar and secondary schools are failing to groom the quality talent her company needs to grow. More than a quarter of 16-year-olds in Austria can't read, the dropout rate is rising, and Austria's educational standards, studies show, have slipped. While it may surprise people that Austria, with its wealthy population and relatively low unemployment rate, may be facing an education crisis, it doesn't surprise Kopp, who hears such concern all over the world.