“The achievement gap is artificial.”

Dr. Cardenas Shackelford

K-12 Math Teacher, Site Administrator, District Administrator

“School should be an integration of fun, play, and the academics, you need to have all of them.”

Dr. Cardenas Shackelford has seen both the beauty and the trauma of education, and he’s made it his personal mission to protect and empower the students that he serves. As a child growing up in the Black Panther era, he attended a segregated elementary school and dealt with race riots in middle school, before attending college in Utah on an athletic scholarship. He had NFL dreams and Air Force aspirations, but it was ultimately education that found him. 

“Come see me, and I’ll put you in a safe place.”

What does it mean to support every child in the specific ways that they need to be supported (without medication?)? Is it possible to create an environment where every child can have a lightbulb moment? What is the interplay between school funding and achievement, and are we penalizing schools for achieving growth? As a classroom teacher, Dr. Shackelford worked to make math fun and understandable for students, and loves utilizing web based learning platforms. As an administrator, he speaks to the challenges he’s faced during his career, how he continues to produce and rise, in spite of being faced with resistance and set up for failure, and the best compliment he’s received from a teacher. And, in addition to sharing some fatherly advice, he reveals his source for ongoing development: his daughters.