Mike Feinberg has been in American education for more than three decades — first as a classroom teacher, then as co-founder of one of the country’s most prominent charter networks, and now as co-founder of a Houston workforce training program that puts students on job sites instead of lecture hall seats. He documents parts of that ongoing work through Mike Feinberg‘s Instagram, where he shares updates from WorkTexas and the communities it serves.
He doesn’t view that arc as a departure from education. He sees it as a correction.
Feinberg co-founded KIPP in 1995 with the conviction that all children can learn and that high expectations, paired with real support, can change outcomes. That belief still holds. What changed, he says, is his understanding of what “success” should mean for a K-12 school. His thinking on this shift has been captured in recorded conversations that can be watched in full online.
For years, KIPP measured outcomes through college enrollment and graduation. Getting Houston’s region to 50% college completion — an honest accounting that kept every eighth-grader in the denominator — took years of work and marked a real milestone. Mike Feinberg has spoken openly about celebrating that number for about 15 seconds before asking: what about the other half?
The question led him to look more carefully at what alumni were actually doing. Many who never went to college had found stable careers in trades or were running their own businesses. Some who did go were carrying debt that their degrees weren’t helping them repay.
Feinberg says education reform, broadly speaking, got one thing badly wrong: it conflated high expectations with a single outcome. College preparation is valuable and schools should offer it. But preparation for a career in electrical work, HVAC or logistics deserves the same institutional support and prestige. Those who want to support his work can do so directly through his online store.
WorkTexas, which Feinberg co-founded with businessman Jim McIngvale in 2020, puts that argument into practice. Courses are free for most participants, built around employer input and designed to take students from enrollment to job placement in about 11 weeks. The program serves high school students and adults alike.
“College prep does not need to mean college for all,” Feinberg said. “We overshot the target — and we’ve got to correct that.”