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2 School Entrepreneurs Lead the Way on Change

June 18, 2008 /

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Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.

As the founder of Teach for America http://www.teachforamerica.org/ , a nonprofit program that recruits elite college graduates to teach in low-income schools, Wendy Kopp has presided over many triumphs, and the group’s annual dinner last month was another. It raised $5.5 million in one night and brought so many corporate executives to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York that stretch limousines jammed Park Avenue for blocks.

Watching discreetly from the ballroom floor was Ms. Kopp’s husband, Richard Barth. In the early years of Teach for America, he was one of her closest aides. Today he runs the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a charter school network that has won praise for turning low-achieving poor children into solid students.

By SAM DILLON

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/education/19teach.html?_r=1&oref=slogin