Michelle Rhee

The Philadelphia School District will pay a nonprofit consulting firm nearly $200,000 to help recruit, train and support up to 75 teachers for its hard-to-staff middle schools. The New Teacher Project Inc., based in New York City, will target Ivy League colleges, as well as other high-caliber schools, and reach out to midcareer professionals with a plea to consider teaching in the city. The project, formed in 1997, is a spin-off of Teach for America, the program that puts recent college graduates in tough urban and rural schools to teach.