Gary, Ind., Isn't a Doom-Scroll Factory. It’s a Case Study in Educational Justice

In American education, we don’t have a shortage of success; we have a shortage of will to scale it. 

Across the country, pockets of excellence prove what's possible when we believe in our students, support them, and push them to reach their potential. However, these bright spots rarely become blueprints. Instead, the media and the public’s fixation on doom-scrolling often overshadows them.

One such pocket exists in Gary, Indiana, a city often dismissed as broken beyond repair. It has a long history of being held down by systems meant to lift its people to a better life (more on that later), but one charter network in the city has flipped that narrative.

GEO Academies, founded by Kevin Teasley, has done more than raise test scores or graduation rates. It’s redefined what’s possible when a community stops underestimating its children.

In Gary, students like Abram Lewis aren’t just beating the odds; they're rewriting them. Lewis earned his associate's degree by 16 and will collect his bachelor’s before even graduating from high school. And he’s not an outlier. He's part of a deliberate system designed to close what’s called the belief gap: the tragic tendency of adults to expect less from Black, brown, and low-income students.

At 21st Century Charter School, GEO’s flagship campus in Gary, early college access, rigorous academics, and intentional mentorship are the norm. As Teasley says, "We don’t just prepare students for college—we place them in it." The results speak for themselves: dozens of students earn college degrees before finishing high school, and hundreds more build the confidence and skills to chart their own future.

This kind of success shouldn't be rare. It should be national policy.

Built by Industry, Broken by Injustice

In that spirit, let’s talk about why success in Gary means so much to people who have called it home for decades amid neglect, economic despair, and state takeovers of its school district.

A story from 2021 about the Jackson Five’s old home tells you a lot about what “hope” has often looked like for many kids in Gary. That year, the city’s leaders added signage along the freeway to direct tourists to the house and draw more tourism.

“This home provides inspiration for our young people,” said Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch. “It says that you can be whatever you want to be.”

But what about the kids in Gary who can’t sing their way to somewhere better?

For far too long, there haven’t been many positive alternatives. However, if you turn back the pages of a U.S. history book, you’ll discover why it wasn’t supposed to be this way in the “Magic City,” as it was called almost 120 years ago. 

Founded in 1906 by U.S. Steel as a “company town,” it boomed with jobs and architectural grandeur. Some of the most renowned architects of the era designed churches, city offices, schools, and more in Gary, making it an unusually popular destination for architect-loving tourists for a city of its size. By 1970, Gary had 175,000 residents and 32,000 mill workers. 

Such simple economic framing crops out the segregation, redlining, and racism that fractured the city from the beginning. 

Gary had a school boycott by enraged white families more than 30 years before the infamous and better-known examples in Alabama, Mississippi, and other Deep South states in the 1960s. 

More than 1,000 white students walked out of Emerson High in 1927 because the district transferred 16 Black students from an overcrowded, mostly Black school. That brought the total number of Black students at Emerson to 28 at a school with more than 2,000 students. The city caved to the boycott and created a “separate but equal” high school for its Black students—an early example of the many broken promises of a better life for Black families in Gary.

When the steel jobs began vanishing in the early ’70s, the standard white flight tactic took off, and discriminatory lending policies kept Black families grounded, unable to follow or buy the homes left behind. 

"When the jobs left, the whites could move, and they did. But we Blacks didn't have a choice," 78-year-old Walter Bell told The Guardian in 2017. He explained: "They wouldn't let us into their new neighborhoods with the good jobs, or if they let us, we sure as hell couldn't afford it. Then, to make it worse, when we looked at the nice houses they left behind, we couldn't buy them because the banks wouldn't lend us money."

As the economy collapsed, so did the population below 80,000. Nearly 40% of residents live in poverty, and 20% of buildings stand abandoned. In the 1990s, Gary was labeled the “Murder Capital of America.”

The slide continued, and no one seemed to be able to pull the city out of the dive.

In 2017, the state took over Gary’s public schools and handed the district to a Florida-based company, MGT Consulting. Enrollment in traditional schools plummeted as families searched for better options. MGT made brutal cuts just to keep the lights on. Local control returned in 2024, but the district still faces enormous fiscal challenges.

It’s a bleak picture. But not a hopeless one.

Amid the ruins of once-grand architecture, educators and students at 21st Century Charter School forge a new path. Lewis and his classmates proved what’s possible when they earned bachelor’s degrees before graduating from high school. Local news media asked if they see themselves as prodigies, and they said no. They simply had an opportunity, and they took it.

Gary has been short on fair opportunities to succeed for most of its existence. Take a look at what happens when kids are given that chance.

In 2023, Indiana passed a new initiative to reward high schools whose students earn significant college credit before graduation. GEO’s approach—early college, wraparound support, and high expectations—has already led to more than 60 students earning associate degrees before finishing high school.

Today, 21st Century Charter serves more than 1,200 K-12 students. It boasts a 94% graduation rate and an 89.9% College and Career Readiness score. 

There have always been people in Gary ready to lead and to build something better. What they’ve lacked is a system that keeps its promises.

Gary can’t return to the past, and it shouldn’t try to. Even in its so-called golden years, many were left out. The goal now must be to remake it from the ground up—not to restore what was but to create what should have been.