Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America, and her husband, Richard Barth, who runs the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), have helped reshape ideas about education and now seek to remodel the nation’s public-school system itself, reports The New York Times.

Teach for America, which Ms. Kopp founded as a new Princeton graduate in 1989, recruits some of the nation’s top college graduates to work in poor public schools and has a budget of $120-million. Among its 14,000 alumni are Michelle Rhee, the Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, and Dave Levin and Michael Feinberg, the founders of KIPP, a network of charter schools that helps struggling students.

Ms. Kopp hired Mr. Barth to work at Teach for America in 1994; soon after, they began dating, and Mr. Barth left the group to work at another education organization. He is now working to expand KIPP so that it can enroll a significant portion of public-school students in Houston, New Orleans, Washington, and other cities.

While some critics have said the changes that Teach for America and KIPP can make on classroom teaching and the educational system are relatively small, other observers expect that the groups can make a significant difference.

“My generation thought the same thing, and we did change the schools a lot,” says Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. “We pursued change through civil-rights laws and by seeking adequate funding and through legislation. They’re pursuing it through entrepreneurship, trying to bring in fresh blood and new energy.”

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