The $500 million question: can charter management organizations deliver quality education at scale?

The $500 million question: can charter management organizations deliver quality education at scale? Charter school management organizations (CMOs) have emerged as apopular means for bringing charter schooling to scale. Advocates creditCMOs with delivering a coherent model of charter schooling to a growingnumber of children across numerous sites. Skeptics have wondered whetherCMOs constitute an effective management approach, whether theywon't merely re-create the pathologies of school districts as theygrow in size and scale, and whether they are well-suited to make use ofnew technological tools. In this forum, Robin Lake of the University ofWashington's Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) andCharter School Growth Fund (CSGF) CEO Kevin Hall discuss what we knowabout the strengths and frailties of CMOs, what the future holds, andwhat promising alternatives might be. EN: How should we define a "quality" charter school? Howdoes quality vary between those operated by CMOs and those that are not?What is the track record of CMOs to date, in terms of quality-consciousgrowth and replication? Kevin Hall: At a minimum, a high-quality charter school produces avast majority of students who meet or exceed academic standardsregardless of their ethnic or socioeconomic background and who are wellprepared for postsecondary success. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Charter School Growth Fund invests in CMOs that operatenetworks of high-quality charter schools, providing grant and loanfinancing packages that enable these organizations to expand theircapacity to serve more low-income and minority students. Over the pastfive years, CSGF has invested in more than 20 nonprofit charter-schooloperators. Among them are successful charter school networks across thecountry, such as Achievement First, YES Prep, KIPP, RocketshipEducation, and IDEA Public Schools. In fall 2010, CSGF announced thelaunch of a new fund of $160 million to invest in the expansion of thebest-performing charter schools and CMOs nationally over the next fiveyears. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Approximately 95 percent of CSGF's member schools enablestudents to outperform comparable district schools in both math andreading; nearly 70 percent of schools enable their students tooutperform state averages in both math and reading, although they servemuch higher than average percentages of low-income and minoritystudents. Some of our CMO schools are beginning to close the achievementgap; their students perform better than affluent students whotraditionally outperform low-income students by a significant margin.This is an extremely rare level of performance, particularly fororganizations that run a number of schools. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While success stories reveal the potential of high-quality charterschools (and CMOs in particular), there are certainly many poorlyperforming charter schools across the country as well. It is importantthat those schools be closed in order to protect the integrity of thecharter schools proposition: increased flexibility in exchange forperformance accountability. As a balance to that strategy, however,there also needs to be an effort to expand the reach of the highestperformers, particularly those that are able to scale their work toserve more students. Several of the CMOs in our portfolio are improvingtheir performance as they get bigger, a historical rarity in the K-12sector, though a phenomenon that is quite common in other sectors. Robin Lake: The quality of any school, charter or not, has to bemeasured in terms of outcomes: are students better prepared for college,career, and citizenship than they would have been had they not attendedthat school? Rigorous research on charter school performance (studiesthat make true apples-to-apples comparisons) shows that there istremendous variation nationally; charter schools often outperformtraditional public schools, though not the majority of the time. When itcomes to educating low-income students, however, charter schools do tendto outperform other public schools. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many hope that by replicating high-performing schools CMOs willprovide more consistent results than stand-alone charter schools haveachieved, but there is no rigorous evidence yet to support that claimnationally. Many CMOs do seem to outperform their district schools, butthere is also a lot of variation among CMOs and even within a particularCMO's portfolio of schools. The CMOs we often point to as successesrepresent a very small portion of the 80 or so CMOs in the country.It's not clear that the CMO model, as a rule, produces moreconsistent quality than does effective authorizing and oversight of"one-off" charter schools. CMO founders are finding that large-scale replication withfidelity, especially at the high-school level, is a lot more difficultthan they thought it would be. It's also true that CMOs sometimesserve fewer special needs and ELL students and students with severebehavior challenges than their district counterparts, so achievementstudies have to take that into account. The study we (CRPE) areconducting in partnership with Mathematica is the first nationwideapples-to-apples analysis of CMO effectiveness. "The National Studyof Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Report onInterim Findings" is available on the CRPE website. A final report,with achievement results, is due out in 2011. EN: How much private funding