Agency

Ian V. Rowe is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on education and upward mobility, family formation, and adoption. Mr. Rowe is the cofounder and CEO of Vertex Partnership Academies, a new network of character-based, International Baccalaureate public charter high schools opening in the Bronx in 2022 and is the chairman of the board for Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption services organization that provides adoption and adoption support services. Rowe is a senior visiting fellow at the Woodson Center and a writer for the 1776 Unites Campaign. He is a trustee at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a senior advisor for the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR For All), Parents Defending Education, and the National Summer School Initiative (NSSI).   Mr. Rowe is widely published and quoted in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, C-SPAN, the New York Post, the Washington Examiner, Education Week, and Education Next. In addition to serving ten years as CEO of Public Prep, a nonprofit network of public charter schools based in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan, he was deputy director of postsecondary success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rowe won two public service Emmys while serving as the senior vice president of strategic partnerships and public affairs at MTV. He was the director of the strategy and performance measurement at the USA Freedom Corps office in the White House and cofounder and president of Third Millennium Media. In its early days, Mr. Rowe was also a senior staff member for Teach For America.   After receiving a high school diploma in electrical engineering from Brooklyn Technical High School, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science Engineering from Cornell University’s College of Engineering. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was the first black editor-In-chief of the Harbus, the Harvard Business School newspaper. Serving as an elected school board member, he resides in Pelham, New York, with his wife and two children.

Foreword / xi

Introduction / 3

PART 1 What Is Agency and Why Do We Need It Today?

1 What Is Agency and Why Is It So Crucial to Human Flourishing? / 15

2 Two Competing Visions of What Impedes the American Dream and the Effort to Build Agency / 25

3 The Third Way: Revitalizing Mediating Institutions to Strengthen Civil Society and Spark Individual Agency / 37

4 How Believing You Live in a Good, If Not Great, Country Helps Build Agency / 47

5 How the Hard Bigotry of “Antiracist” Expectations and the Pursuit of “Equity” Erode Agency for All / 57

PART 2 How My Story of Discovering the Importance of Family Structure Opened the Door for Me to View Agency as the Path Forward for Young Americans

6 Who’s Your Daddy? The Moment I Realized Schools Were Not Enough to Build Agency / 79

7 Robbing Our Young People of Agency: Silence or Denial about the Importance of Family Structure / 91

8 How America Has Changed Young Hearts and Minds in the Past: Teen Pregnancy / 105

9 Dan Quayle Was Right, But His Strategy Was Wrong / 129

10 The Success Sequence: The Empowering Alternative and the Other Building Blocks of Agency / 139

11 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Foundation of Family / 149

PART 3 How FREE Can Usher in a New “Age of Agency” for Young Americans

12 The FREE Framework to Build Agency / 157

13 Family / 165

14 Religion / 175

15 Education / 185

16 Entrepreneurship / 205

17 A New Age of Agency / 213

Afterword / 223

Appendix / 227

Acknowledgments / 241