‘I think that there is no higher calling’: 2024 McGraw Prize in Education winners see the impact of their work

At the 2024 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education Nov. 13 celebration, from left, Jody Lewen, Harold McGraw III, Penn GSE Dean Katharine Strunk, Robert Lerman, Edmund W. Gordon, and GSE Vice Dean of Innovative Programs and Partnerships Michael Golden.

Edmund W. Gordon — the architect of the Head Start program, an educator who challenged outdated ideas about how to teach and assess learners of all ages, a mentor who counseled generations of education leaders — has dedicated most of his 103 years to transforming education. 

In accepting the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education on Nov. 13 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, he laid out the stakes for his life’s work and that of his fellow honorees, Robert Lerman and Jody Lewen. 

“I think that there is no higher calling than that of helping in the cultivation of human intellective competence and character,” Gordon said. “The human brain is perhaps the finest expression of matter known to mankind. What else in the entire universe appears capable, on proper stimulation, of producing human thought? What other than the cultivated human brain seems capable of converting mere conceptions into reality?”

Gordon, Lerman, and Lewen were recognized with the 2024 McGraw Prize in Education for their groundbreaking work in helping learners cultivate their minds and improve their lives. Gordon, the Pre-K–12 winner, was praised for his decades of service, which continues. Lerman, the Lifelong Learning winner, has pushed Americans to rethink how we prepare people for careers. And Lewen, the Higher Education winner, is at the forefront of a new movement in prison education. 

Based at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, the McGraw Prize is the most prestigious prize in education. Each winner receives a Prize sculpture and $50,000 and is honored at a celebration in New York City. Gordon, Lerman, and Lewen join a distinguished list of more than 100 teachers, professors, superintendents, university presidents, nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs, and public officials who have shaped the education landscape.

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