Speaking of school choice heroes, Kudos to Jeff and Janine Yass and Jeanne Allen on another phenomenal Yass Prize ceremony this week, honoring and funding 10 of America’s most successful and innovative educators.
The $1 million Yass Prize was awarded to Valiant Cross Academy, a trailblazing all-boys Christian school based in Montgomery, Alabama.
Founded by brothers Anthony and Fred Brock, Valiant Cross Academy follows a faith-based approach to student instruction while also focusing on workplace learning through a dual-enrollment partnership between three local universities.
Valiant Cross and the nine finalists, who each received $500,000, were selected for their alignment with the Yass Prize’s four core STOP principles: Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless education. The other finalists include:
“Tonight’s awardees exemplify the best of American endeavors in education – people and organizations that defy traditional roadblocks and stop at nothing to deliver highly personalized, pathbreaking education for kids,” said Jeanne Allen, who heads up the Yass Prize and related initiatives.
Several of your Hotline editors attended the festivities. We came away inspired by the amazing alternative “choice” schools that are sprouting up all over the country on shoe-string budgets and headed by heroic educators/entrepreneurs. Most of them are black and Hispanic from low-income areas. Meeting these folks and seeing their joy and tenacity in educating the throw-away kids that the public school system spat out and gave up on gives up on. This gives us great hope for the future. But we also came away a bit depressed and angry.
Why can’t every child in America have access to a great education like these educators are providing?
Why do the politicians make this SO complicated?
