When Kenneth Gorham heard that he was in the running to become the principal of his local middle school, his immediate response was: “Are y’all sure?”
It wasn’t totally out of the blue. During Gorham’s time as a teacher to that point, his class had the highest end-of-year test scores across his grade level, he says.
But he was unusually young to lead a school. When Gorham ultimately landed the job, he was just 24 years old — the youngest principal to ever lead Movement Freedom Middle School, a charter school in Charlotte, North Carolina.