FOUNDER PROFILE
Brandon Sorlie works with school and network leaders to realize their organization’s vision and mission.
As a former teacher, principal and superintendent, Brandon is deeply passionate about education and seeks to change the narrative about what’s possible for students in our nation’s public schools by developing systems leaders to drive durable academic results.
MY STORY
For more than 20 years, Brandon has worked with students, teachers and leaders to unlock their potential and put students on the path to close and reverse opportunity and achievement gaps created in communities plagued by underinvestment, systemic racism and low expectations.
After teaching for 5 years at a traditional public school in the Bronx, Brandon founded Brooklyn Ascend Lower School in 2008, the first school in the Ascend Public Charter School network. In 2013 he became the network’s first Chief Schools Officer, working with the Principals and the executive team to grow the network to 15 schools, serving 6,000 K-12 students across Central Brooklyn.
Brandon and the Ascend team worked to reinvent their school design. Punitive No Excuses discipline was replaced with a warm and supportive student culture model rooted in Responsive Classroom practices. Teacher centered curriculum was replaced with rigorous inquiry-based approaches that honored student ideas and voice in the classroom.
From 2015-2019, network-wide proficiency in grades 3-8 increased 35 percentage points in ELA, and 40 points in math—the highest four-year gains in each subject among large New York City charter networks in that period. Ascend’s students’ academic growth exceeded that of students in each of Ascend’s host Community School Districts (CSDs), as well as that of students in New York City and New York State district and charter schools. In 2019, Ascend students in every school, grade, and subject achieved proficiency rates higher than their district peers—in many instances by more than 40 percentage points.
After leading Ascend through its first COVID year, Brandon stepped away to take stock of all that mattered most to him in his work and in his life and reconsider how he could best contribute to the broader mission of school improvement. Since 2021, he has been working with school system leaders across the country to understand their unique challenges and contexts, share his lessons learned and develop their capacity to concretize and systematize their visions of change and school improvement.