IDEA PUBLIC SCHOOLS STRATEGIC PLAN 2011-2017
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IDEA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
STRATEGIC PLAN 2011-2017
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Table of Contents
Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 2
Mission, History and Theory of Change.................................................................................................. 4
Progress to Date......................................................................................................................................... 8
IDEA Model ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Growth Strategy ........................................................................................................................................ 19
Organization & Operational Execution .................................................................................................. 26
Figure 3: Regional Support at scale (2017-2018) ....................................................................... 32
Budget, Finance, and Facilities .............................................................................................................. 33
Metrics ........................................................................................................................................................ 39
Risks ........................................................................................................................................................... 40
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Executive Summary
By virtually any measure, the United States is failing to prepare a generation of low-income children for success in college and in life. Nationally, only eight percent of minority, low-income students earn a four-year college degree by age 24. The need within Texas is especially staggering. Texas is ranked 42nd of 50 states for its high-school graduation rate of 65%. Worse, only 50% of low-income students in Texas graduate from high school within four years. Of Texas high school graduates, only 22% meet college readiness benchmarks in all four core subjects (math, reading, science, social science) and only 12% of Latino graduates meet these benchmarks.1
IDEA Public Schools, a high performing network of 20 public charter schools in south Texas, proves that students from underserved communities can apply, matriculate, and succeed in four-year colleges and universities if they receive an exemplary K-12 education. IDEA currently serves 9,300 students in grades K-12, of whom 94% are Latino and 81% are low-income. To prepare students from underserved communities for success in college and citizenship, we enable students to develop the academic, social, and leadership characteristics to apply, matriculate, and succeed in a four-year college or university.
Further, IDEA Public Schools demonstrates that the achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers can be closed at scale, using a sustainable financial model. IDEA was founded by Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama in 2000, and in 2004, IDEA embarked on phase one of an ambitious growth plan (“2012 growth plan”) to move from
operating two schools serving ~1,000 students to serving 15,000 students at scale. We will complete phase one of our growth in the fall of 2012, when we open four more schools, totaling 24 in all. To date, 100% of IDEA graduates have been accepted to a four-year college and 92% of our graduates are either still in college or have graduated from college. IDEA was designated an “Exemplary” district for the second year in a row for school year 2010-2011 by the Texas Education Agency.
Given our students’ success, and our growing waiting list (currently 19,000 children), IDEA Public Schools is embarking on phase two of growth to serve more students from underserved communities in the Rio Grande Valley and to begin serving students in other underserved Texas communities, starting with San Antonio, Texas. In phase two of growth from 2011-2017, which this plan describes in detail, we will expand to serve 30,000 students (38,000 at full enrollment) across 54 schools. At the conclusion of this phase of growth, IDEA will operate 34 schools in the Rio Grande Valley, deepening our commitment to the families and students in this region. We will operate the remaining 20 schools in regions outside the Valley, principally San Antonio, Texas.
1 From the 2009 ACT Study of College Readiness
Nationally, only eight percent of
minority, low-income students
earn a four-year college degree.
IDEA Public Schools
demonstrates that the
achievement gap between low-
income students and their more
affluent peers can be closed at
scale, using a sustainable
financial model.
3
In order to successfully execute this aggressive plan for growth and impact, IDEA will need to drive five organization-wide initiatives. Three of our top five organizational initiatives that will be critical to our success have to do with tightening up the model to enable rapid growth with consistent quality. The other two most important organizational priorities are related to human capital. The five key initiatives, listed in rough priority order, are:
1. Invest in building the capacity of our leaders at every level within the organization; 2. Enhance secondary school model to support greater quality and consistency while
scaling rapidly; 3. Recruit and retain outstanding teachers for every classroom; 4. Augment student retention and college readiness through a powerful high school
culture on every campus; and 5. Refine and improve the new primary school model.
At the same time, we will maintain our commitment to growing to scale with a sustainable financial model. Both within and outside the Valley, our campuses will reach financial
sustainability based on public revenues prior to full enrollment (including both fees to the central office and debt service). The central headquarters costs are covered exclusively by fees from schools, starting in 2015-2016.
To serve 38,000 students across 54 schools, we must raise approximately $52 million over the next nine years, after which IDEA will support both operating and capital expenses with minimal fundraising requirements.
When IDEA executes successfully against this growth plan, we will increase the total number of college graduates from low-income families by 50% in the communities we serve and become the largest single producer of low-income college graduates in the state of Texas. In doing so, IDEA will support the dreams of thousands of children, parents, and others who imagine better for low-income families and our communities, the state of Texas, and the nation.
By executing successfully on this
plan, IDEA will support the
dreams of thousands of children,
parents, and others who imagine
better for low-income families
and our communities, the state
of Texas, and the nation.
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Mission, History and Theory of Change
MISSION
IDEA Public Schools prepares students from underserved communities for success in college and citizenship, and is committed to developing students with the academic, social, and leadership characteristics to apply, matriculate, and succeed in a four-year college or university.
HISTORY
IDEA Academy was conceived by Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama, on assignment with Teach for America, at the end of their first year of teaching. Immersed in a school that was poorly organized, lacked a focus on student achievement, and provided too few students an academic path that was leading them to college, Tom and JoAnn began to search for solutions to these problems.
Together they crafted a school design model to rapidly accelerate student learning and close the achievement gap. The vision of the after school program, soon named the Individuals Dedicated to Excellence and Achievement (IDEA) Academy, was simple: any student would be offered admission provided the student and his parents signed a contract that clearly articulated program expectations. For students, this meant a pledge to hold themselves to high standards of personal conduct, stay at school longer each day, complete up to two hours of homework, and call their teacher at home if they were struggling or having challenges. The program achieved impressive results; test scores soared and parents were amazed at the positive changes in their children. Parents, students, and teachers wanted the program to expand to sixth, seventh, and eighth grade to create a bridge from elementary to high school.
In August of 2000 the IDEA Academy became an independent state charter school, serving students in grades four through seven. The campus scaled over time to serve grades K – 12, and graduated its first senior class in 2007 with impressive results that proved all children can be college ready--100% of the graduating class was accepted and enrolled into a four-year college or university. High expectations for kids coupled with a focused college-prep curriculum and outstanding classroom instruction accelerated student learning and showed what was possible when the adults get it right for kids.
THE NEED FOR THIS WORK IS GREAT
In 2004 IDEA Public Schools’ senior leadership team and board of directors embarked on an ambitious expansion plan to scale from two schools serving fewer than 1,000 students to a network of twenty-two schools serving 15,000 students across the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas. The last of the schools planned during this first phase of expansion will open in 2011-2012, with schools reaching full enrollment in 2017-2018. IDEA students reflect the significant need of the region: 76% are low-income students, 22% are bilingual/ESL students, and 94% of students are Latino. Roughly 65% of IDEA graduates will be the first in their family to graduate from a four-year college or university.
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Upon completion and scale-up of this phase of expansion, IDEA will be one of the three largest districts in the Rio Grande Valley with 8% market share of students. Within Texas, IDEA will be the 23rd largest district (including schools in both Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio). Although IDEA Public Schools will enroll less than one-third of the students as the Valley’s largest school
district, IDEA will graduate three times as many college graduates annually2. IDEA’s focus on getting students to and through college allows the organization to produce significantly more college graduates with a fraction of the student enrollment.
