Broad Alumni Spotlight: Mark DiBella (TBA 2017-2018)

What’s your current organization and role?

I’m the CEO of YES Prep Public Schools in Houston, Texas. I’ve been with YES Prep since 2001. Over the years, I’ve been a teacher, a principal, our COO, and have been our CEO since 2016.

What most excites you in your professional role?

I still get pumped about our annual Senior Signing Day, where our students publicly, in front of close to 20,000 attendees, declare their post-secondary plans. If you want to read more about Senior Signing Day, check out Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments. Earlier this year, one of our seniors was detained at her asylum hearing and deported to Honduras. It was an especially powerful moment when she declared (via video link) that she had worked with her school to graduate and would be returning to the U.S. to go to college!

I’m also excited that we launched elementary schools in 2020 (previously, we only served middle school and high school students). Even though COVID hit just three months before our first campuses were scheduled to open, we pushed through with our expansion plans. We now have 11 elementary schools and are on track to open 4 more by 2029. In just a few years, every YES Prep community will have a complete pre-K-12, college prep feeder pattern in their neighborhood.

Since I became CEO, YES Prep has more than doubled in size. During that time, our results have also improved. Growth and quality often get framed as competing forces, but we are finding real ways to make sure that growth drives excellence. We just received our annual state data, and last year was the strongest year in YES Prep’s history for academic results, staff retention, and financial metrics. Winning makes me excited!

How has your experience as a Broad alum influenced the way you approach your work?

I was a member of the 2018 Broad Academy, right when YES Prep launched our growth plan for elementary schools. One of the most impactful parts of being a member of the Broad community was access to a national network of excellent schools. My team traveled all over the country, learning from the best of the best and applying their practices as we founded our elementary schools. To this day, when faced with a tough challenge, I ask myself, “What would my Broadies do?” Then I text to find out. It’s always a powerful reminder that we’re not alone—that we do our best work together, as a community of leaders.

How is your organization working to increase equity for the students and communities you serve?

For us, equity means making sure every child in every neighborhood has access to a high-quality college prep education near where they live. We often say that brilliance is equitably distributed in our city, but access isn’t…yet. We’re ensuring that equitable access to a college prep school and matriculation into college (this year, over 80% of our seniors will matriculate to college) or the competitive workforce matches the brilliance of children all over Houston.

What changes have you seen in the school system as elementary students begin moving into middle school?

We’ve now had two years where students from our elementary schools have matriculated into our middle schools. Historically, 75% of our incoming sixth graders were performing below grade level; now, over 75% are at or above grade level. Our recent math assessments showed that the average fourth grader who had attended YES Prep elementary for two years was outperforming incoming sixth graders who hadn’t been at a YES Prep elementary school. This year, I visited one of our sixth grade teachers who has been at YES Prep for almost two decades, and she said, “It’s a new day at YES Prep. Our elementary schools are changing everything. Just imagine when these students graduate from our high schools having been through our middle schools and elementary schools.”

What do you think school system leaders should be thinking more about right now?

School systems that are still resisting AI do so at their own long-term peril. I’m old enough to remember when graphing calculators came out, and I remember the uproar they created. AI is the new TI (Texas Instruments). Yet we have to be prudent about how to use AI. We’ve had an AI working group that we’re expanding to an AI design team. I want to hear the voices of super-users and skeptics from every type of role at YES Prep as we figure out how to use AI as a strategic tool for making educators’ work more sustainable. I’m also intrigued by how we teach our children to maximize AI. I have a working theory—one that I have tested multiple times on my teenage children—that while their generation is more technically savvy than mine, they don’t (yet) have the critical thinking skills to truly maximize AI. Since the value of AI is driven by the inputs we give it, school leaders should be thinking about how we are teaching students the critical thinking required to create the right inputs to harness the power of this technology.

Any final reflections on leadership in the current moment?

I’ve been working in public education since I joined Teach For America in 1999, and I’ve never felt like education was more under siege than it is right now. Every day, multiple times a day, we face decisions and policies that have the potential to undo decades of hard work and progress. Yet if we crash out every time the next news cycle hits, the next time something unjust happens, we lose sight of the work.

I just finished my 25th year at YES Prep, so I have the benefit of perspective. I’m playing a long game; my colleagues are playing a long game. We’re educating the children that will demand the justice we need. In the present, that means we put our heads down, navigate impossibly complex political situations, and never crash out, because the work must continue. Our children need us now, and we need them in the future.