The author knows intimately that many of the people making a substantive difference deserve capes.
Jeanne Allen and NR go way back. A valued friend of this institution (she’s written numerous times here), she hosted its pre-Covid education podcast, Reality Check, and even toiled on the precursor to NRO. Nice, no?
Sure it is. But more importantly — much more importantly — for three decades Jeanne has been the very valued friend of America’s held-hostage schoolkids, to whose defense she comes, once again, in a new and inspiring book, The Education Avengers: How and Why a New Class of Heroes Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle.
Through her years — seen it all, heard it all, done it all, and has the scars to prove it — of focused work and leadership at the Center for Education Reform, conducted on the nasty front lines of the fight to gain children and families an alternative to the abysmally performing public-school monopoly (her term: the “Hydra”), Jeanne knows intimately that many of the people making a substantive difference — for actual reform and choice — are akin to superheroes. Hence her book’s smart, dead-on title and positioning.
There’s plentiful frank analysis, wisdom, and strategizing in this well-written and wonk-free work, but The Education Avengers’ central appeal and importance is Jeanne’s generous profiling of a dozen-plus Americans, encompassing all demographic, ethnic, and pigmentary characteristics (and hailing from all time zones) of the foxhole buddies she has accumulated over the years of advancing reform and administering the prestigious Yass Prize. These thick-skinned and joyful (man, does Big Education hate the joy that reformers bring to the fight) improvisation experts deserve Allen’s acclaim. And even capes: Their role here is to show that otherwise “normal” people (there could be many more than those profiled here) — who’ve had enough, who refuse to be cowed, who see children’s future (their own children, and yours and mine, too) as worth a no-retreat fight, even one that brings with it many personal wounds to be earned in the trenches and at the barricades — have “super” powers that may be latent in many of The Education Avengers’ readers.
And these powers are needed, because, well, it’s not pretty out there. She writes:
Most Americans don’t realize a parent revolution has been underway in the background, for decades, or that it is even necessary. That is not because parents are indifferent, but because they have been conditioned to believe education is someone else’s responsibility. Schools will handle it. Experts will decide. Systems will correct themselves.
The Hydra works hard to reinforce that belief, but then reality strikes.
Parents discover they have almost no influence over where or how their children are educated. Zip codes begin to matter more than judgment. Rules matter more than outcomes. Compliance matters more than whether a child is thriving.
When that realization hits, parents talk to one another. They compare experiences. They search for alternatives. They ask the most destabilizing question in education:
“Why does it have to be this way?”
That is when the Hydra responds.
Rather than transparent debate, it responds with delegitimization. Parents seeking change are framed as misinformed or selfish. Teachers who challenge the system are treated as disloyal. New ideas are labeled dangerous, divisive, or unproven—even and especially when they are working.
And yet as Allen shows (her prose style is easy and flowing), despite this struggle, and the character of the battlefield, and the tenacity of the entrenched Big Education, and “the simple injustice that funding supports systems, not children,” there are true heroes amongst us, worthy of imitation.
Allen’s gathering of these remarkable neighbors stands as a “living evidence” of the truth that
challenge, paired with agency and responsibility, produces purpose. That purpose strengthens resilience. These leaders did not emerge despite adversity; they emerged through it. And having done so, they built environments that intentionally replicate that arc for young people—schools where struggle is not hidden, but framed; where effort is honored; where students are trusted with real responsibility and real consequences.
One Avenger example is a man she dubs “Captain Character” — that’s Eugene Slocum, the founder/superintendent/CEO/Just-About-Everything of Alpha Academy, a K–12 public charter school in Fayetteville, N.C. (You have to love its mission statement, which pledges to “prepare students to become outstanding leaders and motivate them to strive for their greatest potential through exceptional character and academic achievements.”) It’s a place, says Allen, of “serious rigor,” and “a sanctuary for children of every background, but especially for those the system forgot.”
Character formation is key to Alpha Academy’s success (there are some 1,200 students, and the school’s rankings are high and heading higher), with the institution’s distinguishing culture emanating from the man who insists on character development from and by all his students. A bit from Allen’s profile of “Captain Character”:
Given his experience, Eugene could have safely stayed inside the education system—moving from teacher to principal, working within something already built. But he couldn’t tolerate the politics of the system. He had seen too many moments where people stayed silent even when they knew they should speak out for what was right.
He recalls one meeting in particular. A student had accused a teacher of something serious. As the parent confronted the teacher, the room went quiet. But Eugene had been present and knew what had happened.
“I looked around and thought, If nobody says anything, this teacher might lose their career. And I could see it on everyone’s face—nobody was going to speak up.”
Eugene did. That moment stayed with him.
“I asked myself—if I were ever given the opportunity to run my own school, what would I do differently?”
He had an answer.
“A lot of things happen when people are afraid to speak up,” he said. “The first thing people say is, ‘The parents are at fault because of how the kids act.’ And that’s not true. If you teach them, they will build character.”
Slocum, Allen writes, is determined that Alpha Academy is not seen as “just a school.” And it isn’t. “It is a household, a foundation, fostering character in its students and their community.”
Can you say that about your local public school?
One more of Allen’s Avengers, the final profile of her book: That’s the “Joyful Sustainer,” Janine Yass—she of the aforementioned annual prize. To say Yass is fundamental to education reform is a colossal understatement, and Jeanne Allen explains why:
Every Avenger needs their oxygen: time, trust, and capital. Janine Yass is the force that sustains the fight so that builders can build, parents can choose, and innovators can endure long enough to change outcomes. She does not seek the spotlight. She creates the conditions that make courage viable.
Janine doesn’t simply fund education. She wants to restore joy to it, year after year, school after school, leader after leader. A force multiplier for Avengers, she backs builders, not bureaucracies; creators, not caretakers; fighters, not appeasers. She supports those willing to confront the Hydra head-on: not just feeding children for a day, but helping systems change so that children can thrive for a lifetime.
This is an important distinction. Many give. Fewer stay.
Many fund programs. Few fund principles.
Many avoid controversy. Very few embrace it as the cost of truth.
Janine—with the partnership, support, and backing of her husband, Jeff, who has built one of the most successful companies in the world—is one of those very few. Together they understand that entrenched systems do not yield power voluntarily, that if you want all to be treated equitably, inequitable structures must cease to exist. And they realize that entrepreneurs—in education as in any field—must be allowed not only to survive, but to scale.
Kudos to Janine, Eugene, and the other members of a band of true heroes on display in a book written not for the sake of capping a long professional tenure in an unrelenting fight against bad ideologues. Instead, Jeanne Allen’s keyboard-pounding has created a work of inspiration. For that purpose, and for the analyses that are woven throughout the profiles, The Education Avengers delivers. Its stories of remarkable people prevailing in the thick of education warfare are likely to instigate and motivate a whole new Avengers crop — something surely necessary as the Hydra intensifies its nastiness and activism.
Jeanne Allen and The Education Avengers: How and Why a New Class of Heroes Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle get an A+. No curve. Class dismissed.