As IDEA continued to launch schools throughout the Valley, and proved out its vision of preparing low-income students for success in college and citizenship, the waiting list swelled to 19,000 students for the 2010
school-year. In light of high demand throughout the Valley, continued poor performance of surrounding school districts, and a widening statewide achievement gap, IDEA launched its second growth phase to cast a wider net and serve more students in the Valley and across the state. Several data points compelled IDEA’s senior leadership team and board of directors to pursue continued ambitious growth plans, including:
• Texas is the second largest U.S. state and has a rapidly growing Latino student population
• Poverty is high across the state, especially among Hispanic and African American students
• Texas’ students, particularly Latinos and African Americans, do not have access to high quality public schools
• Texas ranks #42 in U.S. state graduation rates at 65%, five points below the national average with graduation rates in low-income communities hovering around 50%
• College readiness achievement gap in Texas is staggering—gap between Latinos and Anglo students is 32%
• These troubling issues today are on a path to become dramatically worse based on the demographic trends – by 2040 there are projected to be approximately seven million Latino students in Texas – more than the total number of students today – and Latino students will be approximately 2/3 of all student in Texas
IDEA can be an even bigger part of the solution by scaling to serve more low-income students and families. Less than 3% of students in Texas attend an open-enrollment charter school; even fewer, 1.5%, attend a high performing charter school that is adequately preparing them for college.3 A focused K-12 college preparatory curriculum coupled with outstanding instruction and school leadership will ensure that IDEA continues on its ten-year tradition of preparing kids for college and citizenship.
2 The largest district in the Rio Grande Valley is Brownsville ISD
3 Based on analysis of TEA 2009-2010 test score data; uses schools designated exemplary and
recommended to determine which schools are “adequately preparing students for college”
Although IDEA Public Schools
will enroll less than one-third of
the students as the Valley’s
largest school district, IDEA will
graduate three times as many
college graduates annually.
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The next phase of growth will
enable IDEA to increase the
number of low-income college
graduates in the Valley and new
markets by 50%, fundamentally
changing the economic
landscape of host communities.
IMPACT GOALS
Under IDEA’s 2012 expansion plan the organization is on track to become the single largest producer of low-income college graduates in the Valley. The next phase of growth will enable IDEA to increase the number of low-income college graduates in the Valley and new markets by 50%, fundamentally changing the economic landscape of the host communities.
By 2018 IDEA will operate a total of 54 schools. When those schools are fully enrolled, IDEA will be Texas’ largest district in terms of the number of low-income graduates each year who will go on to earn a college
degree. We estimate that Houston ISD graduates approximately 1,500 students each year who will go on to earn a college degree within four years. Once all 54 schools under this growth plan are fully enrolled, IDEA will graduate approximately 1,500 students annually who will go on to earn a college degree – and the majority of our students will be low-income.4
BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOAL (BHAG)
As part of our second phase of expansion, IDEA defined a 30 to 40 year goal for its long term impact. This goal serves to create context for our current growth plan and align all stakeholders around a common vision for the direction of the organization. We call this goal our BHAG.
By 2040-2050, IDEA will close the gap in college degree attainment in its focus communities (primarily low income, Latino communities). In doing so, IDEA will demonstrate quality at scale by becoming America’s largest producer of low-income college graduates. To do this, we will graduate ~5000 low income students from college each year.
We focus on college graduation to ensure that our program scales with quality and that all IDEA graduates are prepared to succeed in and graduate from college. Through this focus, IDEA will put pressure on local ISDs, partner where possible to impact surrounding ISDs, and conduct advocacy to align policy. We believe that faced with this proof point of success at scale, parents, policy makers, and communities will demand the same of all educational options.
Within this longer term context, we think of this plan as a critical step along the path. Over the
course of this growth plan IDEA must achieve the following three things:
4 Note: IDEA analysis assumes 9
th-12
th grade persistence rate of 82%, 12
th graduation rate of 100%, rate
of college entrance for HS grads of 90%, and 6-year graduation rate of college matriculants of 75%. 1500
Houston college grads is commonly used in other high-performing charter networks’ reports, however,
recent press indicates Houston’s total number of annual college grads could be less than 1000. TX High
school population and graduation rates from TEA AEIS reports 2009, College entrance rates are TX
Hispanic averages from Houston Chronicle, College graduation rates are 6-year Hispanic graduation
rates from “Complete College”.
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1. Improve the consistency of its program model to ensure the program can be rapidly replicated with very high quality;
2. Build a sustainable model for entering a new region and managing regions effectively; and
3. Achieve a multi-year track record of opening schools and driving to financial sustainability rapidly.
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Progress to Date
STUDENT OUTCOMES
In the past ten years IDEA Public Schools has achieved outstanding results for students, while building an efficient, sustainable organization, and growing at an average annual rate of 28% in terms of student enrollment.
The charts below compare data from IDEA Public Schools with that of all Region 1 schools (which includes all districts and charters in South Texas), all Texas charters, and all schools in the entire state of Texas including charters. Our most important achievements include:
Significantly increasing student academic achievement and attainment for all students;
Closing historic achievement gaps for student subgroups;
Achieving results for low-income and minority students that are significantly above the average academic achievement results for these students in Region I and across the state.
IDEA anticipates the Texas Education Agency rating/designation of an Exemplary district for the second year in a row – with five schools also bearing the Exemplary rating.
88 95 97 92 92 99
71 86 92
81 79 94
71 88 92
79 77 92
77 90 93 84 83
95
0
50
100
All Tests Taken Reading/ELA Writing Mathematics Science Social Studies
2009-10 Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAKS) Student Passing Rates, Percent
IDEA Region I ESC All TX Charters State of TX Including Charters
87 94 87 70
88 69 70 77
68 71 87
69
0
50
100
Hispanic White Economically Disadvantaged
2009-10 Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAKS) Student Passing Rates, Percent
IDEA Region I ESC All TX Charters State of TX Including Charters
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Regarding performance by the district as a whole, the following table illustrates the just-released (July 2011) data on the statewide TAKS exam.
Ultimately, one of the most critical indicators for IDEA is the percent of our students who are college ready. While our goal is that all students graduate college ready, we have achieved impressive progress toward that goal over the past three years, outperforming Region I and the statewide average in for key student subgroups.
To date, the flagship IDEA campus in Donna, Texas has graduated five classes of seniors, 100% of whom enrolled in a four-year college or university. In 2010-2011, IDEA’s first replication schools, IDEA Quest and Frontier graduated their first seniors – and all three schools have continued the 100% to college expectation. In total, these 310 high school graduates are 65% first generation students. Also, as of this date, 92% of all IDEA students who entered college are still enrolled (or have graduated), dramatically outpacing national averages for college attendance and college retention in low-income, Hispanic, and first-generation students.
97% 94% 100% 98% 99% 97%
43% 36%
68%
36% 49% 43%
0%
50%
100%
Reading/ELA Math Soc. Stud Science Writing Overall
2010-11 TAKS Passing Rates - IDEA Public Schools (All Campuses Combined)
% Passing % Commended
29%
63% 67%
27% 34% 35% 37%
44% 47%
2007 2008 2009
College-ready graduates (in both ELA and Math), Percent
IDEA Region 1 Texas
27%
61% 69%
26% 33% 34%
25% 32% 35%
2007 2008 2009
College-ready graduates (Hispanic), Percent
IDEA Region 1 Texas
92% of all IDEA students who
entered college are still enrolled,
dramatically outpacing the national
averages for college attendance
and college retention in low-income,
Hispanic, and first-generation
students.
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INCREASING EFFICIENCY OF OPERATIONS AND ADMINISTRATION
With few high quality options in 2001 for outsourcing auxiliary services such as transportation, maintenance, and food service, IDEA built internal capacity for all of these functions. The past five years have been characterized by dramatic improvements in our productivity in operations and administration. These improvements ensure that the functions that surround student learning occur seamlessly, enabling instructional staff to focus on improving student outcomes. These savings enable IDEA to reach financial sustainability with greater funding available for core program activities. Dedication to exemplary performance includes not only teachers in the classrooms but food service workers in the cafeteria, custodians in the school hallways, and bus drivers in the school buses.
Child Nutrition Program (CNP): CNP serves over 11,000 nutritious meals every day, 81% of which are free or reduced price meals. While maintaining or improving the quality of the meals, IDEA reduced its annual CNP cost by 27% per student. We achieved this improvement by implementing new tools to measure efficiency (e.g., meals per labor hour tracking to determine staffing patterns).
Maintenance: Maintenance Department cut the cost per square foot to be cut by almost 60% from $19 in 2007-2008 to $8 in 2010-2011. During this time the overall square footage grew by over 500%. All interior custodial services are performed internally by IDEA Public Schools with central management at IDEA Headquarters.