has gone into CMOs so far and havethese investments delivered? RL: Most estimates put the total philanthropic investment in CMOsat around $500 million, and most of the big foundations are no longerfunding stand-alone charter school start-up. I don't think anyonewould disagree that some great things have come from those investments.Some CMOs are creating opportunities for low-income and minoritystudents that people didn't generally think were possible, and theyhave shown the results can be replicated. That's a very importantlesson. But CMOs are growing slowly and exist in a very limited number ofcities. The CMO model is typically highly centralized, with servicesakin to school districts. That model, so far, has produced new schoolspretty slowly (the average CMO grows by one school a year), and manyCMOs have built up very expensive central offices that could not existwithout continued philanthropic support. Many of the well-known CMOsreport annual spending of more than $13,000 per student. That level ofspending may be necessary to serve our neediest students, but in no wayrepresents an obvious cost saving over school districts and stand-alonecharter schools. The CMO business model is so far proving impossible tosustain on public funding alone. A well-known CMO in California recentlyrequired an infusion of $700,000 in private funding to prevent financialcollapse. More of these bail-outs may be on the horizon. It's hard to say exactly how many schools have been createdfrom private money invested in CMOs, but our estimate is around 400.That means that more than 1 million private dollars have gone into eachof the existing CMO schools so far (though some of that money is likelyintended to fund central office systems to support future growth). Could that half billion dollars have been spent in ways thatproduced a far greater number of high-quality charter schools? I thinkit's likely. Diverse investments in innovative approaches to scale,such as back office and data management services, leadership training,and technology platforms for promising stand-alone charter schools,might have vastly increased the quality and number of new schoolsthroughout the country. The important question now is how to make themost out of new federal dollars intended to support replication andscale. It would be a shame and a great waste of money not to be honestabout, and learn from, the first generation of CMOs to create faster andmore efficient paths to scale. Our report suggests a variety of waysthat that can happen, including experimentation with smaller and leanermanagement organizations like those that are cropping up in New Orleansand New York City. KH: CMOs have demonstrated that they can create high-qualityschools at a fraction of the cost of traditional school districts, butlike any growing organization they need capital to expand. Until CMOscan benefit from the billions of dollars of school bonds raised bydistricts, they will need "equity like" investments fromphilanthropy in order to expand and effectively serve more students. Theschools operated by CMOs often receive less overall public funding on aper-pupil basis than comparable district-run public schools, with thedeficit ranging from approximately 10 to 30 percent. The deficit varieswidely by geography, due to differences in the cost and funding offacilities as well as other factors. Many CMOs utilize a model where newschools operate with a deficit for two to four years until the schoolsreach full enrollment capacity, at which point the schools will generateoperating "surpluses" at the site level. To date, CSGF has committed more than $75 million to more than 20emerging CMOs that represent more than 55,000 seats and are on track toexceed 100,000 seats. At that point our portfolio's totalenrollment would place it in the top 30 school districts by size in thenation. CSGF's goal as a financial investor is to enable organizationsto reach sustainability on public revenues. When the schools reachcapacity, they pay management fees to fund central administrative costs,such as academic coaches, student data systems, and payroll. The scaling of high-performing CMOs provides one of the highestlevels of return and leverage for philanthropic funds, particularly whenyou consider that CMOs tend to deliver much higher student achievementthan the local district; these schools will continue to serve studentsin a high-quality way over time; and there are few investments in K-12that have consistently yielded this level of performance. The long-term funding solution is twofold: equitable funding andaccess to publicly financed school facilities. The federal governmenthas a critical investment role to play in 1) supporting the replicationand scale-up of the best providers through its grant programs; 2)improving access to low-cost public facilities for charter schoolsthrough its own funds and by leveraging existing public-school space; 3)pushing states and local districts toward more equitable funding systemsfor all public school students, including those in charter schools; and4) supporting efforts to create early-stage, innovative, and scalablemodels that incorporate greater uses of learning technology. EN: What is the largest number of high-quality charter schools youcould see existing CMOs creating over the next five years? What'sthe theory that envisions how these schools will have an impact on thelarger system? KH: Over the past 10 years, the total number of students attendingschools run by high-performing CMOs increased at least tenfold, fromapproximately 10,000 students in 2000 to more than 100,000 studentstoday. Over the next decade, the opportunity exists for CMOs to continuethis pace of growth and serve more than 1 million students by 2020. Growth in the CMO sector will come in three main areas: 1) ExistingCMOs will continue to scale up. Most CMOs are adding one to five newschools per year as well as filling out their existing schools, and afew over the next several years may begin to expand to new regions.Currently, the CMOs in our portfolio are averaging annual growth ratesof about 30 percent. 