Heroes aren’t born. They’re summoned.
How and Why a New Class of Heroes
Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle
Through the stories of twelve extraordinary people, discover what creates human flourishing, why some communities thrive while others struggle, and what happens when ordinary people decide children are worth the fight.
Every so often, when the world feels fractured and institutions creak under their own weight, a new kind of hero emerges—not with capes or secret identities, but with courage, clarity, and a sense of purpose so fierce it unsettles the status quo.
In these pages, you will meet a new class of heroes fighting for opportunity, dignity, and joy.
Stories shaped by poverty, privilege, adversity, abandonment, success, failure, and reinvention.
“No matter the circumstances, there is something in each of us that is called to fight. And when children need us, we can summon it.”
Twelve extraordinary people. Twelve completely different origin stories.
One unifying outcome.
Watch one Marvel movie and you want the sequel. Then another. We should want the same in real life — that success would change the world almost overnight.
Twelve extraordinary people. Twelve completely different origin stories. One unifying outcome.
The Originals
Before the new Education Avengers came a generation of Originals — educators, thinkers, advocates, philanthropists and disruptors who saw what wasn’t working and refused to look away. They challenged assumptions, changed laws, opened doors, funded ideas before they were fashionable, and helped create the conditions in which today’s builders could emerge.
These are the Originals profiled in Those Who Built the Tower. They are among the extraordinary people who influenced me, taught me, challenged me and shaped my own work over more than three decades. They are by no means the only ones.
The list of Originals will continue to grow.
“If someone saves your world, you should know their name.”
The Liberator
He turned parent power into a matter of justice — insisting that families should not merely be consulted about their children’s education. They should decide.
Guardian of Moral Clarity
He insisted that education owed children knowledge, intellectual rigor and character — and gave parents the standing to demand all three.
The Vision Maker
She saw the possibilities of technology, personalization and learner-centered education long before they were conventional — and created space for innovators to build them.
The Authorizers
They changed who was allowed to build. Kolderie imagined a new architecture for public education — giving educators the authority to create autonomous public schools in exchange for accountability. Nathan helped turn that radical idea into law, establishing a framework for charter schools that would travel across the country.
The Architect of Grassroots Power
He demonstrated that education reform could be authored by communities themselves — making parent authority and local leadership instruments of self-determination.
The Vanguard of Technology
She built a pioneering model of personalized online public education years before the traditional system understood how important learning beyond the school building would become.
In Memoriam
The Intellectual Spine
He gave education reform an intellectual foundation — explaining why governance, autonomy and parent power could determine whether schools succeed.
In Memoriam
The Policy Maker
She turned freedom into policy, helping create an intentionally permissive charter environment in Arizona and making the state a national laboratory for education innovation.
The Humble Steward
He invested early, quietly and decisively in people and ideas — backing builders before their organizations existed or their success could be promised.
In Memoriam
They changed what could be said, what could be funded, what could be built — and what could survive challenge. They opened doors without always knowing who would walk through next.
Today’s Avengers stand on firmer ground because the Originals built it.
And there are more Originals whose stories deserve to be told. We will continue to add them here.
The Originals are not the end of this story. They are the reason there is one.
Together, they create the conditions for human flourishing—the condition in which purpose, courage, joy, freedom, hope, dignity, relationships, character, health, and opportunity come together. The people in this book understood that instinctively—long before the research confirmed it.
Every generation faces an enemy. This one has many heads.
The Hydra is not one enemy. It is many: tangled rules, compliance mandates, accreditation hoops, union work rules, and legacy systems that reproduce themselves long after everyone knows they no longer serve children.
But the Hydra is also harder to legislate away: apathy, ignorance, and the quiet erosion of hope and possibility in the lives of children.
The Avengers spend their lives cutting through that Hydra—not to burn the system down, but to make room for something better to breathe.
When the Hydra says “no,” an Avenger makes “yes” possible.
Jeanne Allen has spent thirty years finding the people no one else was looking for. This book is what happens when she finally introduces them to the rest of us.
But The Education Avengers is about more than remarkable people. It is about the ideas they embody and the conditions they create for human flourishing—and the extraordinary things that happen when ordinary people decide children are worth the fight.
Jeanne is a mother of four, a grandmother of four (and counting), and lives in the Washington, DC area and on Cape Cod with her husband, Kevin.
The Education Avengers isn’t just a book to read. It’s an invitation to recognize the Avengers already among us, to create the conditions for human flourishing in our own communities, and to become part of the story.
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