Transportation: The Transportation Department safely transports 4100 IDEA students to and from school every school day. Transportation is managed centrally at Headquarters, with two regionally focused Transportation Managers directly supervising four campuses each, and a Transportation Clerk/Bus Driver serving as a communications liaison between management and Bus Drivers. Investments in the department, such as full-time Bus Mechanics, have resulted in significant cost reductions. Transportation cost per student has been reduced by over 55% from $1,000 in 2007-2008 to $435 in 2010-2011. At the same time, parent satisfaction increased from 70% to 92%.
Finance and Administration: IDEA’s business office was significantly re-structured in mid- 2009 in order to better support accelerated growth. The reorganization included a significant investment in highly experienced, professional financial management, sourced primarily from the private sector. This investment resulted in a much higher level of operational support, higher employee satisfaction, and measurably more credible metrics in support of long term strategic decision making. The results thus far include:
Unrestricted cash has increased from $1.6M at the end of FY 2008 to $19M at the end of May 2011; from less than 30 days cash on hand in 2009 to 105 days on hand at the end of April, 2011;
Net assets (Surplus), has increased from $7M at the end of FY 2009 to $13M at the end of FY 2010;
Standard & Poor’s twice upgraded IDEA’s investment grade credit rating, from BBB- in 2008 to BBB in 2009 to BBB positive outlook in 2010;
Independent auditor reports on IDEA’s financial statements have been published with clean opinions less than 60 days after fiscal year end.
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CREATING A FINANCIALLY SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL MODEL
We see two critical components to financial sustainability, which we define as operating on recurring public revenue without requiring additional philanthropy:
1. Sustainability of each campus when debt service and the fee to HQ are included and 2. Sustainability of IDEA headquarters (HQ) based on fee income alone.
Historically IDEA campuses have demonstrated financial sustainability at scale. Currently, more than half of IDEA headquarters’ expenses are covered by the CMO fee that schools pay to headquarters. As we discuss in the growth financials, we anticipate that HQ will be sustainable on the CMO fee by the end of this growth plan.
More broadly, as defined by surplus net assets, supplemented with adequate liquidity and an investment grade credit rating, IDEA is close to reaching sustainability as an organization, and is expected to continue to strengthen this position as existing RGV schools achieve scale and the new Better IDEA model is implemented across the primary program, which is a more financially sustainable program model.
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IDEA Model SCHOOL LAUNCH MODEL IDEA’s school launch model includes launching a primary school and a secondary school together, on the same site, at the same time. Over time, these schools grow into a cohesive K-12 system. Primary schools, which we call “Academies,” enroll 672 students in grades K-5 when they are fully built out. Secondary schools, which we call “College Prep,” enroll 740 students in grades 6-12 when they are fully built out. Schools are launched with Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 6th grades enrolled. This is critical to the IDEA school launch model because it allows the Principals on each campus to carefully create and support the IDEA culture within each class of IDEA students as they enroll. A new pair of primary and secondary schools reach full enrollment in year 7 of operations when the first class of 6th graders enter 12th grade.
Enrollment Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7
Academy grades enrolled K - 2 K - 3 K - 4 K - 5 K - 5 K - 5 K - 5
Academy student enrollment 336 448 560 672 672 672 672
College Prep grades enrolled 6 6-7 6-8 6-9 6-10 6-11 6-12
College Prep student enrollment 112 224 336 448 560 660 740
IDEA CORE VALUES The IDEA Core Values are the foundation of every aspect of the programs we have created and how we do our work. The Core Values are based on the belief that closing the achievement gap and ensuring college success is the best way to help our students succeed in life, contribute to their communities, and overcome obstacles they face. Achieving this requires the following beliefs and behaviors:
No Excuses: We control our destiny. What we do during the day matters more than poverty, parent education level, or other external factors. When the adults in the system get it right, our students are successful. Conversely, when our students fail, we don’t blame unsupportive parents, parent education level, or other external factors: we look in the mirror and take responsibility.
Whatever it Takes: Through continuous improvement we achieve ambitious results. The most successful at IDEA seek feedback, pour over data, identify root causes, and implement solutions.
100% Everyday: Our mission and goals apply to 100% of our student, 100% of the time. Creating opportunities that didn’t exist isn’t easy, and it requires that people give their best every day.
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Sweating the Small Stuff: The difference between excellence and mediocrity lies in paying attention and caring about the countless details that go into effective execution.
Team and Family: As the source of strength for our organization, we are committed to attracting and developing high caliber people.
IDEA CULTURE
IDEA offers a complete educational experience—not simply a school or curriculum, but a truly memorable experience that is seen and heard with the eyes and ears, felt in the heart and soul, and resonant with the mind.
Eyes and Ears: All students are in uniform. Students are observed and heard treating adults with respect at all times. The buildings—some old, some new—are impeccably clean, well kept, and clutter-free.
Heart and Soul: Every employee—from the bus driver to the school principal—is professional and treats all parents and visitors with warmth and friendliness. In terms of organization, every interaction with the school reinforces the IDEA brand: the first visit to an IDEA campus, application for admittance to the school, orientation on the IDEA experience, acceptance or placement on wait-list, back-to-school registration, first day and week of school, daily drop-off and pick-up, student-teacher conferences, promotion-retention decisions, and disciplinary proceedings. In all cases, the experience is satisfying and special.
Mind: IDEA policies are clear and enforced consistently, with fairness and integrity by all IDEA team members. Short- and long-term student performance goals are understood and seen as important by students and their families (they all understand that we’re preparing all students for success in college, and they know why that matters).
The appendix provides more detail on the specific elements of culture that characterize an IDEA school.
PRIMARY PROGRAM – BETTER IDEA
As IDEA Public Schools continues to grow and expand to serve the needs of students in the Rio Grande Valley and in other regions within Texas, it will be critical to have a replicable and sustainable elementary model that will continue to yield excellent student achievement results at scale.
The goal of IDEA elementary schools is to set up students for success in a rigorous college prep environment beginning in 6th grade. In order to achieve these ambitious goals, IDEA has re-designed its primary school program in a way that is truly game-changing. Our new primary model, which is known as Better IDEA, delivers outstanding student results – not just incrementally better student results. Better IDEA is highly replicable, which is critical given our rapid growth plans. Better IDEA is made up of two components: The revised core curriculum and the hybrid-learning component for individualized learning for all students.
IDEA has redesigned its primary
school program in a way that is
truly game-changing. Our new
primary model, which is known
as Better IDEA, delivers
outstanding student results – not
just incrementally better student
results.
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Revised Core Curriculum: Direct Instruction powers IDEA’s new core curriculum. Direct Instruction emphasizes well-developed and carefully planned lessons designed around small learning increments. IDEA Public Schools has partnered with the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) to faithfully implement the new core curriculum. Students are placed in flexible homogenous groups in reading, language, and math and their progress is analyzed on a weekly basis to ensure appropriate growth. Teachers and school leaders receive on-going support from NIFDI including an extensive initial staff development, ongoing school visits, and weekly data conference calls to discuss the progress of every student.
Direct Instruction Reading and Language: The language arts block consists of 180 minutes of daily instruction. Students receive roughly 120 minutes of reading instruction on a daily basis with those students reading below level receiving an additional 30 minutes daily. They also receive 50 minutes of language daily and 15 to 20 minutes of daily spelling instruction. Students move on when they master each standard, and if they show continued mastery of concepts, they can “fast cycle” through lessons.
Direct Instruction Math: Students receive 90 minutes of math instruction daily. Sixty of those minutes are from the Direct Instruction math curriculum, which includes fast facts memorization, math objectives, and problem solving. We use the remaining 30 minutes to accelerate instruction, push students to be successful on the state assessment, and expose students to more rigorous problems. The Program Team will develop the curriculum for these 30 minutes. Like reading and language, the math curriculum is focused on student mastery.
Humanities: In the primary grades, we focus primarily on reading and language instruction to ensure that students are at or above grade-level by the time they reach 6th grade, at which time all IDEA students engage in rigorous humanities instruction. Humanities are integrated into the reading and language instruction. Students will be reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction materials.
