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Dorsey Hopson
When City Fund partner Dorsey Hopson thinks about education across America, he doesn't start with policy. He starts with place.
In an op-ed for the Grio, Dorsey reflects on growing up in Memphis and attending Whitehaven High School—an experience that shaped how he would later lead Shelby County Schools as superintendent. Whitehaven taught him that schools must reflect the communities they serve and that stability, high expectations, and adult attention matter.
When he became superintendent of Memphis’ Shelby County Schools in 2013, the district had just undergone a historic merger and was facing significant challenges, including graduation rates. Too many students weren’t making it to the finish line, and Black young men were disproportionately represented in that group. Dorsey focused on the unglamorous but essential work: stabilizing leadership, improving facilities, and putting supports in place where they were needed most, while raising expectations across the system, not in a concentrated area of the district.
The results were tangible. By 2019, graduation rates had increased across the district, including for Black male students, who reached 75.3 percent.
Today at City Fund, Dorsey remains focused on the question: How do we help communities build school systems that work better for families, especially those with the fewest good options?
Last fall, City Fund partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies and UNCF to launch a $20 million initiative supporting public schools developed alongside Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The approach brings together HBCUs' deep roots, educational expertise, and long history of turning opportunity into achievement with K–12 education to open pathways earlier and make them clearer for students.
In Alabama, this partnership is already taking shape. Later this month, I Dream Big Academy will officially open on the campus of Stillman College in Tuscaloosa. Students will attend school each day on a college campus, learning in a setting that makes the next step visible and familiar. Meanwhile, another Alabama community is preparing to reopen an existing public school in partnership with Tuskegee University.
"Public education is strongest when it adapts to the people it serves. Families don't all want the same thing, and children don't all learn the same way. What they want is a real chance."
When Dorsey thinks back to the young men he met in Shelby County classrooms, he doesn't think about policy debates. He thinks about whether they believed the system expected something of them, whether they felt seen, and whether the adults around them believed they would succeed.