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Charter Management Organizations

To date, NewSchools has made portfolio-level investments in 16 charter management organizations (CMOs) across the country.

Scale: These school managers currently operate 124 high-quality schools and touch the lives of nearly 38,000 students across the country. The demand for these schools far outstrips their capacity: in the 2005-2006 school year, there were 3.5 applications for every available seats in these schools. As such, these CMOs plan to continue growing. Over the next several years, the organizations we support will run more than 200 charter schools and serve nearly 75,000 students − making NewSchools' national portfolio comparable in scale to a mid-sized urban district.

Quality: Even more important than the scale of our CMOs' operations is the quality of the education they are providing to their students.

• In the 2005-2006 school year, the vast majority our CMOs substantially outperformed their district peers. This success was most significant among underserved populations. Low-income students enrolled in our CMOs' elementary and middle schools outperformed their district peers by 13 percentage points in reading and 8 percentage points in math; at the high school level, they exceeded district averages by 17 percentage points in reading and 14 percentage points in math. See the image below for more detail.

• However, merely outperforming these urban school districts – many of which have high numbers of underperforming schools – is simply not enough. As such, NewSchools' portfolio organizations are striving for an ambitious goal: by 2010, they will strive to close the achievement gap, such that the performance of students in these schools will exceed that of their state’s non-low-income students.

• The ultimate goal for these schools is to provide students with an education that prepares them for success in college and beyond. Our ventures are making great strides toward this goal: nearly 80% of high school students in CMOs supported by NewSchools graduate from high school, and 95% of these graduates have enrolled in college.