Science: Science is also integrated into the reading and language instruction, including focus on a range of non-fiction science topics through daily reading. Because science is such an investigative and hands-on subject, there is also some supplementation of the core curriculum. Science instruction will consist of 30 minutes daily at the lower grade levels and 30 minutes daily in the upper grade levels with an additional 90 minute block for lab and investigation activities every two weeks. During this supplemental time, students will develop a deeper understanding of science concepts and will conduct hands-on experiments and labs.
Hybrid/Individualized Learning: The second major component of Better IDEA is the hybrid-learning component. We use technology to differentiate and individualize each student’s instruction. The core of this part of the program is adaptive software that automatically adjusts to the pace and the success of the student. Students work through adaptive math software in a computer lab. They also read independently and test their comprehension through the Accelerated Reading program. Together the math and reading individualization will challenge students to take ownership of their own learning and will meet them at their level to ensure both individualization and acceleration. Multiple times each week, every student receives individual content and assessment, and the approach is immensely scalable.
Together, the math and reading
individualization will challenge
students to take ownership of
their own learning and will meet
them at their level to ensure both
individualization and
acceleration.
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iLearning Hot Spot: The iLearning Hot Spot will take place in computer labs with a 1:1 computer to student ratio. Students will work on adaptive math software in the labs. All students will rotate through the learning lab for 45 minutes three to four times per week.
Kindergarten through 3rd grade students will use Dream Box math software and 4th through 5th grade students will use Reasoning Mind. Both of these math software packages allow for a fully adaptive approach. The programs use algorithms to develop the learning path for each individual student. The learning lab manager will monitor the students and analyze data to determine students’ success and areas of need. This data will also help to drive the interventions in the math classroom.
Accelerated Reading Zone: Just as a musician hones her craft through hours of meticulous practice, students become better at extracting meaning from text as they increase the number of words and books they read. It is this process—gaining knowledge and improving the ability to learn by independently reading for meaning—that is at the heart of continuous, lifelong learning. Along the way, comprehension tests help student and teachers ensure that the books are sufficiently challenging and the comprehension at an appropriate level of mastery. The Accelerated Reading Zone will provide students with an extra 135 to 180 minutes of reading time weekly. The reading lab manager will lead students through goal-setting sessions around reading levels.
Human Capital and Financial Efficiencies: In addition to the academic gains provided through the adaptive math and reading technology, the gains in efficiency are equally impressive: the technology enables a 25% more efficient staffing model in which there are three teachers in each four-classroom grade level. From a human capital perspective, this means 25% fewer teachers must be recruited, retained, and trained—an important consideration given IDEA’s aggressive growth plans.
We expect that all students in IDEA Public School’s Elementary Campuses will leave fifth grade at least one year above grade level standards in reading and math. As a result, academy students will be on track to succeed in a rigorous college prep education at the secondary level and therefore be on track to be college ready when graduating from high school.
SECONDARY SCHOOL
Our secondary schools have results that far surpass those of surrounding traditional public school results. Since IDEA’s inception, 314 students have graduated from high school, with 100% of graduates matriculating at a four-year college or university. As IDEA grows, it is committed to developing students with the academic, social, and leadership characteristics required to apply, matriculate, and succeed in a four-year college or university. Every College Prep campus implements a course schedule that ensures that all students are prepared to do college level course-work, and in fact, have the opportunity to do college-level coursework while still in high school. The following table provides an overview of the courses that all IDEA students are required to take and some examples of elective coursework:
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In order to meet our ambitious goal of all students progressing to and through college, the IDEA secondary program includes eight key pillars. These are the tools, systems and processes that ensure that the course sequence described above is delivered in a high quality manner, and that relevant skills and experiences that cross the curriculum are woven throughout the experience of every IDEA student.
1. Core content curriculum guides for core content areas (Math, Science, English/Language Arts, Humanities, and Spanish): Core curriculum guides are aligned to Texas state standards as well as ACT standards, Advanced Placement standards, and English Language Proficiency Standards. Curriculum, instruction and assessment are tightly aligned. To support implementation, each curriculum guide provides a scope and sequence, unit plans, mastery quizzes, exit slips, question banks, and resources. The curriculum also includes pacing guides and formative and summative assessment.
2. Instructional leadership and quality teaching supported by the Program Team: The Program Team develops the IDEA Secondary Curriculum and supports the effective implementation of the secondary program by providing instructional coaching to teacher leaders and high-need teachers.
3. Collaborative data analysis based on real-time, accessible data: IDEA’s comprehensive data analysis system, Lightbulb, helps teachers and school leaders know exactly which objectives each student has learned. After each interim assessment cycle (every six weeks), principals meet with teachers to identify the objectives that are not being met, and work together to refine the teaching approach before that objective is re-taught.
Other requirements for graduation: - Accepted into a four-year college/university. - Minimum 125 hours of community service hours - Minimum of 26 credits under Texas Recommended Plan
Total = 26 credits
6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th
English Language Arts (4 credits)
ELA 6th ELA 7th ELA 8th English I (1) English II (1) AP English Lang. (1) AP English Lit. (1)
English III (1) AP English Lang. (1)
Mathematics (4 credits)
Math 6th Pre-Algebra
Algebra I (1)
Geometry (1) Algebra II (1) Pre-Calculus (1) AP Calculus (1) Or AP Statistics (1)
Algebra I (1) Geometry (1) Algebra II (1) Pre-Calculus (1)
Science (4 credits)
Earth Science
Life Science
Physics Biology (1) Chemistry (1) Physics (1) AP Science (1) Or Other Approved Science Course
Humanities (4 credits)
World Cultures
Texas History
US History
World Geography (1)
AP World History (1) Or World History (1)
AP U.S. History (1) Or U.S. History (1)
AP Gov’t (1/2) and AP Macroeconomics (1/2) Or Gov’t (1/2) and Economics (1/2)
Foreign Language* (3 credits)
N/A N/A N/A Spanish I (1) Spanish II (1) AP Spanish Lang. (1) Or Spanish III (1)
AP Spanish Lit. (1) Or AP Spanish Lang. (1)
Fine Arts (1 credit)
N/A N/A N/A Art, Dance, Music or Theatre (1)
Phys. Ed ** (1 credit)
PE PE PE Physical Education (1) [2 seasons of a sport=1/2 credit; 3 seasons of a sport=1 credit]
Health (½ credit) N/A N/A N/A Health Education (1/2)
Speech (½ credit) N/A N/A N/A Communication Applications (1/2)
Electives (4 credits)
N/A
N/A
N/A
AVID I (1) AVID II (1) AVID III (1) AVID IV (1)
Or Other IDEA approved electives
*Foreign language - Must be taken every year; will accept other foreign language credits. At a minimum 2 credits must be from the same language **Physical Education: Physical Education Equivalent courses are only to be used for athletics, drill team and cheerleading. The activity must include at least 100 minutes per five-day school week of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Students may only earn a maximum of one credit using equivalent courses.
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4. College-credit during HS: Rigorous college-level coursework prepares students for college-level expectations and helps them to earn college credit in high school. We expect that students will complete AP coursework (e.g., AP English literature, AP Spanish language). Campuses also offer dual enrollment courses to expand students’ choices and provide further opportunity to gain college credit.
5. Writing and study skills across the content areas: To ensure that students have the writing, critical thinking and study skills necessary to succeed in college, IDEA students complete the AVID curriculum beginning in 9th grade, which has a strong writing and study-skills component.
6. Daily Intervention Period: Every secondary campus has a 45-minute intervention period during the school day to address individual student needs. Students are grouped homogenously during this time to ensure that they continue to grow and improve their skills in reading and math. Each campus has a designated interventionist who is responsible for selecting resources, analyzing student data, creating intervention groups and helping teachers plan interventions.
