Awarding-winning schools and education organizations meet to plot a course for the next president, the 119th Congress, and the nation’s new leaders.
Washington, D.C. – Education innovators from across the U.S. – diverse in students served, education sectors, and politics – who gathered in the nation’s capital last Thursday want President-elect Trump and the nation’s leaders to identify and lift barriers to non-traditional innovative education approaches.
From a disconnect between college and career credentials fostered by bad federal policy to inequities in the school lunch program and state-level education choice programs, the men and women who lead the nation’s best and most innovative schools demanded that education become an urgent priority for the nation’s new leaders.
“What was most gratifying, just two days after a brutal election season, is that everyone, no matter what their politics, agreed to move forward and get to work, united in their belief that education in the U.S. remains at a crisis point,” said Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, which organized the Power of Innovation summit.
A common theme among conference participants is the need to unleash education entrepreneurship and innovation, and to remove barriers to success.
For example, Lisa Tarshis, executive director of Primer Microschools, the 2024 $1 million Yass Prize winner, said federal policy often forces a low-income parent to choose between private school assistance and the National School Lunch Program.
“What kind of choice is that for parents to make?” Tarshis asked. “Choose between the promise of a better future or your kids actually having food in their stomach?”
Fixing problems like this “is what’s going to make us a better country and a better place and a stronger place for all of the families who very clearly in this election came out and said that school choice matters to them,” she said.
Diana Diaz-Harrison, the founder and CEO of Arizona Autism Charter Schools, the 2022 Yass Prize winner, highlighted how private schools like hers are disadvantaged by a federal policy that mandates children with disabilities, to the extent possible, be taught in environments with non-disabled peers.
“In theory, being mainstreamed should work, but hundreds of thousands of parents will tell you that their kids get neglected, bullied, ostracized–terrible things,” Diaz-Harrison said. “So, when you go to my school, you will see kids engaged, thriving, doing innovative project-based learning.
“Our schools are the opposite of restrictive,” she said. “Because of that, we get less dollars because we over serve students with special needs. We shouldn’t be penalized for doing a great job with this special population. It’s quite the opposite. We should be a model for others to follow in terms of excellence and accessibility.”
“The president’s new team needs to work hard to uncover the dozens of other such federal constraints and barriers to student achievement,” Allen said. “That will take someone willing to buck the system, and who knows how to call on the nation’s education innovators who can demonstrate the folly of these rules up close and personal. It will take a great deal of hard work and perseverance but the time is right.”
The STOP for Education Summit: The Power of Innovation was a bipartisan gathering of the nation’s top influencers in education, technology, and workforce along with policy, advocacy, and philanthropy to plot a course to ensure that freedom, flexibility, and fair funding drive policy in 2025 and beyond.
The event also featured awardees of the Yass Prize from 2021-2024.
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ABOUT JEANNE ALLEN
Jeanne Allen founded the Center for Education Reform (CER) over three decades ago to restore excellence to education, and built it into the nation’s leading advocate for innovation and opportunity in education. CER pioneered dozens of laws providing parents with choice and launched a nationwide movement that energized millions to engage in the fight.
In 2021, Allen partnered with long time board member and education philanthropist Janine Yass and her husband Jeff to direct their education investments, and launched the Yass Prize for Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless education, now the STOP for Education. Together and in partnership with Forbes, CER works to identify and expand best in class education innovators which embody the STOP principles.
Allen is a frequent commentator in the media and advisor to education technology organizations. She began her work on Capitol Hill and served as a senior official in the U.S. Dept. of Education.
Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.
