Blue Engine: The Next—and Better—Teach for America?
This organization is successfully preparing rookie teachers for the challenges that lie ahead in the classroom.
Rapper Lupe Fiasco skipped the platitudes often served up in commencement speeches when addressing a group of graduating students from Chicago’s public school last month. He opted instead for frank and brutal.
He told the crowd: “Congratulations, you’ve just graduated from one of the worst, substandard schools in the entire world...You have just spent the last...12 years receiving one of the worst educations on Earth. You are at least four to five steps behind people that are younger than you.”
The words stung, but were (surprisingly) met with applause.
Fiasco’s point—that a diploma from a low-performing high school does not adequately prepare students for future academic success—is one that education reform advocate Nick Erhmann has been making for years. His attempt to change that is what led him to launch Blue Engine.
Founded in 2009, the New York-based
