Kaya Henderson is Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the Center for Rising Generations at the Aspen Institute. Prior to that she founded Reconstruction, an educational organisation dedicated to teaching young people about African American history, culture, and contributions in a comprehensive and affirming way. From 2010–2016 she was Chancellor of Washington DC Public Schools where she led significant improvements in student performance, graduation rates, and educational opportunities. Kaya started her career as a middle school Spanish teacher in the South Bronx, New York City. In 2024 Kaya joined Nord Anglia Education's Education Advisory Board, which provides external perspectives to support the teaching and learning offering across its 80+ schools.
Since the beginning of my teaching career, I've always seen myself as someone who helps young people realise their full potential. I believe everybody has amazingness inside of them, and all our experiences and our years in education are meant to help unlock it. The real thread is: how do we maximise those opportunities that help us unleash what we all have within us? And how do we create systems and environments so our teachers and front-line educators can help students to this end?
I entered the field of education with a very fixed mindset about what a good education looks like, and 33 years later, that hasn't changed very much. I think it’s because I was the beneficiary of an amazing public education: I went to an arts-integrated elementary school. It was a Core Knowledge school and everything we did each year was based around a theme. Mathematics, Art, Social Studies, and English were all tied into that theme, so I learned in a very integrated way. And then I went to a National Blue Ribbon High School, where I had incredible honours classes. While I was on the highest track, I also took classes with the “regular kids” (non-honours) and saw first-hand that they were not getting the same education I was. I was also in a community that was very intentional about extracurricular activities. I was a Girl Scout. I took horseback riding and dance lessons. I learned how to ski when I was ten. I played the violin and was a cheerleader. I travelled. I had a mom who was a teacher, and she would say: “You’ve got to go see the world.” I had seen probably three quarters of the world before I turned 18, and we were not wealthy at all. That wide-ranging set of experiences that I had as a young person shaped me into who I am and what I believed. I went to college and had those beliefs challenged, and had to learn how to support them. When I think about what I tried to do at DC Public Schools, or what I'm trying to do at the Aspen Institute, I'm trying to give young people that same set of experiences: a rigorous set of academic experiences that are integrated and relevant, combined with lots of opportunities for exploration — extracurricular, artistic, and creative activities. I grew up loving school. I want young people to feel joyful about all their experiences and be able to extrapolate what they’ve learned when they go out into the world.
One of the reasons I was excited to join the Nord Anglia community was because they think about education holistically. Nord Anglia sees its role as helping to develop the world's leaders. Often, the most resourced communities will figure out things before everyone else. And if I can learn from this global community and figure out how to bring it to people who might never get those same opportunities, that’s a huge draw for me. So, the questions I ask myself are: What are the top schools in the world doing? And how do I make those benefits more accessible to a broader group of people?
I really am most proud of the work that we did at Washington DC Public Schools, because this was a city that was giving up on public education. People here were ringing the death knell for public education. We were facing 40 consecutive years of enrollment declines, financial disinvestment and neglect, our buildings were crumbling, and we were the lowest-performing urban school district in the country. We were in a death spiral. And what we were able to do over the course of ten years is restore people's confidence in public education, not just in traditional schools but for charters as well. We saw six consecutive years of enrollment growth, and those schools are still growing. We were able to create a product our citizens feel proud of and are willing to put their students in, and our government felt it was worth the investment. We used to be the punching bag for politicians, and now people come from all over the world to Washington DC to see how we turned things around.
One place where I think we've gone wrong over the last 30 years in education is we've reduced education to a limited set of data points because that's easier for the adults to grasp. We say, “If we can just reach third grade reading and eighth grade math scores, or graduate 75% of students from high school, or put young people on track for college and a career, that’s a good education.” That’s not a good education. What I learned at Teach for All, and the way they think about the purpose of a good education is that we need to create students who are leaders - who can solve problems for themselves, for their community, and for the world. Yes, you need skills in order to be a problem solver, but skills are the means and not the end. So, we have to expand the broader purpose of education to not just problem-solving, but changing the world.
Sometimes, we reduce complex concepts to shorthand terms like “equity.” I understand the importance of shared language, but for me, if you look at everything I've said about education over the years, you’ll notice I don’t use terms like “achievement gap” or “opportunity gap.” That’s not the lens through which I view this work. While my work is certainly about equity in practice, I frame it as being about “the all.” That means ensuring a quality education for every child — including children with disabilities, those who are incarcerated, those living in refugee camps, or children of colour — everyone. I often remind people not to get distracted by the labels or packaging. At DC Public Schools, we were able to make remarkable progress because we were in crisis. As I mentioned, we were the lowest-performing district in the country at the time, and had been under-resourced for years — but that’s where I do my best work. I come from a community that, despite immense adversity, taught themselves to read and write under the most dangerous conditions, often in secret, without access to formal resources. In the twelve years following emancipation, that same community established 37 historically Black colleges and universities. That kind of vision, resilience, and resourcefulness is part of my heritage. I also carry the legacy of those who were denied the right to vote, yet during Reconstruction, 500,000 African Americans found ways to overcome voter suppression and helped elect Ulysses S. Grant who won by just 300,000 votes. So, when people say our vote doesn’t matter, I remember that we’ve been here before and proven people wrong. I may not face the same level of adversity, but I still have the responsibility, and the freedom, to act. It’s my duty to challenge injustice and ensure young people everywhere receive what they need to thrive.
I think there are two things that come to mind. One is finding ways to share what we know more broadly. We have a research group at Nord Anglia that is about disseminating knowledge and practice, such as our research into metacognition. I’m excited by the idea of sharing this knowledge to a broader audience. The second thing is that we’re helping young people understand interconnectedness. The projects we do, the challenges we put in front of them, along with our metacognition work, these are all about leadership. It is about problem-solving for yourself, your community, and for the world. When I think about America, I think about the ideals of rugged individualism that underpins our culture. When I look out at other communities that are communal, cultures that are much less individualistic, I know for sure there is another way. A way to teach privileged young people that they have a role to play in making the world better, in engaging with people who are not like them, and using their skills and resources, not just for themselves, but for everybody.
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