Make Schools a Catalyst for Change.

• Date: 01 August 2021
• Author: Yanar, Omar

Now that students are returning to in-person classes, schools have an opportunity to reimagine how they prepare young people for the complex world that awaits them after high school graduation. My proposal: Turn schools inside out and create civil rights organizations that use education as a catalyst for positive social change.

After earning a master's degree in education from Stanford and another in public policy from Harvard, I founded a public charter school in Texas that challenges assumptions about how to deliver education to our nations most underserved population--Black and brown youth. The El Paso Leadership Academy, with a staff of thirty and student body of more than 200, teaches grades six through eight. We are opening our first high school this fall.

Our goal from the start was not to run a school. Rather, we set out to form a civil rights organization.

It sounds like a radical idea because it is. Our critics...