Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A Tale of Two Open Letters | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

A Tale of Two Open Letters | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:


A Tale of Two Open Letters

Wendy Kopp announced that she is stepping down as CEO of Teach For America, and around that time on The Huffington Post, a TFA alum named Kate Casas wrote an open letter to Wendy.  This letter was in stark contrast to the one I wrote which I was pretty proud of and which actually got written about in The New York Times andThe Washington Post.
In this letter, Casas complains that Wendy has not been ‘reformy’ enough:
During the eight years that I have been associated with Teach for America, I haven’t always loved the organization. In fact, there were a few desperate moments when I was in the classroom that I was quietly cursing you. More recently, there have been times that I wished you and your team would make a bigger political splash, push the envelope, and dare lawmakers to challenge the status quo.
Here’s another excerpt:
Without TFA there would be no KIPP-Inspire in Saint Louis to have proven that the achievement