7. Strong connection to college experience: Three elements of our program are focused on preparing our students to matriculate at college:
College counselor support: beginning in 6th grade, college counselors provide a college preparation course sequence to students on the value of going to college, how they need to plan ahead to be accepted to college, identifying top choice colleges, applying to college, and paying for college. The AVID curriculum is implemented in high school. In addition to supporting strong writing and study skills, the AVID program has a four year sequence of coursework that supports students through the college selection and application process.
College experiences/field lessons: At the end of each school year, students in grades six through eleven visit colleges and universities across the United States. The purpose of the field lessons is to make the idea of college real for every student. Every student will visit at least 25 colleges prior to graduation. Students will be exposed to college life first-hand, helping them make the best decision on the specific school they would like to attend.
Requirement for college acceptance before receiving diploma: all IDEA students must be accepted into a college prior to receiving their high school diploma. This milestone is celebrated at College Signing Day for all seniors. During this event, seniors announce the college they have selected.
8. Robust college matriculation and support: Each student is supported through the process of applying to college and applying for financial aid. Parents are supported through the process as well, many of whom have not attended college themselves. College counselors on each campus engage in individual problem solving in partnership with our seniors to ensure that they are accepted into college, that they enroll and matriculate. Once in college, IDEA provides its former students with targeted support to ensure that they persist. Our new College Support team will engage in thoughtful design of this program over the next 18-24 months to ensure appropriate support.
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ROLE OF THE CENTRAL OFFICE
IDEA Public Schools central office, or Headquarters (‘HQ’), has scaled up over the past several years to support the rapid growth of its highly successful charter school model while steadily increasing student achievement and college readiness. To meet its goals of scale and quality the CMO provides schools with critical operational support, thereby allowing school leaders to focus on professionally developing their staff and driving ambitious student achievement results. IDEA focuses on core operations that will result in consistently high quality schools and a financially sound organization. There are four areas of core operation:
1. Design of core academic program with implementation support: HQ provides system-wide tools to support the implementation of the program and to measure academic achievement and overall school effectiveness. HQ provides a common curricular framework, student assessment system and the training needed for effective implementation. IDEA tools and implementation support ensure consistent quality across campuses, and provide a mechanism to identify schools not meeting IDEA standards. If a school is not meeting IDEA standards the HQ team has the capacity to help get the school back on track. In most cases this means providing technical assistance to school leaders and more training for teachers, in rare cases it will include replacing the school leader.
2. New School Start-Up Services: Successfully starting a school is a complex process, the success of which is contingent upon the coordination of diverse efforts. HQ assists with building relationships with community stakeholders, training school leaders, student recruitment, and processing the charter application or expansion request.
3. Operational Support: IDEA schools benefit from the support of being in a system in terms of the cost efficiencies gleaned from centralized operations, and the focus on instruction that is enabled by HQ managing many school-based operations. HQ provides services for cafeteria, transportation, textbooks, materials and equipment purchasing, information technology infrastructure, and information management systems.
4. Financial Support and Oversight: All financial accounting is performed by HQ. School leaders are given a degree of flexibility and autonomy through a discretionary budget line that allows school leaders to make local program decisions. As enrollment changes or state revenues fluctuate, the CMO ensures that school budgets are modified and adjusted accordingly.
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Growth Strategy
The need for high quality public education options in Texas is staggering. Low-income students generally lack access to high quality schools and they graduate high school at much lower rates than Anglo and affluent peers. Only a fraction of those graduates enroll in college, and still fewer will receive a four-year degree. IDEA’s results throughout the Rio Grande Valley prove that low-income kids are capable of amazing things when the adults get it right—parents invested in their success, teachers reaching ambitious goals with kids, and principals providing the coaching and support to ensure college ready results.
IDEA’S APPROACH TO GROWTH, 2011-2017
Pace: Continued need and demand prompted the organization’s leadership team and board to pursue expansion beyond the 2012 growth plan. Through school year 2012-2013, we anticipate continuing to open two campuses (four schools) a year. During this time we will prove out our refined primary and secondary models and create a more robust talent pipeline. Beginning in school year 2013-2014, we anticipate opening three campuses (six schools) annually. Upon conclusion of the 2017 plan, IDEA will operate 54 schools that will serve 38,000 students at scale.
Place: During this second phase of growth, we will focus on continuing to deepen our presence in the Rio Grande Valley and also on developing a deep presence in a second region of Texas. We have adopted a regional approach to growth so that school launches will cluster regionally to leverage efficiencies and school support. Going deep into a region also allows IDEA to significantly increase the percentage of low-income college graduates in each of its launch communities.
With 19,000 students on the waiting list IDEA will continue to launch schools in the Rio Grande Valley to ensure that all communities have access to a high quality public education. Under IDEA’s 2012 expansion plan the organization is on track to the single largest producer of low-income college graduates in the Valley. By launching two additional schools annually through 2017, IDEA will increase the number of college graduates in the Valley by 50%, fundamentally changing the economic landscape of the region. In 2017-18, IDEA Public Schools will operate 34 schools in the Valley serving 24,000 students at scale. IDEA will serve approximately 8% of the students in the Rio Grande Valley at that time.
The balance of the growth will occur in San Antonio, Texas—just 250 miles north of IDEA’s headquarters. Between 2013 and 2017 IDEA will scale the region to 20 schools that will serve 14,000 students upon full enrollment. This scale will put IDEA on a path to increase the number of low-income college graduates in San Antonio by 50%.
Market analysis: In evaluating new community selection IDEA used four primary criteria to ensure a mission-aligned launch: need, demand, sustainability, and support.
Both San Antonio and El Paso stand out as communities with the highest need and demand for quality choice options. TAKS passage and commended rates were lowest in El Paso and San Antonio, graduation rates are far below the statewide average and less than 1% of San Antonio and El Paso students are currently enrolled in a high performing charter school. San Antonio proves more attractive in building and sustaining a network of schools considering access to
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private philanthropic support and with human capital partners like Teach for America, Trinity University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio. Detailed analysis on the largest regions can be found in the appendix.
MAJOR GROWTH INITIATIVES
Over the past seven years of growth through replication, IDEA has refined and improved the definition of what constitutes an IDEA school. Despite our significant success, the definition of all of the elements of an IDEA school has been refined with time and experience, and the implementation of the defined IDEA school model has been somewhat uneven. As we prepare to grow outside of the Valley, we know that it will be critical to get both the definition of the IDEA model and the implementation of the model right. Three of our top five organizational initiatives have to do with tightening up the model and implementing it with more fidelity. This will be crucial to scaling with consistent, very high quality.
The other two most important organizational priorities are related to human capital. Our schools are only as good at the teachers in each classroom and the leader that supports and nurtures the school culture, the staff and the students. Here too, we have succeeded to date despite having very few high quality systems to support our teachers and our pipeline of leaders. While we have already begun to invest in our human capital pipeline through initiatives such as our i3 grant, we have more to accomplish in order to successfully execute this plan.
In order to successfully execute this aggressive plan for growth and impact, IDEA will need to drive the following five organization-wide initiatives (in rough order of priority):
1. Invest in building the capacity of our leaders at every level within the organization; 2. Enhance secondary school model to support greater quality and consistency while
scaling rapidly; 3. Recruit and retain outstanding teachers for every classroom;
1. Establish Need:
• Pervasive achievement gap
• Market share of other CMO’s, magnets, or university-based public schools
2. Assess Demand:
• Regional enrollment trends
• Waiting lists for area charter schools and magnet programs
• Survey 5-year education landscape
3. Determine Sustainability:
• Scalability of the region
• Private & philanthropic support
• Facilities & infrastructure considerations
4. Build Support:
•Establish cross-sector partnerships (govt., business, NGO’s, etc.)
