Depending on which side of the internet you have been on, you may have noticed the outcry about the drastic decline in America’s education system and post graduates quality of life. Since 2013, there has been a regressive trend where students across the country are struggling to demonstrate basic skills that were once the standard for children. These skills include remembering and recalling a series of events, focusing on videos longer than 3 minutes and identifying the main idea, writing in complete sentences, and beyond. While kids are continuously allowed to fail there is a principal paving the way in what excellence in leadership can do within an entire academic network. Her name is Shannon Beatty. Beatty is a leader with a decade+ long career in education that started in the classroom and has risen to the ranks of leadership due to her insistence for accountability for herself, her staff, and students. This grit has allowed her to lead schools under her supervision to exceed the current failure rates of students across the country with 100% pass rates for state testing.

 

Concerns in Education as a Whole

Like most children Beatty had dreams of being a teacher and couldn’t wait for her opportunity to guide the future thinkers of America. That dream was realized in 2016 when she earned Bachelor’s of Arts degree in psychology from Hobart and Williams Smith College and Master’s of Science in Education at Touro College. Starting in a Department of Education regulated system, the harsh truths of public school policies and culture stood her in the face as she struggled to enrich children’s minds. From the lack of behavioral measures between administration and parents, her life dream was realized with detrimental setbacks in the industry as a whole. Some of those concerns include:

• the lack of standards from the adults (staff and parents)
• the low academic culture for kids
• the lack of recourse or protection for teachers
• the dismissive responsibility for responsible authority
• the focus on politics and not students’ performance

The list can go on. A quick search will echo this rhetoric from educators across the country in one form or another

Current State of Education

After decades of failure the United States is forced to face the jarring facts that their education system has failed generations of kids.

Despite collective state, local, and federal spending of $857 billion annually on K-12 education, our students continue to fall further and further behind in core academic knowledge. The latest NAEP data looks at math and reading skills amongst 12th graders and science skills for 8th graders. The results reveal record low scores for 12th graders in both reading and math, while science scores for 8th graders also declined to their lowest level since 2009. Crucially, 45% of 12th graders failed to demonstrate even a basic level of math knowledge and 32% failed to demonstrate a basic level of reading skills. Amongst 8th graders, 38% failed to demonstrate a basic level of science knowledge. (Handel, Alec)

These scores prior to college are merely the tip of the iceberg of what to expect in the workforce of today’s millennials, gen z laborers phased out for generation alpha and beta.

 

 

This recent trend of reading grade level sentences speaks to the alarms of a need for education reform.

Success Academy

During those times her colleagues heard her frustrations and referred her to charter schools, specifically Success Academy. At the time, Success Academy was in its early stages of development spearheaded by the CEO Eva Moskowitz and her team of executives that includes her chief learning officer, Lisa Sun and chief schooling officer and provost, LaMae de Jongh. Alongside the rest of the executive suite. Success Academy is a charter school known for its rigor and no excuse mentality to encourage scholars to be critical thinkers in liberal arts and STEM. Starting as a kindergarten teacher Beatty sharpened her pedagogy as Success Academy provided an environment where educators are supported in the classroom and developed with professional days to improve their overall instruction. At Success she respected:

• their performance – Top 3 elementary charter school network in the country
• school policies address and support teachers with  behavioral infractions
• attention  to detail engrained in the organizational culture 

By her 5th year of teaching at Success Academy Beatty’s tenacity and determination to provide kids with a high level education and the confidence to reach and exceed their thinking and benchmarks landed her in the administrative seat as an assistant principal. Shortly after in 2021, she came the principal of her own school, Success Academy Bushwick. Working at Success Academy was the perfect environment for Beatty to thrive and bring her childhood passions to life in a way she imagined many moons ago. Her years at Success emphasized the importance of smart classroom management, holding scholars accountable to developing strong ideas, and doing their best with the support of their parents and teachers.

Her challenges in the classroom prepared her to not only enrich the thinking of children, but also the quality of the staff in the entire building. Once promoted to leadership Beatty became the principal of the Success Academy in Bushwick. As of 2025, Bushwick and other Success Academy schools achieved of 90% passing for all of their students. “Pass rates for pupils at the charter network in grades 3-7 were nearly double those of their public school counterparts, the figures from Success Academy show. The charter school system boasted that 92.5% of its 9,280 students in those grades passed the 2025 English Language Arts exam while 96.2% proved they were proficient in math.” (Propper, New York Post) At Bushwick elementary the scholars achieved 100% in math and 95% in ELA. Those results are a direct result of the teachers being properly guided on how to teach scholars to develop strong ideas and holding them accountable to be well mannered independent thinkers. During her professional development sessions she maximizes her time by utilizing similar learning strategies from the classroom that provides insight to her personnel that strengthens and expands their approach to educating students. Her dynamic use of personal encounters, public news articles, or pop culture references motivates her league of educators to put their best foot forward in service of kids.

 

Due to this dedication in 2023, Beatty did what most principals could not pull off and managed 2 elementary schools and a middle school. With over 800 scholars under her supervision, she was able to achieve one of the highest pass rates of 95%+ between both the Bushwick elementary and Bedstuy middle school that exceeds nationwide state test performance. In other schools room for growth may seem non existent as teacher shortages continue, but with Beatty the failing averages do not apply.  Not only has she guided her staff to academic success, but she has developed over 10 leaders into higher positions within the company. Since taking the reigns Beatty has nurtured several assistant and full time principals who carry the standard that sometimes outshine her own.

Career Highlights

At this current stage in he career she notes, her most proud moments include:

• Every school turn around – Especially Success Academy Bushwick!
• Every leader she developed into strong professionals
• 2020 –  raised SA Bushwick Elementary school’s performance from 52nd – 1st place in the network
• 2023 – opening SA – Sheepsheadbay
• 2024 –  raised SA Bedstuy Middle School to 95% passing in state and  AP/regents performance
• 2026 –  first leader of SA k-12 elementary and middle school