225BatonRouge.com

At 24 years old, you’d think Michael Tipton would be the youngest executive director in Teach for America, the national program that places top recent college grads in struggling schools. We sure did. Apparently an executive director in New Mexico has him beat by a few weeks.

Still, the University High alum is among the rising TFA stars. He graduated from LSU summa cum laude with dual bachelor’s degrees in political science and history, and he holds a master’s degree in education from Pace University in New York.

Before joining TFA in 2005, Tipton worked in the Office of the Chancellor at LSU, where he worked on developing the university’s flagship agenda.

His first TFA gig: teaching ninth-grade history and English at Mott Hall Bronx High School in the South Bronx, an area in New York City surrounded by more than 30 high-rise housing projects. His first classroom was a sixth-floor walk-up with no air conditioning. There, he cultivated an Ivy League-esque atmosphere demanding hard work and setting high expectations for his 110 students.

“A staggering achievement gap exists in this country,” Tipton says. “It’s absolutely eye-opening and frightening. It’s one thing to talk about change and it’s another to make it happen.”

After assessing his students at the beginning of the year, only two were in a position to pass the rigorous New York State Regents

Exams. By the time Tipton was through with them, 98 of his students earned passing marks, not bad for a novice teacher.

Now he’s back home to help turn around South Louisiana’s failing schools. With a current corps of 74 teachers placed in four parishes, including East Baton Rouge, St. Landry, St. Helena and East Feliciana, Tipton oversees and supports corps members, engages alumni and manages a staff of four with a budget of roughly $700,000.

“This is our generation’s civil-rights movement,” he says. “This is the fundamental underlying issue of so many of the challenges that we’re facing. And in Louisiana it’s even worse. It makes sense to be here, to come home and make a difference.”