I have returned to the home of my alma mater, Morehouse College, this week to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools. As the founder of the nation’s largest public charter school, I am enormously proud to receive this award — all the more so to receive it here in Atlanta, where I earned my first college degree and where, as an undergraduate student, I was an usher at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.
It was at Morehouse that I resolved to make helping disadvantaged communities the sole focus of my professional life. As my colleagues and I work to help children in underserved communities in Washington and Baltimore access college and careers, King’s belief in the power of education to improve our society for everyone drives and inspires us. The challenges we face in our work do not compare to the obstacles faced by King as he strived for equality, civil rights and social justice — but the barriers to success encountered by our children are very real.
Our job is to raise the expectations of our children, and those of society, about what they can achieve. This we aim to do by providing educational opportunities, which are typically available to students who attend private or selective public schools, in the most disadvantaged ZIP codes.
When our first campus opened 14 years ago, the state of public education in our nation’s capital was a disgrace. More than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education and a generation after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, half of the traditional public school system’s overwhelmingly African-American students dropped out before graduating from high school. Such schools typically failed even to provide a safe environment for their students. Academics and even attendance were neglected. A generation of children was betrayed.
Beginning with only high expectations and people who cared passionately about realizing the potential of urban youth, my organization was determined to make a difference where the need was greatest. Growing out of Friendship House, a community program for economically vulnerable families of which I was executive director, Friendship Public Charter School today boasts a graduation rate at our flagship charter school of 96 percent, with 100 percent accepted to college — higher than the U.S. average.
One way we get our students on course to graduate college is by offering Advanced Placement and early college courses. Much more rigorous than the standardized tests we are required to administer, these college-level courses help prepare students for college-level work, allowing them to earn college credit. These advanced courses also help students develop the intellectual curiosity that success at college requires. Nearly one-third of all African-American students in the nation’s capital who took the AP U.S. government and politics course last school year did so at our Collegiate Academy charter high school campus. Their pass rate was comparable to students who live in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods.
Our early college students have earned more than 3,000 college credits in more than 20 different college courses. We also invest heavily to secure the resources our students need to thrive at college. From summer internships at our head office, to pre- and after-school programs, to $18 million in college scholarships in the past three years, we believe in doing what it takes to ensure that our students succeed. This year, five students earned the merit-based Gates Foundation-funded Posse scholarships for low-income students and three of our students earned Gates Millennium Scholarships, which pay a full ride for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
As these talented students make their way to college and careers, I am reminded of the many challenges that King faced as he spread his message of peace, love and brotherhood. Admitted to Morehouse at age 15 after attending segregated schools in Georgia, and traveling more than 6 million miles to speak more than 2,500 times, King was no stranger to adversity. In the face of great danger, and the horrific violence that took his life when I was studying at Morehouse, he believed in the power of education to achieve justice. The communities we serve do not yet enjoy the public educational opportunities afforded to others in our society, but we are determined to get there.
Donald Hense is founder and chairman of Friendship Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.
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