Reporter Richard Whitmire recently discovered the Building Excellent Schools (BES) fellowship program while interviewing a number of its graduates, leaders of high-performing charter schools across the country. The program allows promising charter school leaders to learn from the best practitioners in the field, to forge vital connections, and to see firsthand the importance of a strong leadership team. Over the years, BES has imparted these skills to many educators who have gone forth to lead new charter schools with the zeal of pioneers.
We here at Fordham have seen firsthand what Whitmire describes, because Columbus, Ohio is home to BES Fellow Andrew Boy—founder and chief executive officer at the United Schools Network (USN). Since Andy completed his BES fellowship and started his first school in a tiny church in 2008, he and his team have created a network of four schools successfully serving approximately 560 students in low-income neighborhoods in Columbus.
According to USN’s 2014 Annual Report, 89 percent of seventh graders at USN’s Dana Avenue campus scored proficient or higher on the reading portion of the Ohio Achievement Assessment. That’s five percentage points higher than all Ohio public school students. Students in USN’s Main Street campus grew over four times the rate needed to score an A on the state’s value-added measure. And USN’s eighth graders outscored or matched fourteen of the sixteen Franklin County school districts on the math (96 percent proficient) and reading (94 percent proficient) state tests.
These results, and others like them across the country, are par for the course for BES fellows. The organization has built up strong leaders who have seeded successful schools across the country. Long may it continue to do so.
