Inside The Education Avengers: Why Jeanne Allen Calls JoAnn Mitchell “The Justice Keeper”

In the 2026 book The Education Avengers, Jeanne Allen introduces MAS Charter School founder JoAnn Mitchell, Ed.S., as “The Justice Keeper,” a title that begins in Mitchell’s own childhood. 

Before she challenged schools that mislabeled children or lowered expectations for them, Mitchell was a child whose future could have been narrowed by poverty at home and by a college system no one in her family had been taught to navigate.

Across multiple pages in Allen’s book, Mitchell describes growing up in poverty and instability in a family that had struggled for generations. She became a first-generation high school and college graduate, an experience that still shapes how she talks about children who enter school carrying circumstances adults may mistake for destiny. 

Reflecting on the book, which is now available on Amazon, Mitchell said “I hope people take away that a child's circumstances do not have to determine the trajectory of their life. I know that personally because I grew up in poverty and instability, in a family that had struggled for generations. And I was a first-generation high school and college graduate and education changed the trajectory of my life.”

Allen, the author and Founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, frames the book around the lives of people who act when children’s futures are at stake. In announcing the book, Allen put the focus in plain terms. “Not the policy. Not the politics,” Allen said. “The child.” 

Her chapter on Mitchell follows a woman whose understanding of school came from childhood experience and from years of work with students who had been misunderstood by the places meant to educate them.

The Gap Between Acceptance and Preparation

Mitchell’s college experience sits near the center of that story. At Elmira College (Elmira, NY), she arrived academically motivated and willing to study, yet she lacked basic knowledge about how higher education operated. She did not know how to register properly for classes, how course sequences worked, or how quickly one missed deadline could push a student off track. In the book, Allen recounts a moment when a suitemate asked Mitchell about her major. Mitchell answered, “Education.” Her roommate had the same major, then pointed out that they had never taken a class together.

Excerpt from The Education Avengers

After performing well at a public high school, JoAnn was accepted to Elmira College, a private institution in upstate New York. There, a new challenge emerged. As a first-generation college student, she lacked even the most basic guidance on how higher education worked.

She didn’t know how to register for classes, missed deadlines, took courses she didn’t need. She did not fully understand the implications of attending a private college when student loans came due. About a year and a half in, she had a jarring realization when one of her suitemates asked what her major was.

“Education,” JoAnn replied.

“Me too,” her roommate replied. “That’s strange—we’ve never had a class together.”

That night, JoAnn learned something no one had explained to her: majors followed prescribed sequences of classes. She had been off track from the start.

For Mitchell, the problem went beyond inconvenience. College gave her access to a different life, while also revealing how much invisible knowledge first-generation students are expected to supply on their own. 

“It didn't erase everything I had experienced, but it gave me choices, opportunity, and eventually the ability to imagine a life that looked very different from the one I had grown up believing was possible,” Mitchell said. The gap between acceptance and preparation would later become part of the educational design she built at Mission Achievement and Success (MAS) Charter School in Albuquerque, N.M.

What JoAnn Mitchell Saw in Schools

Before founding MAS, Mitchell worked in schools where the same concerns kept appearing under different names. In the book, she says, “Every time I moved, I kept seeing the same thing: Every school looked the same, rundown buildings, lowest quality education, the same expectations and outcomes for the kids that were there. It bothered me.” Her work in Title I schools, special education, and school administration gave her a close view of how children could be labeled before anyone had fully examined what instruction or safety they had received.

Her answers today return to the same point with fewer institutional abstractions. “I wish more people understood that struggling children are not broken children,” Mitchell said. “Throughout my career, I have watched children labeled because they couldn't read, punished because of their behavior, or underestimated because of poverty, trauma, disability, or circumstances beyond their control.” She said schools too often ask, “What is wrong with this child?” before asking whether the child has received what they need.

The question followed Mitchell into special education work, where she saw children identified as disabled when they had not been taught to read effectively or when language complicated their experience in school. She also saw behavior treated as a disciplinary problem before adults understood what the behavior was communicating. 

“One of the most important lessons I have learned is that behavior is often communication, and struggle is not the same thing as inability,” Mitchell said. Her work taught her to look first at instruction and at whether a child had an adult who refused to give up too early.

How Accumulated Observations Impact MAS Charter School 

Mitchell designed MAS around the belief that high expectations require preparation and support, including preparation for what happens after high school. The connection to her own life is direct. Mitchell had reached college without the map she needed, then spent years watching children treated as if they could not travel far. MAS’s college-preparatory approach now sends students toward life after graduation with adults working alongside them long before graduation arrives.

The Education Avengers also follows Mitchell through the resistance she faced while opening and growing what has become a top ranked school in New Mexico. She describes writing a charter application at night while working during the day, then defending the proposal before officials skeptical of her ideas. 

When one official suggested her plan sounded like common sense, Mitchell answered, “If people were doing it, we would have results.” The line captures one reason Allen’s “Justice Keeper” title holds. The argument concerned evidence, because Mitchell wanted a school organized around what children needed adults to do.

Educational Freedom Tied to Academic Results

Mitchell’s view of autonomy still carries that same condition. “I also believe we have to be willing to give schools and educators real autonomy when they are demonstrating results,” Mitchell said. “Autonomy should not mean an absence of accountability. In fact, I believe the opposite: give us the freedom to do what works, and then hold us accountable for whether it actually works.” The statement places responsibility on systems and schools alike. Freedom has to be attached to evidence, and accountability has to ask whether children are learning and growing.

Mitchell’s sharpest judgment may be the one she applies to adults. “We have to stop accepting outcomes for children that we would never accept for our own children,” she said. In her telling, circumstances that often become excuses in school become reasons to keep looking for better answers. “Children don’t need us to decide what their limitations are,” Mitchell said. “They need us to help them discover what is possible.”

Near the start of Mitchell’s story, a college student without a family map to higher education learns too late that she has been taking the wrong classes. Years later, that student is the founder of MAS Charter School, which consistently outperforms Albuquerque Public Schools and the State of New Mexico by as much as 20 percentage points. 

It is a school that demonstrates high academic performance while serving students and families who have historically had less access to educational opportunity.  Mitchell continues to speak about children leaving school with choices and the preparation to understand what comes next. 

The distance between those two scenes is the work Allen names in The Education Avengers. A child reaches the edge of one world, and an adult, you can call her “The Justice Keeper,” decides the map should not be missing.

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Editor’s note: The Education Avengers: How and Why a New Class of Heroes Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle (Post Hill Press | August 2026 | By Jeanne Allen) is available for purchase on Amazon.