2) New CMOs will emerge from outstanding singleschools, particularly in regions where many high-performing schools werelaunched over the past five to seven years. 3) Next-generation modelsshowing promising early results will take root. Rocketship Education, aCMO based in northern California, uses a "hybrid" model thatcombines learning technology with great teaching to deliver outstandingresults at much lower school site-level costs. High-quality CMOs will set the bar for the entire K-12 sector whenit comes to educating disadvantaged students. Over the next decade,several successful operators will serve a significant share of theirlocal market (at least 10 to 15 percent of all students). Moreimportantly, based on continuing their historic levels of performance,these schools could double the number of low-income students going on tocollege in these communities. Even though charter school enrollment isrelatively small, we expect charter schools to dramatically increase thenumber of low-income students graduating from four-year colleges, and,in many cases, exceed the number of college graduates emerging from themuch larger local district schools. This level of performance at scalewill have a deep impact in those communities on the expectations forwhat schools can accomplish. About half of the public school students in the U.S. attend schoolsin districts that have fewer than 10,000 students. Many CMOs thatstarted from scratch over the last decade will grow to be among thelargest 10 percent of districts in the country. Aggressive smallerdistricts may adopt some of the practices of these CMOs, including howthey recruit, select, and develop talent; the culture they build intheir schools; and the way they manage multiple schools, moreeffectively pairing accountability and decisionmaking rights throughoutthe school system. RL: The CMOs we've surveyed (about half of those in thecountry) say they plan to create just over 300 new schools in the nextfive years. If we double or even triple that number, we are stillnowhere near the number of schools needed to replace or transform the13,000 chronically low-performing schools in the U.S. So while CMOs arereplicating as quickly as they can and are becoming a significantpresence in some cities, they are clearly still "a drop in thebucket" when it comes to large-scale public-school improvement. Some have suggested that the next generation of CMOs will producefar greater numbers of schools, but CMO growth projections havehistorically been overly optimistic. What's more, many U.S. citieshave no hope of attracting CMOs: a large majority of CMOs are eithercommitted to staying in a particular city or state or cannot operate instates with lower per-pupil funding. Few existing CMOs are interested inturning around existing schools, one of the highest priorities ofSecretary Duncan. Some CMOs believe that by flooding a particular district withhigh-quality schools and by providing proof that it is possible to closethe achievement gap, they will prod entire school systems into changing.Unfortunately, so far only a few school districts in the country areresponding to CMOs in this way. It seems clear, then, that if thecharter sector hopes to contribute to transformational numbers inhigh-quality public schools, the current CMO approach alone can'tget it there. EN: How big a challenge is the replication of high-quality schools,even by admired CMOs? What measures, whether in terms of practice orpolicy, could help CMOs succeed at delivering more high-quality schoolsat scale? RL: Finding ways to replicate successful schools has stymied publiceducation for decades. CMOs have so far scaled faster and seemingly withmore consistency than any of the many failed dissemination andreplication strategies of the past, including comprehensive schoolreform. But the challenge is still immense. Most CMOs say thatfacilities costs, inadequate per-pupil funding, and limited access tohigh-quality teachers and leaders are barriers to growth. All of thoseissues could be addressed by changes to local, state, and federalpolicies. But CMOs also suffer from many self-inflicted problems as theyscale: many are dealing with very high teacher turnover, increasingstandardization and bureaucracy, and difficulty maintaining consistentquality, especially in their high-school models. Larger CMOs arebeginning to look a lot like the very school districts charter schoolswanted to escape. The expense of CMO central supports means that fewCMOs have shown they can replicate without the massive philanthropicsubsidies they have enjoyed in the past. In our survey, CMO leaders saidthat uncertainty about continued philanthropic funding is second only tolimited access to facilities as their most significant barrier to scale. These challenges are not reasons to dismiss the CMO model, but theydo point out that CMO problems will not be solved with simply morepublic funding or access to public facilities. CMOs were meant to helpcharter schools capture economies of scale, given expected lowerper-pupil funding relative to school districts. Large CMO models havenot achieved those economies (though they are likely achieving