•Execute partnership agreements with mission-aligned organizations
Mission Aligned Community Expansion
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4. Augment student retention and college readiness through a powerful high school culture on every campus; and
5. Refine and improve the new primary school model.
1. Invest in building the capacity of our leaders at every level within the organization
In order to meet our ambitious growth goals, IDEA must create a robust pipeline of leaders at every level. Developing school leaders is particularly crucial because of the wide-reaching impact that these staff members have on the performance of teachers, and therefore student achievement. We have developed a comprehensive Leadership Development Continuum to demonstrate the path to leadership at IDEA:
Over the next seven years, we will need a significant number of new leaders at every level of the leadership continuum:
Position with hiring need
FY 11-12 actual
FY 12-13 FY 13-14 FY 14-15 FY 15-16 FY 16-17 Total
New School Leaders 7 9 11 12 14 15 78
New Rising Leaders 34 35 27 29 35 37 204
New Teacher Leaders 58 89 59 62 57 62 401
At each level, this includes hiring needs based on growth at existing and new schools, attrition, and promotion within the organization (including to other positions on this chart).
We have aligned our leadership development opportunities with a common set of competencies that all effective leaders at IDEA must exemplify. We believe that while great leadership
SR
LEADERS
SCHOOL LEADERS
RISING LEADERS
Assistant Principals, Instruction
Assistant Principals, Operations
Counselors
TEACHER LEADERS
Grade Team Leaders
Content Team Leaders
TEACHERS
new – developing – proficient - master
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development can happen in formal training settings, the vast majority of an individual’s professional growth happens each day in their job. These shared competencies provide a framework for in the field coaching, self-reflection and performance reviews of our district leaders. We will also utilize our formal training opportunities to build and practice specific skills linked to the leadership competencies.
The $8 million Investing in Innovation (i3) grant that was awarded to IDEA Public Schools enables us to build out best in class leadership development opportunities for our teachers, teacher leaders, rising leaders, and school leaders. Over the next three years, we will partner with Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District to offer training programs to these groups of leaders.
Ultimately, we aim to develop at least 75% of our school leaders from within the district, with large numbers of staff members following our Leadership Development Continuum on their journey to become a principal. Offering first-rate professional development for staff members at all levels enables us to grow school leaders within IDEA.
2. Enhance secondary school model to support greater quality and consistency while scaling rapidly.
To support quality and consistency in our secondary program while growing rapidly we must build systems around the effective practices that are in place on our campuses. To do this we must increase the quality and rigor of our curriculum, tools, and campus implementation support. Our efforts will focus on college matriculation and graduation, academic rigor, and student persistence.
College matriculation and graduation: Across the first five IDEA graduating classes we have achieved our goal of 100% college matriculation. 92% of our graduates are in college still today or have graduated from college. This is due to the outstanding effort and determination of our dedicated students and staff. As we grow, we must create systems to ensure that all students receive the support that they need to matriculate to a four year college. Key action steps to enhance our work here include:
Implementing the AVID program across all campuses to support the college application process and to enhance study habits, time management and writing skills;
Providing greater role definition, training and support for college counseling staff; and
Developing a scalable, resource-efficient program to provide targeted support to our graduates once they are in college.
Academic Rigor: The number one factor that will determine whether our graduates make it to and through college is their level of academic preparation. Our goal is that 90% of graduating seniors will achieve a composite score of 19 or higher on the American College Test (ACT) and 75% of seniors will achieve 24 or higher on their ACT. A 19 will secure our students’ admission to University of Texas Pan American. A 24 will secure them admission to a wide array of selective admissions colleges and ensure they have a choice in their college attendance. Key action steps to achieve this goal include:
Aligning curriculum with ACT standards throughout the secondary program and developing more robust curriculum guides and resources in the four core areas;
Providing robust college entrance test-preparation support to understand whether our students are on track to be college ready as early as 8th grade; and
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Providing focused intervention to students who need additional support through intervention plans tailored to meet their learning gaps on the ACT.
Student persistence: IDEA campuses must retain at least 90% of their students each year, and 80% of a freshmen cohort over four years. Currently we retain ~65% of a cohort over four years, and we find that this statistic improves on each campus over time as it matures. Key action steps required include:
Ensuring IDEA has a distinct, age-appropriate approach to culture in high school on every campus;
Creating systems on each campus to ensure that every student connects with at least one adult and to identify and intervene when this has not happened effectively; and
Ensuring that all students have the opportunity to participate in extra-curricular programs that allow them to explore an interest, hobby or passion.
3. Recruit and retain outstanding teachers for every classroom
IDEA Public Schools will only be able to maintain our exemplary record of student achievement if we are able to recruit and retain high performing classroom teachers in every year of this growth plan. The chart below highlights the total hiring needs (hiring new teachers, replacing teachers that leave IDEA, and replacing teachers that are promoted to leadership roles) for 2011-2017:
An effective teacher is the single most important factor in driving strong student achievement. To maintain our record of hiring strong faculty, we will implement or improve upon the following strategies.
Build capacity & expertise among centralized talent recruitment specialists: By leveraging the expertise of a smaller number of recruitment specialists, we can efficiently recruit top talent for our schools and also ensure quality control in decision-making. School leaders will continue to make hiring decisions about their staff, but talent recruitment specialists can play an even larger role in facilitating those hiring choices.
Broaden pipeline by diversifying our recruitment sources: We currently recruit from two main sources – local teachers with a proven, measurable track record of success & Teach For America corps members and alumni. These pipelines have delivered talented teachers for the past ten years, and we will continue to maximize on their potential. But as we grow, we will have to recruit from additional pools that also consistently produce high performing teachers, like the UTeach program, highly ranked Master’s programs, and state-wide professional development networks.
63 78 98 115 123 137 100 88
104 126 149 167
0
100
200
300
SY 2011-2012 SY 2012-2013 SY 2013-2014 SY 2014-2015 SY 2015-2016 SY 2016-2017
Total teacher hiring needs for existing and new schools
Primary Secondary
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Improve predictability of selection process: We’ve recently developed a suite of teacher selection tools that help hiring managers understand a candidate’s record of results and fit with our organization. We will continue to study the predictiveness of our tools and refine them annually to enable hiring managers to make the best staffing choices.
Strong recruitment alone cannot build a talented staff – we must also improve our ability to retain high performing teachers. In the past three years, roughly 14% of our “proficient” or “exceptional” teachers have left IDEA Public Schools. Moving forward, we aim to retain 90% of all staff members who are rated as "proficient" or "exceptional" within the district, including teachers, campus leaders and district staff. Every leader at IDEA plays a role in retaining staff members because we all play a role in making IDEA a great place to work. But, principals and other campus leaders play a particularly important role in teacher retention.
Improve leadership capacity at campus level: There are direct correlations between results on our bi-annual staff satisfaction survey and retention. Our lowest staff agreement is with the statement: "my opinions count". Our retention plan focuses on increasing staff satisfaction by improving our internal communications practice, both at Headquarters and within school leadership teams. School leaders will receive significant training and coaching on communication and organizational leadership. By improving the ability of our campus leadership teams to provide context for district decisions and create authentic opportunities to engage our teachers, we will create a professional environment that attracts and retains high performers.
Focus on developing skills of experienced and able teachers: We will implement training
and coaching opportunities for this group and support teachers who seek external growth opportunities that enable Proficient teachers to become Master instructors. Not only will this increase the strength of our teaching force, but also improve our retention by creating an atmosphere where teachers of all experience levels can grow and learn.
Consider implementing innovative pay options: Over the next 18-24 months, we will develop a research-based performance-based pay option for teachers that leverage the best-in-class models in the education field. At the same time, we will also establish a standardized salary-setting process for non-instructional staff.
4. Augment student retention and college readiness through a powerful high school culture on every campus
The IDEA College Prep culture has its origin in the IDEA Donna campus culture, which was created as a middle school. As a result, our College Prep campuses have a very strong middle school culture. Our high school culture seeks to gradually release the structure and support of students, placing more responsibility on students to make the right choices and manage their education. To achieve both our college graduation goals and our student persistence goals, we will focus on further articulating the differences between the IDEA middle school and high school cultures, and supporting all campuses in effectively implementing the high school culture.
To achieve the goal of building a consistently powerful high school culture on every College Prep campus, a team of College Prep principals came together to agree on the core elements of high school culture that should be common across all IDEA high schools. Supported by the efforts of this group, HQ will enhance existing tools and training and build new supports if necessary. Based on this work, schools will have cultural processes and procedures that are clear and consistent on all campuses. All leaders will be trained on creating a strong and differentiated culture on their campuses, and provided a toolkit to support that work. IDEA
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teachers will be trained in effective, age-appropriate classroom management and motivation techniques.
