Rebecca and I are excited to announce our newest venture: Fulcrum School.
Before we get to that, though, we owe some words on Higher Ground Education, the company we founded with a small group of colleagues in 2016.
Last February, after nine years leading the company, Rebecca and I both resigned from Higher Ground. In the months since, we have not commented publicly on the decision or timing. The situation was and remains complicated, and we will continue to leave the full story for another day. But we do want to say a few things.
First, while we no longer speak for Higher Ground, we can let you know that the legal entity recently filed for Chapter 11 restructuring. The platform and majority of schools have been reorganized into a new company, Guidepost Global Education. While it is heartbreaking to see the end of the original organization, we are thankful the underlying network of exceptional Montessori programs will live under a new banner and a new capital structure. And, we expect, the enterprise will evolve in great ways in the capable hands of a new leadership team.
Rebecca and I think very highly of the operating team running Guidepost Global, and have endless goodwill for them. We retain our deep respect and love for all the people in the network—the indefatigable and idealistic school leaders across communities; the talented, inspired teachers that guide hundreds of classrooms; the devoted, discerning families that appreciate the great programming our schools have to offer; and above all, the children who shine and will forever shine with the glowing sense of wonder and moral ambition that Montessori makes possible.
Reflecting on the past decade, we are incredibly proud of what we accomplished at Higher Ground: the school communities, the platform, the program, the facilities, the partnerships with vendors and landlords and aligned organizations. Most of all, we cherish the team we shared it all with, and the way we together embraced and embodied such a radical mission. While it is not easy to see it now end, the company represents an incredible, singular achievement whose impact will redound through education, not only in the lives of children, but also in the adults it developed, nurtured, and helped unleash into the world of education. Scan the ranks of almost any great venture influenced by Montessori, and you’ll see former Higher Ground employees creating value there.
Not surprisingly, in recent months we have seen critics and haters coming out of the woodwork, full of glee, eager to re-raise every grievance real and imagined, and to revel in their bonds of malice. As Mark Twain noted, “a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” So it is with Higher Ground. While we do not care to actively reply to them, to our friends and supporters we do want you to know that we regard the criticisms we’ve seen as categorically false and unjust. Claims of sudden school closures, for instance, ignore the ways in which our team bent over backwards, in the face of constantly shifting information, to give maximum notice to parents and to help staff to transition. Allegations that teachers were underpaid ignore the exact opposite reality: that no other organization put a higher percentage of tuition revenue towards teacher salaries. Caricatures of the business model ignore the creativity of how we responded to COVID and the challenges that arose, as well as the extent of the investment into each and every school, in pursuit of enduring programmatic excellence. Claims we betrayed our amazing landlords fail to recognize how much effort we put forth to try to do right by this incredible class of highly-valued partners, and the extent to which we did manage to mitigate damage to them, while navigating the constraints we were faced with.
We are the first to acknowledge that there were growing pains, and that we made serious mistakes in how we responded to them. But observers of modern culture will not be shocked when we say: don’t believe everything you read.
In the end, while perhaps like Icarus we reached for the sun and fell short, we do well to remember that part of what Higher Ground Education challenged, and what Montessori itself challenges, is the meaning and bounds of the Icarus myth itself. Anyone who understands the central importance of entrepreneurialism to human civilization, and who genuinely appreciates the Montessori insight into our nature as agential beings, should celebrate what Higher Ground Education represented—a willingness to pursue a civilizational vision, against all odds, out of a deep and abiding love for human ability and human potential. While we are sad that the full realization of our life’s mission won’t happen at HGE, and we have some regrets, none of them are fundamental. Rebecca and I loved the journey. We learned, we lived, and we were honored by the opportunity to do ambitious work with exceptional colleagues. We would not trade for anything the fact we live in a world where such aspirations are possible, and where Montessori ideals are carried forward to adulthood.
We send our love to the people who carry the torch at Guidepost. They know well how much they mean to us and how much we miss them. And we know they will not only honor and continue what has been built, but rightly and beautifully make it fully their own, in ways different than what we would have done. They’ll do their great work, and we’ll go on to do ours.
And now, we turn the page and continue the work. We look now to our new adventure.
“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish,” wrote John Adams, “the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”
Let us continue to dare. Let us help create a world in which children are allowed to develop their capacities to so dare. For me and for Rebecca, over the course of past two decades, the work has always been about our vision for an ideal education. And it has always been driven by twin motives:
First, that the world needs such education. Now more than ever. We need schools that help children become flourishing, elevated adults. Schools that impart both the wisdom of the ages and the power to master and revere what is new. Schools that embrace the dynamism of life and the power of the mind to know true from false, good from bad, worthy from trite. And school that build the capacity to act and live and achieve tangible values based on that knowledge—to turn hopes and dreams into reality. “In the quietude of a schoolhouse, civilizations are preserved and reborn.” Our work ahead now is to create the paradigmatic example of such a schoolhouse.
Second, that the sight of a capable child, a capable adult, a capable human being is a reward unto itself. Rebecca and I want to see a world filled with people who live ambitious, interesting lives of curiosity, effort and joy. We love being surrounded by children alive in their full glory, lost in some moment of self-creation. We love their unsullied idealism about adulthood—about the possibility of an adulthood that arises naturally from a healthy childhood, where all the powers and freedoms of adult life are fused with the wonder of the child’s enthusiasm, and enthusiasm that endures rather than fades. We have done a great deal of work to enact this visions with the early childhood age group, and are now eager to more fully explore and perfect applications to elementary and up.
So, after a decade of designing systems of scale, we are excited to now spend the coming years devoting to hand-crafting all the details of our ideal upper school program. We will be going deep, returning to direct work on curriculum, pedagogy and program design. We are in the beginning stages of architecting a flagship school in the north Austin suburbs, where we ourselves will teach, build curriculum and software tools, innovate directly on product, and create an unparalleled physical environment on acres of beautiful Texas Hill Country. We will serve a community of aligned families, and guide students toward their best lives. We hope to both offer and receive guidance from fellow travelers, and in parallel with building a school, will pursue educational advocacy by actively writing, engaging, and inspiring. Through this work, we hope to bring forth the greatest generation of the future, the generation that will confront the technological, political, and cultural changes ahead, and show us how to repair to the standard of human excellence, human beauty, human goodwill, and human joy. The joy of lives fully lived.
We’ll say more about Fulcrum School and Fulcrum Education in the coming months. For now, thank you to those who have supported us. We hope you will forgive us our shortcomings, trust that we have reasons for our comparative silence, and appreciate the sincerity of our conviction to the mission that has always animated us. And we hope that our paths cross again many times ahead.