othergoals), and it is possible that other initiatives might be better ableto capture economies of scale and still maintain high quality. Somepossibilities: CMOs might spin off schools once they are stabilized orthey might only offer very limited central office services. Newtechnologies might make it possible for stand-alone charter schools to"plug in" to remote services that provide CMO-like supports,such as data analysis or real-time teacher coaching. KH: We are beginning to see CMOs succeed in delivering consistenthigh-level quality across their networks. For example, Aspire PublicSchools operated 25 schools last year and averaged a 9.5 (out of 10)similar-schools ranking, meaning their schools are averaging a rankingin the top 5 percent of schools in California serving similardemographics. Organizations like Aspire, Uncommon Schools, IDEA, and YESPrep are proving beyond a doubt that school systems can deliver highquality at scale. The main barriers to replication are indeed building aquality talent pipeline, particularly at the school-site level; ensuringfull per-pupil funding follows the student; access to publicly financedfacilities, one of the largest barriers, particularly for early-stageCMOs; patient, long-term focused growth capital sufficient to enableCMOs to build out high-performing networks; and the regulatoryframework, as state and district-level structures and policies are oftenat odds with scaling up high-performing and promising new operators. There has been good progress over the past year on the policy frontin many states, and the Obama administration and Secretary Duncan havebeen working on smart ways of lowering the barriers outlined above.Recently, a few states and cities have been working to createenvironments where the best-performing CMOs might be able to expand andthrive. EN: How do CMOs compare to traditional school districts? Will theyreplicate the same dysfunctions as large school districts, or will theybe able to avoid this fate? KH: The successful CMOs in our portfolio have been able to putstudent achievement as the driving force within their organizations.Because of this relentless focus on achievement, we have seen theseorganizations innovate in critical areas like improving instruction inthe classroom, providing career paths for teachers, and principalleadership training. We believe these innovations are possible intraditional school districts, but the work is complicated by factorsthat distract from the core mission of student achievement. Many outstanding CMOs incorporate common elements in theirapproach. In many cases, this means a longer school day and a longerschool year than those found in a traditional public-school setting. Theorganizations emphasize carefully recruiting, selecting, developing, andevaluating talent, especially at the principal and teacher level. Theorganizations have a firm conviction to use data to make hard choices.The enterprise is built from the classroom and school level"up" versus an organizational model of a central, bureaucraticorganization driven "top down," as is typical in most U.S.school districts. Principals and teachers at the school level haveconsiderable latitude for decisionmaking inside the construct of theacademic, operational, and financial model of the organization. Theseorganizations have an intense and meaningful focus on a set of valuesthat permeate the school and entire organization. Students, faculty, andstaff are held accountable for living these values, and they arereinforced by authentic "cultural norms" shared by all. The central office is a "service provider" that seeks tofree schools and educators from operational burdens and allow them tomaximize the time and resources that are focused on student learning. Afocus on efficiency, particularly with respect to nonschoolexpenditures, enables more funds to be spent closest to the student andthe use of school time to maximize the amount of learning for students.While each of these elements is consistently present, high-performingCMOs offer a diversity of models through which they accomplish academicexcellence. These models cater to the unique needs of each CMO'sstudent population. Because many of these elements are highly scalable, the rise ofhigh-performing CMOs represents one of the most promising developmentsin K-12. Other key differences between CMOs and most school districtswill enable the former to continue to scale effectively: 1) Governancestructure. CMOs are governed by self-perpetuating boards that can aligntheir governance and oversight around the organization delivering on itsmission over time. Elected school boards are often unable to deliverupon this function effectively. 2) Client focus. CMOs are subject tomarket forces. They have to deliver for their parents, students, andemployees every day or they will lose them. This discipline helps tomaintain focus on providing the environment where students can achieve.3) Talent opportunities. With their flexibility, CMOs are better able toattract and reward talent, most importantly, great teachers and schoolleaders. They create a culture in which people are united around acommon mission, and their growth enables them to provide talent with newchallenges and opportunities. CMOs are beginning to achieve a level ofscale, in which they are developing more of their own leadership andbuilding great cultures of excellence. As an example, YES Prep wasrecently named one of the "Best Places to Work" in Houston,based on the feedback from their team members. As our successful CMOs grow, they must work hard to remain nimbleand innovative to avoid replicating the bureaucracies