Overview
New Schools is committed to creating new and innovative schools that provide high-quality educational options to serve the diverse needs of Chicago’s public school students. We create and support quality schools through a comprehensive approach that recruits high-quality school operators, evaluates school proposals through a rigorous request for proposals (RFP), supports approved schools through planning, incubation, school opening, and school operation, and ensures accountability through regular monitoring of multiple measures of success.
We manage a portfolio of 104 schools that consists of schools developed through Renaissance 2010 and all charter and professional development schools created before Renaissance 2010. These schools include "new starts" and "turnaround" schools which seek to transform struggling schools into quality educational options for Chicago students.
Goals
We work to continue to open high quality school options throughout Chicago and take the necessary steps to recruit a diverse array of excellent educational providers. We will work to:
- Continue to open high quality schools
- Serve the remaining six priority communities identified at the start of Renaissance 2010
- Support the portfolio of 104 schools
- Increase the number of charters available to Chicago
- Strive to make the opening of new schools a community-based process at all steps
Current initiatives
The current initiatives revolve heavily on the recruitment of high quality education providers. For the fifth round of recruitment, the RFP concentrated on certain communities with the greatest need for new school options and on a number of school types:
- Career preparatory schools
- Single sex schools
- Alternative schools
Accomplishments
With the addition of several new schools each year, there is a constant challenge to continue to provide the same excellent support to all schools. We will proceed to grow in a way that continually offers new school options while aligning support to help ensure schools succeed in providing high quality education options. Accomplishments include:
- A portfolio of 104 schools
- 73 Renaissance 2010 schools opened since 2005, with 20 schools approved to open in the fall of 2009
- 19 priority communities with Renaissance 2010 schools (as of fall 2009)
Resources
The Chicago Public Schools publishes this annual report of charter schools’ performance to increase transparency on the successes and points of improvement for charter schools.