The Loudoun School for Advanced Studies, overlooking the historic Ashburn Colored School on its property that it partnered with the community to restore, presents a stark contrast in the arc that learning has taken since 1958. The foundation of the Loudoun School, for one, is social justice, and the belief that education is the answer if you want to build a better world.
If that concept sounds familiar, credit Deep Sran, a brilliant, 48-year-old educator and tech entrepreneur, who decided to build such a school in law school after reading Plato’s “The Republic.” What does justice mean and how can it be realized in human society? That all begins in the classroom, says Deep, and he should know.
Beyond his law degree and career as a corporate lawyer, Deep sought a PhD in human development studying cognitive science. His path wound through a DC charter school, then back to the idea of constructing an ideal school as a kind of laboratory for best practices in education. Along the way, he designed and patented a platform called Actively Learn that helps students not only stay up to speed with their classmates with interruptions like COVID, but help them scaffold that experience with teacher feedback and peer collaboration. Purchased by Achieve 3000 in 2018, it has been adopted by some of the largest school districts in the country to provide continuity in the patchwork of in-school and online hybrid learning models being adopted during the pandemic.
Fundamentally, he asserts, “If you give teachers autonomy; if you give students great content in a healthy culture, and you connect what students are learning to the rest of the world, you should see amazing things happen. That’s what we’ve seen through our graduates.”
It’s clearly something he and his fellow educators and Head of School, Sylvia Israel, do for the love of learning and their students. National Association of Independent Schools statistics show that its median member earns just $200 per year per student, meaning that most aren’t profitable, a fact evidenced locally by the recent closure of Middleburg Academy. While the Loudoun School isn’t cheap, its nearly 1-to-3 teacher to student ratio, 16,000 sq. ft. of leading-edge classroom space (equipped with 12 HVAC systems and their UV-C sanitation units performing a complete air exchange 12 times an hour) aren’t cheap either.
“Our goal is to have the safest, cleanest environment possible,” says Sylvia. Every teacher and student will be required to wear a mask, and each classroom has its own fully equipped Zoom station so that either students or their teachers can attend any class in the curriculum remotely. “It’s the most exciting thing about this year for us, aside from our curriculum being very social justice oriented in our humanities classes, both English and History,” she adds. “We are committed to having the hard conversations take place in the classroom because change for the better begins here.”
That made the NAACP’s choice in mid-June to culminate its march for justice with a discussion on the schools front lawn extremely satisfying for Deep, who always envisioned the school as becoming a community focal point for societal discourse.
“We have a tagline: ‘Do Great Things,” Deep explained. “The transition from school and learning to action is an indirect one, and it’s often a longer term transition. A line that has always resonated with me is this: ‘Strong people don’t need strong leaders.’ So my goal has always been to equip students to be independent thinkers. I feel like students who leave our school are able to think for themselves, are able to research and learn and do so with the goal of doing something.”
It’s clear that the myriad high degrees of teachers at the school, combined with their practical, real-world experience is the initial draw for parents seeking a truly exceptional, personalized learning experience for their children. They learn physics from a professor from CalTech with experience in the space program, calculus from an actuary, and chemistry and financial algebra from a former chemical engineer who worked at Dupont and went to Wharton (he also introduces students to the world of analyzing and trading stocks). One student who went on to Virginia Tech in computer science and later the Colorado School of Mines actually taught a class in game design as part of his independent study.
All that is bred of an intense desire to engage and delight students by taking what they love, or excel at, and “moving the carrot out further” as Sylvia likes to say. “Our school offers each child the opportunity to pursue their interests at an advanced level in a way that challenges even the most academically talented.”
For Deep, the real impact of the school won’t be felt until they’ve had a chance to see what their first class from 2008 has done by the time they’re forty. By the reunion of 2032 he wants to shake the hand of a newspaper publisher, a governor of Virginia, and founders of impactful non-profits, along with successful businessmen and women and entrepreneurs.
Says Deep, “I hope and I think that our students leave with an understanding of their responsibility as citizens to be part of the solution. We hope that we equip them to be part of the solution.”
Daily, in-person classes for some 60 students in grades 6 through 12 begin August 27, and, because of social distancing protocols, the school has a limited total capacity of around 80. That can grow to 120 once the crisis clears. If you’d like to explore whether it’s the right kind of environment for your child to thrive, we recommend attending a virtual open house which Sylvia conducts with faculty and parents every Monday (https://www.loudounschool.org/open-house). Whether or not you are “school aged,” we’d also point you to this year’s social justice curriculum, and encourage you to forge the kind of Socratic conversation circles that help the material sink in for the students at the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. See: https://www.loudounschool.org/justice.
Finally, if you'd like a local history of the land and surrounding society that built the Ashburn Colored School, the profitable black businessman who donated the property in the 1880s, how the building was restored, details about the Lola Jackson scholarship named for the teacher who for decades taught all grades in the one-room schoolhouse, or even about adventures in running for Congress, just ask Deep.