Changing the Baseline of What’s Possible

On Sunday, I joined 61,000 other New Yorkers and people from around the world to run the New York City Marathon.

When I started training four months ago, I could barely run two miles continuously. On Sunday, I ran more than ten times as far. What I learned most from the training is just how quickly we can change the baseline of what's possible. And if we can expand our own potential, we can do that for our communities, our city and state, and our country. 

I had heard stories from other runners, but nothing prepared me for the experience. The energy and emotion began before the race started, with a group of volunteers cheering us on as we boarded the Staten Island Ferry. Then came the crisp autumn air as we crossed the Verrazzano Bridge into Brooklyn, followed by the beautifully diverse crowds of two million spectators urging us forward across all five boroughs. Few things can be as encouraging as a stranger yelling your name or a line of kids offering high-fives as you run past.

There were so many cowbells ringing along the way. When hearing them, I couldn’t help but think back to the early days of the pandemic when, at 7:00pm each night, New Yorkers would bang pots and pans from their windows and balconies to show their support for frontline workers. What we were attempting on Sunday didn’t match the heroism of those workers, but the melody of unity and support was refreshingly similar.

That combination of one person or group’s commitment, carried by the support of an entire city, is how hard things get done. Bold ambition coupled with broad cooperation is what New York and the nation need to meet today’s challenges, whether expanding our energy capacity, building the housing we need to stay affordable, or preparing the next generation of students and workers for the future.

A shared goal can organize effort on an extraordinary scale. From the original moonshot in the 1960s to the race to find a COVID vaccine in recent history, these successes relied on years of advance work, significant investment of resources, and a willingness to take on something difficult. As President Kennedy put it, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Many of today’s challenges do not require a scientific breakthrough. We know how to construct homes and deploy clean energy. We have examples of schools preparing students exceptionally well for the future. Yet we struggle to deliver those solutions at the scale we need.

Our shortfalls are problems of politics, not physics, defined by an era of conflict that shuts out cooperation and by processes that slow down progress. If we can change our politics, if we can commit to ambitious goals and work together to reach them, we can change the baseline of what’s possible and prove that we do have the capacity to achieve great triumphs. 

I have seen what happens when an organization refuses to accept those limits. On Sunday, I wore a navy blue shirt with “Success Academy” in orange across my chest. Each time a stranger shouted, “Let’s go, Success Academy!” I thought about the organization I was running for and what it has achieved over twenty years, including the past decade during which I have served on its board.

With 59 public charter schools serving 22,000 scholars across the city, Success Academy is the largest and highest-performing charter school network in New York. Serving communities that have historically been neglected by our public education system, the organization consistently redefines what is possible. Last year, 97% of Success Academy scholars passed math on state exams, compared to only 57% of students citywide. One hundred percent of Success Academy graduates have gone on to four-year colleges for the last nine years in a row. 

Those results were never inevitable, and some of Success Academy’s biggest obstacles weren’t in the classroom, but rather in City Hall and Albany as the charter sector fought for fair funding and access to public facilities. Yet the network has demonstrated that a commitment to excellence, coupled with cooperation among school leaders, teachers, families, and scholars, can change the future for so many.

Four months ago, two miles felt like my limit. On Sunday, I proved it wasn’t. New York, and the nation, should be just as willing to question the limits they have come to accept and do the hard work together to move beyond them.