we haveencountered in other school systems. So far, they look more likehigh-performing companies and nonprofits than school districts. Theyhave many of the same functions as those found in a"traditional" district structure, but their culture,incentives, and alignment are very different from the majority of largerschool districts in the U.S. RL: Many CMO leaders fear they will recreate the same systems theyhad hoped to escape and to some extent there are signs this ishappening. This is in part because a centralized approach to schoolmanagement is what everyone--district leaders and business peopleworking in education--knows. The organizational charts and centraloffice services offered look strikingly similar. It's also truethat as CMOs have grown larger and more bureaucratic, many arestruggling to find ways to remain innovative, flexible, and responsiveto their teachers. Our research shows that larger CMOs are more likelyto prescribe solutions to their schools and are more likely to haveformalized policies. Organizational rigidity and complexity are classicpathologies of scale that most large organizations, including schoolsdistricts, encounter. Unchecked, they can carry serious organizationaland financial costs. One-fifth of CMO central office leaders say thatefforts are underway to unionize their teachers. There are important differences between CMOs and districts,however. Most notably, CMOs tend to include significantly more time forinstruction in their schools and focus much more on leader and teacheraccountability. CMO leaders also say it is easier to keep theorganization nimble and focused on the mission without the politics ofelected school boards. It's impossible to say, however, whetherthese potential advantages over districts can be sustained over time asCMOs grow and mature. In theory, one of the prime advantages of the charter sector is itsdecentralized nature, which allows teachers and principals to adoptinnovative missions, methods, and organizational structures that workbest for its community of students and change them quickly if they donot work. Some of the most effective charter schools thrive because theculture of the organization is nimble and informal, inspiring teachersto work as cohesive, trusting teams and put forth monumental effort onbehalf of the neediest students. If large, centrally plannedorganizations like CMOs come to dominate charter schooling, much of thatadvantage may be lost. EN: How do CMOs compare to for-profit education managementorganizations (EMOs)? Given that CMOs have more difficulty generatingcapital, must rely more heavily on philanthropy and government grants,and have few incentives to expand aggressively, is there value inenvisioning a larger role for EMOs going forward? RL: A lot of investors were disappointed with what they perceivedto be lackluster quality in early EMO expansion. Many early EMOsexpanded quickly and opportunistically to meet aggressive investorgrowth targets and imploded as a result. They also struggled with localcommunity politics because state charter laws required them to contractwith nonprofit governing boards rather than run schools directly. Thetheory was that nonprofits would have more incentive to stay focused onquality and would be able to avoid the political and governance fightsof EMOs. CMOs do seem to have set a higher bar on student learning andtheir governing boards are typically pretty high functioning, but thetrade-offs mentioned are real. Some EMOs, such as National HeritageAcademies, are expanding aggressively throughout the Midwest, and weshould study their results. Given the need for more high-qualityschools, we should be open to finding ways for any high-qualitypublic-school operator to be successful, whether they are stand-alonecharter schools, EMOs, franchises, networks, or CMOs. There may even benew organizational models and structures that could combine the bestelements of all of those organizational types. KH: Students, parents, and teachers should have choices amongschools operated by a variety of providers. The key is the quality ofthe school, not who runs it. Schools run by for-profit EMOs will be animportant part of the long-term picture, but there are structuraldifferences that make the CMO approach more attractive now, includingthe ability of a CMO to hold its own charter, which many for-profitscannot do. For-profit organizations have strong potential in terms oftheir ability to develop new models, particularly those that operate invarious "turn-around" environments and incorporateindividualized learning technology. In the near term, there aresignificant barriers to raising for-profit venture capital foroperators. EN: How much potential is there for charter schooling to utilizevirtual learning or introduce new technologies? Are CMOs a good way tohelp make use of these new tools at scale, or are there faster andbetter ways to expand their use? KH: A new generation of education entrepreneurs will find ways totransform the current "one teacher, one classroom" mindsetthat dominates K-12 education. CMOs are beginning to figure out ways tocombine adaptive learning technologies and great instruction to deliveroutstanding student achievement. CMOs like Rocket-ship Education havebeen early innovators in this area, and they are inspiring a new wave oftechnology innovation in the charter school sector. These "nextgeneration" models are highly compelling in the context ofpersistently poor academic performance and declining education fundinganticipated over the next several years. Technology can provide a wealth of data about what students knowand where there are