Raising Kings: A Year of Reporting Inside a High School for Young Black Males

For more than a year, Education Week’s Kavitha Cardoza and NPR’s Cory Turner reported on the birth of a new high school in Washington, D.C.: Ron Brown College Prep. The school, designed for young men of color, takes a radical approach to educating its students: Educators combine unconditional love and restorative justice with high academic expectations. Cardoza and Turner spent hundreds of hours in the school, from the earliest days of recruiting 100 students to be its inaugural class of freshmen to the final bell in June of 2017. The reporters saw the staff work tirelessly to build a culture of respect and love and to push the students, known as “kings,” to believe in their own potential for success. With tremendous access to Ron Brown’s classrooms, educators, and students, the reporters witnessed big and small moments of triumph and conflict. Cardoza and Turner discuss what it took to get such open access to a public school--rare for journalists--and their own personal experiences with school and life that they had to hold in check as they reported on the lives of this remarkable school of educators and students.