"Our motto has been cien por ciento: one hundred percent for all."

Principal Jeremy Beard (L.A. '95) accepts the Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership on behalf of IDEA Public Schools.

"If you were to come on a home visit with me to meet my students and our families in Donna, Tex., you would find many living in communities called colonias. Many of these lack running water, electricity, street lighting, paved roads, and structurally sound housing. Try doing homework by candlelight or in 110-degree heat with no air conditioning.

"How can U.S. citizens living in Third World conditions be expected to perform at the level of their peers in more affluent communities?" I wondered when I came to IDEA in 2002. We and countless other TFA alumni working in under-resourced communities thought this was unacceptable, but we were unsure of how we were going to change it.

In 2002, our students were four to five grades behind in math and reading, according to our Stanford 10 scores. We decided to work to implement the International Baccalaureate program, one of the most rigorous programs in the world, to get them college-ready.

Not just some of them—all of them. Our motto has been cien por ciento: One hundred percent for all. If one student fails, we all fail.

Students like José Gonzalez, who worked full time to help pay for his mother’s medical costs, played three varsity sports, took eight AP classes, and graduated with a 3.7. Domingo De La Rosa, the only male in his family not currently incarcerated, [who] enrolled in college. And students like Zanyace Aguinaga, who is attending Tufts on a full scholarship and is on the dean’s list in her freshman year.

These students, who were so far behind their peers, helped create the first authorized IB school in the world that expects 100 percent of its predominantly low-income minority students to go through the IB program.

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the gap has widened between white and black students. How do we explain that? We call ourselves a just society—a moral society?

I question, as a society, "Do we believe in freedom?"

If you believe in freedom, when you wake up tomorrow, talk to somebody who doesn’t know we are hemorrhaging trillions of dollars of gross domestic product because we are failing to offer an equal education to our citizens.

If you believe in freedom, when you wake up tomorrow, say to yourself, "Today I will take a risk to ensure our children most in need have a better chance at life."

If you truly believe in freedom, then make a commitment right now to do whatever you can to ensure we close this achievement gap in our nation.

It is an honor for us to be considered among so many TFA alumni doing great things. We took a leap of faith in the place of arguably the highest need in the U.S. because we wanted to help our students break the cycle of poverty.

We wanted our students to be free. We, like so many TFA alumni, cannot and will not rest.

If just one child receives an unequal education, none of us are free. Cien por ciento."