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In one sentence, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has summed up everything that is generally wrong about the politics surrounding K-12 education in the region and the state.

When people ask me why I decided to become an education leader, I tell them about Jeremy. I met Jeremy shortly after I graduated from the University of Richmond. Armed with a degree in American History, I knew only two things: that I wanted to teach and that I wanted to help fight poverty. Dr. Rick Mayes steered me toward Teach For America, and I realized I could combine my two passions by joining.

FOR years, KIPP Reach College Preparatory in Oklahoma City has been one of Oklahoma's best schools while serving low-income students from the urban core. A new study of Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools nationwide shows KIPP Reach is not an anomaly.

My name is Wydeyah Hay and I am a TEAM Academy (KIPP New Jersey) founding class member, part of the first class when TEAM opened in 2002. This fall, I returned to the classroom as a Relay Resident at KIPP's Seek Academy. Through this program I'll be on my way to earning a master's degree by apprenticing in a well-run classroom. It was because of the values that KIPP helped instill in me that I was inspired to become a teacher and support my community.

The Oklahoma City community, our business and civic leaders agree. If we want to put Oklahoma City on the map-to make it a great city, a destination for families, an employment center-we must have great public education in an attractive environment.

Over the past four years, we have made great strides, and in Tennessee this has been a largely bipartisan effort. The federal Race to the Top competition awarded funds to states such as Tennessee that encouraged high standards for evaluating teachers, opened doors for charter schools and paved the way for more rigorous standards.

The debate over charter schools may be ready to explode again in Newark. The mayor's chief education advisor has called for a halt to all charter growth, the union is demonstrating next week, and credible rumors are spreading that KIPP - one of the top performing charter chains - is about to anchor a new expansion.

Through my experience leading KIPP, a network of 183 public schools serving largely educationally underserved students, I've come to believe leaders in higher education have never been more interested in charting a new course. And it's clear that when colleges make a priority of sending a message of opportunity, students respond and thrive. Just ask the 41 KIPP alumni who attend the University of Pennsylvania, or the 19 at UNC Chapel Hill, or the 10 at Wesleyan University, or the 34 at Franklin and Marshall, or the 15 at UC Berkeley. If this is possible for students at one network of schools, think what is possible for this nation.

With its decision to approve a modified expansion of KIPP Reach Academy, the Oklahoma City School Board chose to compromise - a practice all too rare in these politically charged times. It's a move that at its core will help children.

Here's how it all started. A decade ago, in my final year of graduate school, I met two educators, Dave Levin, of the KIPP charter school network, and Dominic Randolph, of Riverdale Country School. Though they served students at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, both understood the importance of character development. They came to me because they wanted to provide feedback to kids on character strengths. Feedback is fundamental, they reasoned, because it's hard to improve what you can't measure.