A Career Defined by Saying Yes

Chris Barbic’s career has been defined by an insistence on saying “yes” where systems too often say no. Yes to high expectations for students who have been underestimated. Yes to building schools designed for excellence rather than the perpetuation of an unacceptable status quo. Yes to taking responsibility for results, even when the work is difficult, controversial, or politically fraught. Across more than two decades as a school founder, system leader, and national reform partner, Barbic has helped expand what is possible for students and for the charter school movement itself.

From the Classroom to School Design

Barbic’s path into education began in the classroom. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, he joined Teach For America and began teaching in Houston. There, he encountered students whose potential was unmistakable and whose opportunities were constrained by a system that was not built to serve them. The experience convinced him that incremental change would not be enough. What students needed were schools deliberately designed to produce different outcomes at scale.

That conviction led Barbic, in 1998, to found YES Prep, a 6–12th grade secondary school launched with a clear and ambitious mission: to prepare students from underserved communities to graduate from college and succeed beyond it. From the beginning, YES Prep combined rigorous academics, a strong school culture, and deep attention to long-term student success.

Under Barbic’s leadership, YES Prep grew carefully and intentionally, expanding into a network that would become one of the most respected charter organizations in the country. The network’s success reflected deliberate design, disciplined execution, and a refusal to compromise on expectations. It also demonstrated that scaling could be done without sacrificing quality or clarity of purpose. As evidence of that commitment, YES Prep became the first public school network in the nation to make acceptance to a four-year college a graduation requirement, a decision that reflected Barbic’s belief that expectations should be explicit, measurable, and non-negotiable.

That focus on results and execution is something Mark DiBella, now CEO of YES Prep, has often emphasized. He has noted that Chris built YES Prep with an unshakable belief in what students can achieve and a relentless focus on how to make that belief real, insisting that saying “yes” to kids meant building systems strong enough to support that promise for the long haul.

The culture Barbic established at YES Prep had a lasting impact on the students it served. One alumnus from the network’s earliest graduating classes recalls that while he did not know all the details of how the program worked, he knew this much: Chris Barbic was building schools like their futures depended on it. That sense of purpose, he reflected, shaped how many students saw themselves and what they believed was possible.

Taking on System-Level Change

As YES Prep matured, Barbic increasingly turned his attention to an even larger challenge: how to bring urgency and accountability to entire school systems that had failed students for generations. That question led him in 2011 to say yes to one of the most ambitious and challenging school improvement efforts in the nation, leading Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD).

The charge was explicit and bold. The goal was to move schools from the bottom five percent of performance into the top twenty-five percent within five years. The work was complex, highly visible, and deeply demanding. Barbic brought to the role a level of commitment and endurance that few public education leaders are ever asked to sustain. At the same time, he demonstrated a willingness to learn, adapt, and try new strategies as conditions changed, understanding that system-level change demands both resolve and humility.

Those who observed Barbic’s work in Tennessee point to this long view as a defining feature of his leadership. Dorsey Hopson, a longtime Tennessee education reform leader and now a partner at City Fund, has noted that Chris understood real change takes time, and that he stayed committed to Tennessee and continued to push for better outcomes even when the work demanded patience and persistence.

Staying, Building, and Stewarding

Following his service on the Achievement School District, Barbic remained deeply engaged in Tennessee’s education landscape. He joined the board of the Tennessee Charter School Center, which, working alongside other advocacy organizations, helped advance a series of policy breakthroughs in the 2020s that breathed new energy into Tennessee’s charter school movement and positioned the state as a national leader.

During this period, Barbic also became a partner at City Fund, a role that has afforded him the opportunity to work with local leaders in communities across the country to expand access to high-quality schools. The work reflects a consistent through-line in his career: a belief that durable change requires strong local leadership, disciplined execution, and long-term commitment.

That same spirit has shaped Barbic’s service in a range of leadership roles, including his time on the board of the Texas Charter Public Schools Association. There, his work to recruit respected leaders strengthened the organization’s governance during a period in which Starlee Coleman transformed the association into an advocacy powerhouse. Barbic’s subsequent rise to board chair helped ensure that the organization stayed on stride, securing some of the largest policy wins in the history of the Texas charter school movement.

Colleagues continue to point to this approach as central to Barbic’s leadership. Tyler Whitmire, a partner at City Fund who works closely with Barbic, has observed that Chris understands lasting progress starts with assembling a community of charter school leaders who carry real credibility in their local communities, and then putting those relationships to work collectively through shared outreach to policymakers.

Calling the Movement Forward

Across every phase of his career, Barbic has resisted easy narratives about education reform. At the same time, he has galvanized the charter school community to tell its own story with confidence and conviction. Sharing remarks after his induction into the Hall of Fame at the 2025 National Charter Schools Conference, Barbic encouraged colleagues to “get our moxie back,” a call reflecting his lifelong ambition to inspire a generation of leaders to release more meaningful yeses across the national education landscape.

Chris Barbic’s induction into the National Charter School Hall of Fame honors a career defined by instructional excellence, courage, adaptability, and sustained commitment. His work stands as evidence that meaningful progress requires not just bold ideas, but the willingness to keep saying yes over the long arc of change.