5. Refine and improve the new primary school model
The Better IDEA model is revolutionizing our approach to primary school and promises to deliver breakthrough results in student outcomes. This approach is a significant change – it impacts the role of our teachers, the staffing model, technology choices and even facilities infrastructure.
We are already implementing the core changes to ensure that Better IDEA and its associated impact on student outcomes and IDEA efficiencies are realized. However, we recognize that we have only started down the path of implementing a blended learning model. Like all schools that have started down this path, we will learn how to better implement the program as we progress. To take full advantage of the Better IDEA model we must:
Continue to evolve our primary teacher development and support to account for the specialization of teachers by literacy and math;
Monitor the rapidly changing landscape of technology enable instruction products to ensure that we are using the most advanced technology to provide each student with a truly individualized learning experience; and
Develop greater sophistication in the ways that data from the learning lab is used to inform the teacher’s instruction in the classroom.
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Organization & Operational Execution
GOVERNANCE
IDEA Public Schools is a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization. All IDEA schools are under one charter granted by the Texas Education Agency, which is overseen by one governing board. Because IDEA Public Schools is both a non-profit and a public school system, the board’s role is a hybrid of a traditional non-profit board and the compliance requirements associated with a traditional public school board. Like all public schools in Texas, the governing board has fiduciary responsibility for the organization and provides oversight and governance to ensure that IDEA Public Schools’ is achieving its organizational goals and priorities, thereby ultimately ensure that IDEA is effectively preparing students for college success. Like a traditional non-profit, the governing board plays an important role in community engagement and fundraising.
It has always been incredibly important that IDEA board members provide the local context needed for IDEA to be impactful in multiple communities. The importance of this function will increase as IDEA expands outside of the Valley. For this reason, IDEA will maintain one common governing board to perform the fiduciary and governance functions for the organization as a whole, and will establish local advisory boards in each expansion region. The local advisory boards will assist with deeper community engagement, the development of local partnerships, and fundraising. Over the next 24-36 months, the membership of the current board of directors will evolve to include representatives from the expansion communities, and a local advisory board will be created in the Valley. Current board members, based on their terms, interests, and backgrounds will populate a portion of the local advisory board and will fill the majority of seats on the governing board. See the Appendix for a full list of the Board of Directors. Over time, the governing board will include members from all regions in which IDEA operates schools.
SCHOOL-BASED LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITIES
IDEA schools are at the center of driving all learning and persistence outcomes together with our students and families. An IDEA principal is an instructional leader and is ultimately responsible for all academic goals for all students at their school. Their lead team is tasked with helping them achieve academic goals and other goals that are more operational in nature.
Both primary and secondary schools have standard staffing structures that enable them to implement the program. Principals own their staffing and budget decisions, and are empowered to alter their staffing plan to meet their needs with the input and approval of HQ.
All IDEA primary school’s leadership teams consist of one principal, an assistant principal for academics, an assistant principal for operations (shared with secondary schools), and an academic counselor. Secondary school’s leadership teams consist of one principal, two assistant principals (one for middle school, 6-8, and one for high school, 9-12), an assistant principal of operations (shared with primary schools), an academic counselor and three college counselors.
Other than the school principal who is directly managed and supported by an Executive Principal, all positions on a campus leadership team report to the school principal or designee.
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Figure 1: IDEA Primary School Structure
Figure 2: IDEA Secondary School Structure
Principal (1)
Admin Staff
Assistant Principal (1)
Director of Operations (0.5, shared w/ CP)
Support Staff
(all 0.5, shared w/ CP)
Admin Assistant
Receptionist
SIS Coordinator
Registrar
Business Clerk
Library Aide
Health Services CNA
Teaching Staff
Core Teachers (18)
Special Ed Teachers (1)
Phys Ed Teachers (1)
Co-Teachers
Classroom (5)
Learning Lab (1)
Reading Lab (1)
Phys Ed (1)
Principal (1)
Admin Staff
Assistant Principal (2)
Director of Operations (0.5, shared w/ AC)
School Instructional Coach (0.5)
Counselors (4)
Support Staff
(all 0.5, shared w/ AC)
Admin Assistant
Receptionist
SIS Coordinator
Registrar
Business Clerk
Library Aide
Health Services CNA
Teaching Staff
Core Teachers (26)
Special Ed Teachers (2)
Elective Teachers (12)
Co-Teachers
Classroom (2)
Learning Lab (1)
Phys Ed (1)
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IDEA HEADQUARTERS
IDEA’s headquarters organization is organized into teams that support schools so that non-instructional activities are efficient and effectively delivered, and to ensure that schools have the instructional supports they need to drive dramatic student learning outcomes. HQ is organized around seven functional areas. Beginning in 2012, we anticipate that there will also be a regional support structure, led by a Regional Vice President, who will report directly to IDEA’s CEO.
JoAnn Gama, IDEA Co-Founder and Chief of Schools, is responsible for supporting the leadership teams in all IDEA schools as they implement the instructional program. The Chief of Schools manages executive principals for primary and secondary who coach and manage their respective school principals (currently 10 principals are managed by each executive principal). The Chief of Schools and her team are primarily responsible for helping to create a strategy to ensure school-level goals are met, and training school personnel to ensure they are on track to hit their goals.
IDEA has a robust Program Team, managed by the Chief Program Officer, Dolores Gonzales. The Program Team provides direct support to the campuses around curriculum, assessment, instructional resources, instructional coaching and support for special populations. The Program Team works directly with campus leadership teams as well as classroom teachers and co-teachers. The Program Team provides direct support to teachers in the classroom by teaching and modeling and through monthly professional development meetings.
Curriculum: The CPO manages a team of both Elementary and Secondary experts who coordinate the development, refinement, and implementation of the curriculum models for IDEA Public Schools. Within the Program Team, a group of curriculum coordinators will ensure our K-12 curriculum is aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and further, rigorous and preparing students for college and beyond. Professional Development: While the Program Team has Elementary and Secondary experts, there will also be elementary and secondary instructional coaches who will provide high quality of professional development using daily progress monitoring sheets for elementary students in reading, language and math, as well as formative assessments and quarterly course collaboration team meetings using data from Interim Assessments. During these course collaboration meetings, teachers will not only be assisted in analyzing student data, but additionally, learn and share best teaching practices with teachers and instructional coaches who teach the same grade and content.
Chief Executive Officer
Tom Torkelson
Chief of Schools
JoAnn Gama
Chief Program Officer
Dolores Gonzalez
Chief Human Assets Officer
Audrey Hooks
Chief Operating
Officer
Irma Munoz
Chief Financial Officer
Wyatt Truscheit
Chief Development
Officer
Susie Crafton
Chief Growth Officer
Matthew Randazzo
Regional Vice President
(starting 2012)
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Student Support Services: The Director of Special Education will lead a team of licensed specialists (Educational Diagnosticians, Speech Language Pathologists, and a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology) to serve students with special needs who require these services. Individual Education Plans will be created for each student within the special education program, and provide skills-based learning for those students who are two or more grade levels behind in reading and/or math using Direct Instruction's Corrective Reading and Math programs. A Direct Instruction Secondary Coach who is also on the Special Education Team will support all secondary Special Education teachers implementing Corrective Reading and Math programs to ensure student achievement gaps are closing and students are prepared for college.
The ELL Coordinator will provide more regular teacher and principal training on Sheltered Instruction and English Language Proficiency Standards to ensure all are equipped with the necessary, most strategic teaching techniques to reach 100% of our English Language Learners.
College Success: The Program Team designs and supports the implementation of the College Success program across all IDEA campuses. The Program Team identifies resources, drives the creation of a common Road to College curriculum, supports counselors in their implementation of the program, and ensures best practice sharing.
