Seth Andrew’s commitment to education reform was solidified while attending Brown University where Seth lost a race for State Representative by just 79 votes. Had 80 more supporters showed up to the polls, Seth would have become an elected official, a dream that was sparked while he was serving as a Congressional Page. Instead, he began reflecting on the underlying causes of his narrow loss and identified disenfranchisement of young people and general civic disengagement as the most significant barriers to fundamental social change in our democracy. Inspired by the Henry David Thoreau quotation, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, for every one who is striking at the root," Seth set out to strike at the root of our world’s challenges, not through elected office, but by working to reform our public schools from the ground up.
Seth shifted gears and began his career as a public school teacher and also taught in South Korea and South Africa, before becoming a Special Education administrator in Massachusetts, where he and his future wife attended graduate school. While deeply inspired by his students’ growth and passionate about working in the classroom, he felt his colleagues lacked his sense of urgency and zeal. He felt like his classroom was an oasis, an island of excellence in a sea of low expectations, and he longed for an innovative environment where everyone shared the same belief that every single one of their students would be successful in college and citizenship if given the necessary academic tools.
When the results for his special-needs students became public—95% had passed the high-stakes MCAS exam—he received a call from his union leader asking to come visit his classroom. Seth had been an active union member and delegate, and thought that the results meant he was about to win "Teacher of the Year." Instead, the union leader, straight-faced, said, "You’re creating unrealistic expectations for kids and teachers. Not all kids can go to college, and no teachers will ever work as hard as you." A debater at heart, Seth began to argue, until he realized attempting to reason with this man was futile. The traditional public school system wasn’t the place for him.
Determined to leverage his work to affect the greatest number of students, Seth set out to build a college-prep school focused on civic education that served all students, including those with special needs. His goal was to have the school become a proof-point for what was possible for urban students and serve as a counter-factual example that would stand in stark opposition to both the doubts about his students’ capacity and the critiques of public charter schools in general. In 2004, Seth joined the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship, where he studied and learned from best practices used by the highest-performing schools and school leaders in the nation.
In 2005, Democracy Prep Public Schools was born with the goal of ensuring that every single student would Work Hard, Go to College, and Change the World! Under Seth’s leadership as founding Head of School, Democracy Prep became the number one middle school in the City of New York. Seth now serves as the DPPS Superintendent, managing more than 1,000 students on four campuses across Harlem in grades K-11, as well as founder and chair of the board of Democracy Builders, a separate 501(c)4 organization focused on civic engagement for public charter school parents across New York.
Seth is a proud product of the New York City public school system and earned his A.B. in Education and Public Policy & American Institutions from Brown University and an Ed.M in School Leadership & School Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he now teaches leadership as an adjunct member of the Harvard faculty.
