StarShine Academy, a K-12 charter school, opened as a community outreach project in 2002 to fulfill the needs of children and families in one of the highest crime areas in Arizona. All of the high school students had previously dropped out of school and none of the kindergartners could speak English. None of their family members had ever graduated from high school. Since then, StarShine has graduated 121 students; only 3 had previous family graduates and they graduated from StarShine. StarShine has earned high accreditation nationally with NCA and internationally, with CITA and AdvancEd, and works with the United Nations.

StarShine has provided its Teachers as Leaders Training in London, Liberia, Africa, Shanghai and throughout the U.S. We have opened model schools for refugee children, established a second pilot in Glendale, Arizona and are opening this fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico. StarShine has created a replicable model for all students to excel–and for teachers to enjoy teaching–by providing support and research for best practices, technology and the whole child, brain-based learning for body, mind, spirit, health, wealth and happiness.

StarShine Academy is re-inspiring the American Dream and will one day be throughout the United States to help improve the education system for K-12, for all kids. StarShine Academy does not drop students to bring test scores up, as is standard at many schools; we work with each child as an individual learner, as long as it takes for them to achieve greatness. This philosophy has at times had an adverse effect on the scores the school attains, but it’s a price we’re willing to pay to make each child succeed.

Stanford is an amazing university. First, the setting is stunning. Every student should be so lucky to attend a school such as this. No matter where you look, the beauty is incredible. Gardens, detailed architecture, design of everything related to everything; one just feels more special, maybe even more intelligent, in this setting.

Dr. Byron Davies, Chief Systems Synthesist, who is in charge of StarShine’s data architecture, graduated with a Ph.D. from Stanford. He was invited along with me to attend a summit of two hundred people to focus on the urgent need to fix K-12 education in America and throughout the world. The Global Education meeting was hosted by the President of Stanford, John Hennessy, and Goldman Sachs (can you believe it?) because they are both saying that for over one hundred years we have ignored K-12 and now if we don’t fix it, America will not be able to survive economically or peacefully. President John Hennessy is calling for every person in America to help K-12 teachers and classrooms as the most pressing economic problem today. He has devoted every department of Stanford to have an initiative focused on K-12. Goldman Sachs predicts that more money will be made in K-12 for a longer, sustained time than in all previous sectors combined in history. They are saying the demand is worldwide and the market has been so ignored for so long it has created an almost unbelievable upside opportunity. And it will save kids and families.

We already knew about it. Maybe it will become the “In” career for the next part of life for the nearly 11,000 people per day, turning 60 years old, with the United States alone having about 78 million baby boomers. This group is the most passionate about saving our education system and is the most educated group on the planet. And according to a recent study, if you make it to sixty years old, chances are 95% that you will make it to eighty-five, so people will need to have something worthwhile to do.

StarShine was the only K-12 school at the conference and we have nine years of statistics to prove and share what we have learned. Our great friend and long-term partner, President Angel Cabrera from Thunderbird Global Management University in Phoenix, was there for the whole time and spent quite a bit of time with us talking about StarShine. We also got to spend time with John Sperling, University of Phoenix founder, and Michael Milken, who spends 100% of his time trying to change medicine and education.

It is going to get exciting around here.

Trish McCarty
StarShine Academy

In this video I put to music some amazing pictures of amazing people who have contributed to what we call The StarShine Effect: the thing that makes emotion happen and brings everyone to the core of what they perhaps forgot…You are probably in here–if not your picture…your heart.

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“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” — Anais Nin