This week, we are excited to profile the extraordinary Steven Carney, founding executive director of Rooted School Vancouver in Vancouver, WA.
Steven Carney was in love. He wanted to get married to his girlfriend, but her father had one condition.
“Her dad said, ‘If you want to marry my daughter, you have to go to college.’”
College wasn’t exactly what Steven had in mind at the time. He had graduated high school with a GPA of less than 2.0. He grew up poor in Washington State – a “trailer kid,” in his words – and education wasn’t a priority in his home. In school, he had been tracked – assumed to have low academic abilities and pushed along as such.
But he was in love, so he went to college.
College flipped a switch for Steven.
“I started college and realized wait a second, I can do this,” he said.
Steven learned quickly that the educational experience he had been given was one that needed changing – and one that he could have an impact on: “I thought, ‘I’ve got to be part of changing this system.’” (He also got married!)
A career supporting schools
Steven took the inspiration he got in college down the Pacific Coast to Chula Vista Elementary School, where he started working. There, he said, “I quickly fell in love with understanding the power behind belief systems in education.”
So, even though Chula Vista and Washington State are quite different, Steven saw the common denominator: Underserved students deserve so much better.
In his work in the classroom and in school leadership, Steven consistently saw a gap: “We knew how to best serve students and communities, but why wasn’t it happening?”
Bridging that gap between “what works” and “what’s actually happening” would become a hallmark of his career, which has now spanned more than three decades.
The opportunity in charter schools
In working for county offices of education in California, serving 100-some school districts, Steven saw all of them struggle with implementation. He was dedicated to closing that gap, but he thought the complexity of traditional public school districts was too cumbersome.
“I really wanted to implement evidence-based practices from the ground up,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to turn an entire system to be able to do that.”
He was also keen on testing out what he knew about teaching and learning. Steven saw an opportunity in charter schools. He helped launch Western Sierra Collegiate Academy in Rocklin, CA – which went on to become a California Distinguished School and one of U.S. News & World Report’s Best High Schools. But there was more to be done.
Going back home
Steven moved back to his home state of Washington. He saw that the state’s charter school commission was considering approving a Rooted School in Southwest Washington. Steven did some research on the school – and he was hooked.
Rooted School began as a 15-student pilot in New Orleans in 2014. The central tenet was that youth are an extremely underutilized asset and source of talent in their own communities. The school’s founder, Jonathan Johnson, believed that school could play a more effective role in breaking cycles of poverty and providing students with pathways to financial freedom. Since launching and expanding in New Orleans, Rooted School has also opened in Indianapolis. A Columbia, SC Rooted school is slated to open this year.
Steven was eager enough to reach out to Jonathan. The school, it turns out, was looking for an executive director.
“I really believed in the mission and vision, and it really aligned with who I was as a 30-year educator,” Steven said. “I was like, I gotta do this again.”
In 2023, Rooted School Vancouver became the first-ever charter school in Southwest Washington.
‘A job offer in one hand and a college acceptance letter in the other’
Steven believes the model of Rooted School can be life-changing for students who come from underserved backgrounds, as he did. He strives to ensure that students who attend Rooted School Vancouver graduate with “a job offer in one hand and a college acceptance letter in the other.”
This dual focus – on workforce training and college preparation – helps put students on a path to financial freedom and serving in their communities.
“The focus is really on helping students earn the right industry certifications before they graduate and we also tap into the local community and make sure that the certifications our students are earning actually work for that community,” Steven said. “It becomes a pipeline for the workforce in that community, so it’s also giving back to that community. But it’s in fields in industries that helps students get out of the generational financial constraints that they had.”
And they’re seeing promising results: Last year, about 70% of Rooted School Vancouver’s students made 1.5 years of gains in reading. On top of that, half of ninth and tenth graders at the school earned at least one industry certification. (Many school systems don’t have students earning certifications until 11th or 12th grade.)
Myth busting
“I think charter school advocacy should be part of everybody’s job who is in the charter world,” Steven said.
In that spirit, he’s taking visits to the Capitol, working closely with the Washington State Charter Schools Association.
“We’ve sent families and students to Olympia to talk about legislation and inviting members to actually come and visit our school,” Steven said. “That’s the biggest advocacy we can do is actually inviting them to our schools.”
But he’s also playing the role of myth buster.
“Washington State is a hard place to have a charter school simply because of the politics and the myths. We have to help our community and our parents understand what a charter school is. We have a lot of politicians making decisions about charter schools who misunderstand,” he said. “Every charter school in Washington is a public school. And we do more with less. Because students need options. They need to know there are options available to them.”