In a poignant conversation on Chicago’s Morning Answer, host Dan Proft spoke with Ian Rowe, founder of Vertice Partnership Academy, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, visiting fellow at the Woodson Center, and author of Agency: The Four-Point Plan for All Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power. The discussion honored the late Bob Woodson while exploring practical solutions to educational failure and cultural narratives of victimhood.
Rowe, who first met Woodson at age 83, described him as a lifelong “solutionist” who empowered communities closest to the problems rather than relying on government dependency. In response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project—which Rowe called a discredited effort to reframe America as founded on oppression—Woodson collaborated with Rowe to create the 1776 Unites curriculum. Now downloaded over 300,000 times by teachers across all 50 states, it presents the full story of the African-American experience: triumphs and tragedies, without cherry-picking negatives or sanitizing history.
Highlights include lessons on the Rosenwald Schools, built through partnerships between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, which educated generations of Black leaders, including Maya Angelou and John Lewis. Another unit covers Tulsa’s Black Wall Street—showing Black entrepreneurship and wealth creation under Jim Crow—before addressing the massacre and subsequent rebuilding. “If that was able to be achieved, then why can’t we achieve that now?” Rowe emphasized. The interview tied into broader critiques of public education. Referencing Jeff Bezos’s comments on New York City schools spending $44,000 per student with poor results, Rowe and Proft advocated for school choice to give low-income parents real options.
Rowe praised New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to opt into the Trump school tax credit program, which could generate over a billion dollars in privately funded scholarships without diverting public funds. Rowe shared inspiring moments from a recent fireside chat with Woodson, one of his final public appearances. Woodson told students: “Never allow yourself to be defined by the challenges in your life. Take enough strength from those who love you to overcome those who do not.” He also stressed that “values are not taught, they are caught,” encouraging young people to actively exercise agency in their own lives.
The conversation reinforced Woodson’s core message: lower expectations and victimhood narratives rob individuals of dignity and potential. Rowe continues this work through his charter school and curriculum, proving that faith, virtue, and action-oriented solutions can transform outcomes.
Ian Rowe’s book Agency is available now. For more on the 1776 Unites curriculum and Vertice Partnership Academy, visit their respective sites.