In early May, a coalition of stakeholders from business, philanthropy, and education organizations in Cincinnati announced a bold new public-private partnership called Accelerate Great Schools (AGS). The nonprofit organization is modeled after a similar program in Indianapolis known as the Mind Trust. In Indy, the Mind Trust is accomplishing some pretty remarkable things, including attracting established reform organizations and charter operators with proven records, and funding fellowships for talented people with ideas that have the potential to transform education. But what makes Cincinnati the right place to implement such a daring venture, and what exactly is AGS trying to accomplish?
Part of the reason why Accelerate Great Schools is coming together in Cincinnati—and has a chance to be successful—is because education in the Queen City has a lot going for it already. The school district, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), has implemented community learning centers (CLCs). CLCs are schools that offer more than academics. They also provide health services such as eye centers, dental clinics, and mental health counseling; after-school programs and tutoring; parent and family engagement programs; early career and college access services; mentoring; and arts and recreational programming for students, families, and the entire community. (The jury is still out about whether Cincinnati’s CLCs will be as effective as organizations like the Harlem Children’s Zone). At the same time, CPS has also instituted a high-schools-of-choice model, which allows every student to choose his or her high school rather than being assigned one based on home address. This opens up a set of customized options for students and families. The community has also been a strong partner in improving the city’s schools. The Strive Partnership is a group of over three hundred leaders from education, businesses, communities, and nonprofits who have banded together to accomplish a common set of goals that includes improving kindergarten readiness, fourth-grade reading and math scores, graduation rates, and college completion. In addition, overall results have historically been better in Cincinnati than in the rest of the Big Eight districts. Cincinnati Public Schools’ 2013–14 state report card shows the highest performance index score of any of the Big Eight districts—a grade of C, compared to other districts’ Ds and Fs. (For the report cards of the other Big Eight urban districts, see here).
While there is much to be proud of, the rest of the district’s report card is dotted with Fs (with the exception of a C in the K–3 literacy component) and demonstrates that much work remains to be done. The district’s four-year graduation rate is just above 73 percent. AGS estimates that of the approximately fifty thousand students in Cincinnati Public Schools’ geographical territory, only 5,500 (about 15 percent) are in high-quality seats. They estimate that an additional 39 percent are in medium-quality seats, which leaves the remaining percentage—almost half of all students—in low-quality seats. In his report Poised for Progress: Analysis of Ohio's School Report Cards 2013–14, my colleague Aaron Churchill estimates that around 17 percent of Cincinnati’s public school students (district and charter) attended a high-quality school in 2013–14.
Unfortunately, charters in Cincinnati perform just as poorly as CPS district schools. For instance, Aaron finds that over half of Cincinnati’s charter students attend an overall low-quality school—the highest percentage for Big Eight charter sectors. A recent CREDO report also offers data on Cincinnati charters: On average, Cincinnati charter students lose fourteen days of learning in math over the course of a school year when compared to traditional public school students and are on par with traditional public school students in reading. In other words, Cincinnati’s traditional and charter schools could use some help. And overall, while Cincinnati’s existing reforms appear to be a massive step in the right direction, thousands of students are still lacking access to high-quality seats.
Enter the accelerator. The Cincinnati Enquirer recently examined Accelerate Great Schools’s resemblance to the Mind Trust. The Enquirer published more information in subsequent articles, responses from supporters and critics cropped up, and a CEO was named. And yet there’s still relatively little information about what exactly Accelerate Great Schools is and how it will work. Here’s what we do know:
Who
AGS is a coalition of stakeholders that includes the Cincinnati Business Committee, the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, the Farmer Family Foundation, the Haile U.S. Bank Foundation, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, educational leaders from Cincinnati’s district and charter schools, and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Together, these organizations have created a nonprofit that aims to pursue broad educational excellence. AGS recently named Patrick Herrel as CEO. Herrel was previously the vice president of recruitment and selection at the Mind Trust and was named to Forbes’s 30 Under 30: Education list in 2012.
What
AGS has a three-part philosophy. First, it will focus on a school’s performance, not its operator. Second, it will embrace and support all successful schools whether they are district, charter, or Catholic. Third, it will focus on the development and expansion of schools and models that deliver outstanding results. Despite being labeled as “three parts,” these qualities mostly boil down to sector agnosticism that aims to fund, advocate for, and support high-quality schools as a way of creating more high-quality seats.
Speaking of seats, Accelerate Great Schools’s main goal is to almost quadruple the current number of high-quality seats. While the organization estimates that there are currently about 5,500, the goal is to have ten thousand by 2020 and twenty thousand by 2025.
How
In order to grow the number of high-quality seats, AGS has a few priorities. In particular, it aims to use its resources to recruit and grow high-performing school operators; strengthen teacher and principal talent pipelines through recruitment, training, and retention efforts; advocate for education policy improvements; and organize community support for education reform. Resources include a $25 million, five-year fund. AGS, at least for the moment, has announced plans to break the funding down into three spending categories:
- $15 million to support the growth of high-performing schools
- $5 million to support human capital investments that emphasize attracting, training, and retaining high-quality teachers and principals
- $5 million toward operational costs
To be clear, AGS doesn’t intend to take the place of the many great reforms that are already happening in the Queen City—nor should it. Instead, the accelerator will serve as a needed addition to current projects—an extra way to ensure that the number of high-quality seats in Cincinnati is growing every year. The commitment shown in creating the accelerator is exactly what’s needed if AGS is going to hit its ambitious and transformative goal of creating a total of twenty thousand high-quality seats in the Queen City.