gaps. Over time, educators will find new ways toharness this information to accelerate learning and use school resourcesmore effectively. Leading-edge innovation will initially happen outside oftraditional school districts and will most likely occur in charterschools and the home school market. It is important that CMOs play acentral role in this innovation because they can implement new ideaswhile setting the standard for high student achievement. In the past,"innovation" in K-12 has not always resulted in better studentoutcomes. Many large districts will struggle to create an atmospherethat promotes innovation as they wrestle with dramatically changing theexisting teaching and learning paradigm, especially given existing laborcontracts; building a spirit of risk-taking; and maintaining anunwavering commitment to success that will be required to develop newand innovative models that produce outstanding results. RL: So far CMOs seem to have used technology mainly as a way tocreate central office systems, such as data dashboards and internalorganizational tools. These tools seem to be valuableperformance-management tools, but if CMOs hope to expand much faster andmore effectively than they have, they need to find ways to reduce costsat the school level. Several new CMOs are experimenting with ways to usetechnology to help reduce school labor costs, and some charter schoolnetworks exist as virtual schools. I expect to see a lot moreexperimentation with technology as CMOs seek ways to operate schools forless money and find new ways to educate students effectively. CMOs haveso far not been hotbeds of innovative practices, but they seem to beable to adopt others' innovations quickly. I suspect that onlinelearning will continue to expand mainly via course providers like K12,but savvy customers like CMOs and high-performing stand-alone charterschools will help increase the quality of high-tech platforms. EN: When we look out to 2020, what kind of role will CMOs beplaying in the delivery of education? RL: CMOs are important in education reform, but they can and shouldonly be one piece of the scale puzzle. In the next 10 years I hope CMOswill evolve to operate in partnership with school districts that want toturn around low-performing schools and oversee a portfolio of differentschool-governance models. In any given community I expect we will seeCMOs operating alongside high-quality stand-alone charter schools,franchises, and networks. I also expect we'll see lots of mutationsof the CMO idea. Some might act as incubators for new schools andspin-off schools once they are stable. Others might see their role asmatching students with online and community services rather than runningschools directly. The best CMOs are obsessed with continuous improvement and adopt a"whatever it takes" mentality to solve problems that get inthe way of student achievement. We need to adopt the same level ofurgency and commitment to problem solving around getting to scale,continually inventing a new architecture to support effective newschools rather than being wedded to any model of the past. This willmean a commitment from CMO leaders, funders, and policymakers to addressweaknesses in the current CMO model as well as experimentation and realingenuity to regularly develop and test new models. KH: In the next decade, the highest-performing CMOs have atremendous opportunity to transform American education and ensure thatdemography is not destiny for our nation's students. By 2020, thefollowing is possible: High-performing CMOs will be graduating more than80 percent of their students college- and work-ready regardless offamily income. Their schools will set the pace both locally andnationally for achievement performance, particularly for low-incomestudents. More than 200 CMO organizations will be delivering aconsistent level of high-quality education, creating this performanceacross many cities and states. A small number of CMOs will have grown toserve at least 20,000 students, placing them among the largest 2 percentof school districts nationally in terms of size, while delivering alevel of performance that will change the current paradigm of deliveringperformance at scale. Many CMOs will serve more than 10 percent of thestudents in a local market and will help to more than double the numberof low-income students going to college in their community. Several CMOswill become the leading-edge providers using "hybrid"approaches that combine the best of emerging adaptive learningtechnologies with great teaching talent and school cultures to providemore personalized and effective instruction for students. There is no "silver bullet" that will transform K-12education in our country. However, the creation and rise of very highperforming charter management organizations that have a very distinctculture, operating philosophy, and ability to deliver results will be animportant element in driving change. Education Next talks with Kevin Hall and Robin Lake Achievement First Founded: 2003 Schools: 17 Locations: CT, NY Students: 4,500 Aspire Public Schools Founded: 1998 Schools: 30 Locations: CA Students: 9,800 IDEA Public Schools Founded: 2000 Schools: 8 Locations: TX Students: 6,000 KIPP Founded: 1999 Schools: 99 Locations: AR, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, LA, MA, MD, MN, MO, NC,NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, TN, TX Students: 26,000 Rocketship Education Founded: 2006 Schools: 3 Locations: CA Students: 1,264 Uncommon Schools Founded: 2005 Schools: 24 Locations: MA, NY, NJ Students: 4,500 YES Prep Founded: 1998 Schools: 8 Locations: TX Students: 4,200