The Chicago Public Education Fund

News Release
at The Chicago Public Education Fund
Aidan Leonard, Development/Communications Associate
(312) 558-4503

October 7, 2005

U.S. Chamber of Commerce features The Fund as model for public-private partnerships

CHICAGO—The Chicago Public Education Fund's founding chairman, Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith, and founding president, Janet Knupp, spoke to an audience of business and civic leaders from around the country Thursday, October 6, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship's first-ever Business Education Network Summit in Washington, D.C.

Focusing on ways to promote communication, coordination and collaboration among businesses and their education partners, the summit was the first of its kind and highlighted The Fund as a model for effective public-private partnerships.

"Finding ways to create great partnerships built around people with shared values and goals has been one of The Fund's guiding principles and the key to its success," Smith said. "The summit offered the opportunity to build those partnerships on a national scale and we were honored to be highlighted for our results in Chicago and our venture philanthropy model."

Launched in 2000 by some of Chicago's most prominent business and civic leaders, The Chicago Public Education Fund is a venture capital fund for public education. Focused exclusively on the single most important factor in student achievement - school leadership - it seeks to accelerate that achievement in Chicago's public schools by building teams of talented teachers and principals in the schools that need them the most.

Like a venture capital fund, The Fund channels private sector dollars and ideas into a portfolio of high-impact programs that are aligned with Chicago Public Schools priorities and promise excellent returns through innovation and solid implementation. The Fund's board of directors and staff help those programs develop strategic plans, navigate relationships within the third largest school district in the nation, hire staff and management teams, recruit board members, develop marketing plans and much more.

"The Fund's model allows us to bring high-impact programs to scale and effect system-wide improvement," Knupp said. "Identifying and supporting great school leadership is the most effective way to boost student achievement, and we're proud of our results. The BEN Summit gave us the chance both to share what worked for us, and to learn from other organizations and leaders across the country."

By focusing on three key areas of school leadership - expert principals, master teachers and talented new teachers - The Fund has been highly effective in boosting the number of talented leaders in Chicago Public Schools. In addition to helping CPS systematically overhaul the way the district prepares and supports principals, The Fund has helped boost the number of National Board Certified teachers in Chicago from just 11 in 1999 to more than 350 today. Additionally, it has raised the number of first-year teachers hired through alternative routes to 35 percent, positioning teachers with deep content knowledge in classrooms that might otherwise have gone without a full-time teacher.

At the summit, Smith and Knupp highlighted those results on two separate panels. As part of the conference's opening plenary Leadership Roundtable, Smith presented with Tom Luce, assistant secretary for the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development in the U.S. Department of Education; Tom Vander Ark, executive director for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's education initiatives; and Margery Mayer, president of Scholastic Education. The panelists built on their collective experience and expertise to call for increased accountability, the greater use of business expertise to inform education strategies, and the necessity of forming partnerships with sharply focused priorities.

"Stay focused, go deep," Smith recommended. "Establish a set of benchmarks and see everything through to completion."

Later Thursday afternoon, Knupp joined Paul Vallas, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and current CEO of The School District of Philadelphia, and Leslie Koch, the CEO of the Fund for Public Schools, the nonprofit affiliate of the New York City Department of Education, to discuss models for public-private partnerships. Focusing on ways to navigate the political environments in individual regions, Knupp echoed the summit's key theme.

"Establishing effective working relationships between the business and education communities is the key to improving our schools," she said. "And one of the best ways to establish those relationships is to demonstrate results."

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As a venture capital fund for public education, The Chicago Public Education Fund is an unprecedented catalyst for improving school leadership and student achievement system wide. Launched by a group of corporate and civic leaders, The Fund brings private sector dollars and expertise to high-impact programs aligned with Chicago Public Schools priorities. Find out more at www.cpef.org.

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