About the Author
airick journey crabill has spent his career focused on a single question: what does it actually take to change outcomes for people who've been let down by systems that were supposed to serve them?
His own life gave him an early education. Bounced in and out of foster care, he attended eleven different schools as a child. Those experiences left him intimate with both the failures and the possibilities of the systems meant to protect young people — and shaped a lifelong commitment to closing the gap between what should happen and what does.
That same gap is at the center of The 50% Journey. The framework began in 2017 as a personal and professional tool — a way to apply to his own life the same discipline he asked of the leaders and institutions he coaches. Over time, requests to make it more widely available grew into this book.
He currently serves as Senior Coach at Effective School Boards and as Director of Governance for the Council of the Great City Schools, leading school board supports for the nation's largest urban school systems. As board chair of Kansas City (MO) Public Schools, he spearheaded reforms that doubled the percentage of students who are literate and numerate and led KCPS to full accreditation for the first time in decades. As Conservator of DeSoto (TX) ISD, the district made double-digit literacy gains and moved from F ratings in academics, finance, and governance to B ratings.
He is the recipient of the Education Commission of the States' James Bryant Conant Award, which recognizes extraordinary individual contributions to education. He is also the author of Great On Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective.
The 50% Journey is his most personal work — rooted in the practices he relies on himself, for exactly the same reasons anyone else might need them.