Kenneth Campbell
President of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO)
Kenneth L. Campbell, a founding board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), was selected as the organization’s president in January 2010. BAEO’s mission is to increase access to high-quality educational options for black children by supporting parental choice policies and programs that empower low-income and working class black families. The organization celebrated its tenth anniversary in March during Symposium 2010 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Before he accepted the BAEO presidency, Mr. Campbell had served as director of Charter Schools for the Louisiana Department of Education since 2007, where he helped to create an environment where charter schools could grow and thrive in New Orleans and the rest of the state.
Mr. Campbell, a strong advocate for high-quality educational options for black children, has worked to support the creation of high-quality charter schools for more than 15 years. He played a key role in helping to establish a strong charter school movement in Washington, D.C. during the 1990s. He was part of the initial effort that worked to get one of the country’s best charter school laws passed for the District. He also created the D.C. Charter School Resource Center to ensure there was an environment in D.C. where charter schools could be successful and to teach people how to start new charter schools.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Campbell helped to establish charter schools in urban areas across the country, working with Mosaica Education, Inc. Prior to his position with the Louisiana Department of Education, he spent almost four year years in Doha, Qatar, where he helped the country’s leadership in its efforts to convert its existing public schools into charter schools, as part of the most progressive school reform effort ever attempted in the Middle East.
Mr. Campbell was also a founding board member of Building Excellent Schools, which works to raise the quality of urban charter schools in the United States by helping entrepreneurial individuals design, build, and maintain excellent schools in under-served communities while building partnerships and networks of support.
Mr. Campbell served in the United States Army and retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Captain in 2005. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Averett College in Virginia and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Touro University International. He resides just outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his wife, Shelia, and eleven-year-old son.