Linda Mendez and Ravi Gupta

Linda Mendez and Ravi Gupta aren't your average twentysomethings. While most of us spent the decade struggling through an existential crisis or four, the two overachievers were already out in the trenches, racking up merit points in educational training boot camp. Now, thanks to relaxed criteria for charter school eligibility here, they're heading up two new charters opening this fall in two of Nashville's least served communities — Mendez's Liberty Collegiate in East Nashville and Gupta's Nashville Prep in North Nashville.

Both are fast-track fellows at Building Excellent Schools — a charter incubation program in Boston that fosters leadership in urban education. Both cite personal and political reasons for their devotion to the cause: They come from large families where they saw siblings with different educational needs served the same educational product. And though they have different work backgrounds —Mendez's résumé includes victim's advocacy, Teach for America and work in troubled schools, while Gupta taught English to Ghanaians, worked as an assistant to David Axelrod on the Obama campaign and studied law at Yale — both have a remarkable firebrand passion for education reform.

"When we talk about our approach as a school, we're a no-excuses charter school," Mendez explains one morning over coffee at Fido. "That means there's no excuse for why our students can't achieve rigorous academic success. We don't care if they are coming in five grade levels behind. We don't care if their families live in poverty. We don't care what ethnicity our students are. We know that despite the odds that are often stacked against our kids, with high expectations and adequate support, they can achieve incredible things."

It'd be easy to dismiss that determination as starry-eyed talk, but Mendez has a proven track record — she more than doubled the passing test rates of her Houston students as a Teach for America educator, most of whom were Latino kids who spoke English as a second language.

For Gupta, the thrill of education reform is not unlike the thrill of the campaign. He canvasses North Nashville neighborhoods and strategizes their efforts with the fervor of an activist — one who took Obama's message to build more and better schools to heart.

"If this were a sporting contest, you'd think that we were losing," Gupta says of the state of education. Though he chose social entrepreneurialism over law, his background certainly helps.

"Law is about the ability to frame an argument," he says. "Because at the end of the day, a charter school is really an argument — to the city, to the parents, to the people who fund the school. Right now, our school system is antiquated and based off a lot of old assumptions. Kids used to have to go home and farm, and we're not doing that as much anymore, especially in urban areas. So we can afford to spend a little longer now and catch our kids up on some key skills."

Of course, the argument requires some real elbow grease to produce results. For Liberty Collegiate and Nashville Prep, that means longer school days and a longer school year. Double the math and double the literacy. Tutors for every child who needs one. Individualized attention at every turn. Plus an extraordinary commitment from students, parents, and of course, the teachers.

"We say this a lot," says Mendez. "It's not rocket science, it's just the hardest work on planet Earth."