10 Urban EducationYears Of

More than 6,700 reasons to celebrate

Craig Henderson, Chicago International board president, was serving on the board of the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Foundation (DMSF) when he first considered the power of the charter school movement. Founded 18 years ago, DMSF provides four-year scholarships and educational support to 420 high school students who attend private schools that will prepare them for college.

“We were minding our own business, giving about 50 scholarships a year, when the Civic Committee [of the Commercial Club of Chicago] came knocking,” Henderson says. Made up of senior executives from Chicago’s top institutions, the committee had lobbied hard for charter schools. The city had given the committee the responsibility of figuring out who would run Chicago’s first 15 charter schools, but Henderson says Daniel Murphy’s board just wasn’t interested in running public schools.

“But then [the committee members] asked, ‘How many kids are you helping now?’” Henderson says. “We told them 50. And they said, ‘If you open a charter school, you can help 600 kids.’ That was the hook that got us to consider it.”

DMSF board members Henderson, David Chizewer, Kate Gottfred and Jim Murphy—who had founded DMSF—agreed to try. Their mission: extend the opportunities afforded to Daniel Murphy Scholars to a larger group of children by providing both high-quality elementary school choices and increasing the number of public, open enrollment, college-preparatory high schools in Chicago.

To this end, they enlisted board members with different areas of expertise: education, law, finance, facilities, and governance. “We wanted an organization that was replicable and scalable,” Henderson says. “We had to operate on the paltry amount of money we received from the government.”

One of the board’s first decisions was to build an operating model that was different from most charter school structures. “We decided the board would be an oversight board, and we’d farm out school operations to school management organizations [or SMOs],” Henderson explains.

by Hilary Masell Oswald

FocalPoint | 13

10Years of

Urban Education

The benefits of the model are threefold, he says. “First, it allows us to be objective about how the SMOs are doing. If somebody is not doing a good job, we can terminate the contract and hire someone else.” Second, the board creates competition among management companies because they’re vying for more schools. Competition yields higher performance.

And third, “we were able to build scalability, and with scalability come economies of scale,” Henderson says. “If you run one school, you need a director of education, of course. If you run 11 schools, you still just need one director of education. Therefore, more dollars go to the classroom, where they should be.”

When the board applied for and received one of the first public school charters in Illinois, Chicago International was born. In August of 1997, two campuses—Longwood and Bucktown—opened their doors to 1,510 children in kindergarten through ninth grade.

The school flourished. More campuses opened, and more families added their names to the waiting lists. (Today,

Chicago International has more than 2,400 students on its waiting lists). Henderson says the growth prompted the board to reconsider how best to manage the campuses. Instead of relying on one school management organization, they hired three SMOs—one national provider (Edison Schools), one local provider (American Quality Schools), and one wholly owned subsidiary with expertise in high school curriculum development (Civitas Schools)—to meet students’ diverse needs. “The SMOs have different strengths, and we match them with the different needs on our campuses,” Henderson says. “Plus, the SMOs share best practices, which makes the whole organization better.”

By August of 2003, Chicago International had changed dramatically: 3,200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade were attending six campuses. With its three SMOs, the board further clarified its operating model. Guided by the board, the central office would oversee student performance evaluation, regulatory compliance, fiscal management, capital facilities projects, fundraising, school-wide policies, and relationships

14 | FocalPoint

with external partners. The SMO partners were responsible for all things related to the education of students: training and managing personnel, implementing curriculum, and managing the school culture and climate in accordance with the mission and vision of Chicago International.

In the 2004-05 school year, Chicago International got a $40,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation to develop a 10-year business plan. Students had been outperforming their Chicago Public School counter-parts for years, but standardized test scores and the caliber of colleges that graduates were choosing suggested that Chicago International had not yet achieved its mission. “The grant was the catalyst that got us to refocus on what was important: education results,” Henderson says. “The business plan allowed us to focus on accountability and curriculum, to really look at what is important.”

Henderson says that student outcomes show that the board’s efforts are working. (See “A decade of progress”). “I think the model is key. I think the other crucial thing we do is give control of the classroom to teachers, and we believe time on task in the classroom is very important,” he says. “What really makes this organization work is the commitment of our teachers and administrators. The fact that they work two more hours per day and 19 more days per year than their counterparts in the Chicago Public School system and for comparable wages—that’s what makes our campuses so successful.”

In addition to dedicated teachers, Chicago International’s board is proud of the revitalization the schools have brought to far South and West Side neighborhoods. The organization purchases its buildings or leases them long-term from the Archdiocese of Chicago; the renovation of these buildings—many of them in areas of high crime and low employment— has brought pride to these communities.

Henderson says the next 10 years will bring continued educational success for students. “If we have the results, we’ll continue to grow,” he says. “But the results have to come first.”

He’s looking forward to the opening of Chicago International Ralph Ellison High School, a new 600-student high school at 80th and Honore streets—a $15 million project on Chicago’s Southwest Side that includes the renovation of an historical structure and the creation of a new gymna-sium, named to honor the community. But most of all, he’s hoping to see the growth of a legacy that started 10 years ago with a few Chicagoans who shared a vision.

“It’s my belief that every child in the city of Chicago, regardless of economic status, should have a high-quality, college preparatory education,” he says. “That’s our mission for the next 10, 15, 25 years.”

Chicago International’s board believes that the campuses should operate without substantial philanthropic support. In order to be long-term community schools, the educational programs could not be affected by economic conditions that often impede fundraising; however, generous contributions from our donors have allowed us to expand our offerings to our students, develop new curricula and build schools. Here is a look at the organizations that have supported Chicago International.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: More than $4 million to develop a new high school curriculum, which is showing significant early signs of success, and to open four high schools

Charter Growth Fund: $1.4 million to develop an accountability program

Walton Family Foundation: $230,000 per campus for start-up expenses for new campuses

Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) and funding partners (Kraft Foods, Judd Enterprises, Circle of Service Foundation and the Woodley Road Neighbors): Commit $500,000 per new campus over the first three years of existence

KaBOOM! and partners (The Home Depot & AMC Mortgage Services): Construction of new playgrounds on six CICS campuses—approximate in-kind value of $45,000 per playground

Money Well Spent

FocalPoint | 15