The Human Assets office was created in 2011 and is led by Audrey Hooks, the Chief Human Assets Officer. The creation of this team reflects our understanding that human capital is our most precious asset, and that we must invest deliberately to attract, develop and retain highly talented and committed educators. Our successful pursuit of an i3 grant to build our capacity in this area is a reflection of the high priority we place on this work. We will achieve our goals of having a high performing teacher in every classroom and a high performing principal in every school when we are able to:
Systematically recruit and hire top talent for expansion teaching and leadership positions;
Help our current teachers and leaders build their own capacity so they are ready to take on larger scopes of work; and
Ensure that IDEA Public Schools is a great place to work, which will lead to better retention of high performing staff.
Improving our end-to-end human capital practices requires shared responsibility among all district leaders. The Human Assets team will direct the organization’s human capital strategy and provide training, tools and support for district managers. Principals, assistant principals, and other managers in the field are best positioned to impact the actual performance and experiences of our staff members, especially as we grow. Therefore, every manager in the organization will need to execute strong hiring, coaching, and retention practices within their teams, and will be supported in doing so by the Human Assets team.
Irma Muñoz is the Chief Operating Officer, and her team oversees several functions: IT, performance management, campus operations, and marketing and communications. This team drives strategic development centrally for these functions, and supports execution at the school level. They negotiate contracts, provide technical training and build management capacity to ensure efficiency.
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Information Technology: IDEA’s IT strategy is managed and executed centrally by a small core team that manages network infrastructure, and a lean cohort of technical personnel that supports schools. IT’s primary objective is to build an infrastructure that facilitates learning and enables operational efficiency through innovation. This is accomplished in two ways:
Campus tech support that promotes self-sufficiency. Technical personnel support IDEA staff and students at a ratio of 2,500 users (or 4 schools) to 1. At the same time we make available quick reference resources, and training that allows schools to be self-sufficient in low and mid-level troubleshooting.
System integration and new platform development. As IDEA develops expertise internally it has begun building custom applications to meet our needs. Often this development is ahead of the market or too expensive to purchase off the shelf. By building infrastructure internally, we effectively tailor solutions to match the efficiency problem we want to address.
Performance Management: IDEA employs Lightbulb, a performance management platform that supports data-driven decision-making and facilitates knowledge sharing throughout the organization. On the instructional side, Lightbulb provides real-time attendance, discipline and assessment results to measure student progress so teachers and school leaders adapt instructional strategy, and ensure students are achieving mastery. On the operational side, this platform allows functional managers to analyze trends to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Lightbulb is also poised to serve as IDEA’s principal communications platform through easy document sharing, collective lesson planning, and facilitating internal communications.
The data team supports performance management centrally by: leading all strategy development and execution based on stakeholder input; managing IDEA’s student information system, as well as discipline and assessment applications; and providing technical training to school personnel, which includes student information system (SIS) coordinators, registrars and instructional staff.
Campus Operations: Each campus has an Assistant Principal for Operations. While this individual reports to the campus Principal, the operations team supports these staff in many ways. The team develops operations protocols and procedures, trains the APs for Operations and assists with trouble-shooting, and builds management capacity to ensure efficiency.
Marketing & Community Engagement: Marketing strategy is developed and executed centrally to ensure branding and message consistency for IDEA. The central IDEA marketing team works closely with each school and makes modifications to the broad marketing strategy as needed.
The focus of marketing efforts is three-fold:
Ensure we continue to serve IDEA’s target demographic
Generate name recognition and brand awareness to facilitate student and staff recruitment, as well as philanthropic giving
Build community engagement among IDEA families and community stakeholders to facilitate education reform
Student recruitment is a shared effort between campuses, the operations team, and the growth team in new markets. An Assistant Principal of Operations at each school drives grassroots marketing efforts that are tailored to reaching underserved families in the available grade levels at each school. These efforts may involve door-to-door visits in low-income neighborhoods or
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“colonia walks,” visiting common gathering places like grocery stores and flea markets (“pulgas”), or working with local non-profit organizations to leverage community events. A Recruitment Director assists the new school leader in developing a launching a comprehensive student recruitment strategy that targets low-income students while the marketing team places ads, television and radio spots, and coordinates student recruitment events for launch and scaling campuses. The operations team also manages the student lottery process whereby nearly a dozen lottery events are held annually to choose students for the upcoming school year.
The business office is overseen by Wyatt Truscheit, the Chief Financial Officer. This office manages Finance and HR Administration, Transportation, Facilities, Child Nutrition, New Construction and Textbooks Management. These responsibilities are critical to the day to day function of the schools and the organization itself. The business office maintains a dual focus on customer satisfaction (attaining highly satisfied customers through being accountable, proactive and responsive to customer needs), and efficiency (through an effective and efficient systematic approach).
Finance and HR Administration: The business office manages all HR administration (payroll, compensation and benefits), and financial functions, including budgeting and forecasting, Accounts Receivables and Accounts Payable, receiving, bond financing, and cash management.
Transportation, Facilities, Child Nutrition and Textbook Management: These shared services are provided to schools but managed centrally. The business office team hires, trains and evaluates the school-based and shared staff that perform these functions. The central team ensures that proper procedures are in place to meet regulatory requirements, support reporting and filing to access funds where applicable.
New Construction: New construction projects are transitioned from the Growth team to the business office for management of the project to ensure facilities come in on-time and on-budget.
The Growth team is led by Matthew Randazzo, Chief Growth Officer. This team identifies mission-aligned communities for expansion, selects school sites, manages external and community relations with donors, elected officials, government agencies, and is ultimately charged with growing the network of schools from 20 to 54 schools by 2017. Actual school launch is matrix managed centrally by the Growth, Operations, and Finance teams with school design sitting with the growth team, construction with the finance team, and student recruitment/enrollment with the Operations team.
The growth team also leads the organization’s advocacy and partnership portfolios. For much of IDEA’s 10-year history we failed to engage in legislative advocacy and prided ourselves on sticking to our core business of educating students. However, it has become evident that we need to build a strong advocacy network to ensure that IDEA has the policies and resources necessary to best serve kids. As such, state and national policy advocacy efforts are managed centrally to drive better outcomes. This is a new, but important, strategic investment for IDEA Public Schools to ensure long-term sustainability and support.
The growth team also leads IDEA’s partnerships with school districts, advocacy organizations, government agencies, and other charter school management organizations (CMO’s).
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The Development team, led by the Chief Development Officer Susanna Crafton, is responsible for generating and managing much of the revenue that comes to IDEA including federal, state, and foundation grants, as well as local fundraising. The driving purpose of these fundraising efforts is to ensure that scaled campuses have funding for instructional strategies that make IDEA unique and innovative, to seed the start-up campuses, and to provide financial supports to our IDEA alumni in college when they are faced with unforeseen financial hardships. The Development Team submits accurate program, expenditure, and compliance reports and keeps the funding community abreast of the transformational work at IDEA. The vast majority of fundraising is managed centrally through this team. When schools identify grant opportunities, they alert the Development team who assesses the organizational fit and pursues provides support when there is alignment.
The Development team takes the lead with two additional critical constituencies. The team supports the work of IDEA's Board of Directors through developing and managing the calendar of board meetings, leading in board communications, and supporting board member recruitment and development. Additionally, the CDO will work closely with the CPO and CSO to design a robust IDEA alumni program to support alumni as they persist through college by creating natural communication systems between our alumni and the broader IDEA Team and Family and deeper partnerships with colleges and universities.
IDEA REGIONAL SUPPORT
As IDEA expands into San Antonio, we will build a small regional team but provide most required support from IDEA headquarters to maximize the benefits of scale and efficiencies related to learning. Initially, this team will include only a Regional Vice President, Launch Director/Regional Operations Coordinator, and Program Team support as required (e.g., Special Education). At scale, this team will have a matrix reporting structure, co-managed by leaders at headquarters and the Regional Vice President. The Regional Vice President will report directly to the CEO of IDEA.
The small local team lead by the Regional Vice President will develop and manage relationships with local community stakeholders (including parents, students, potential funders, potential school staff members, local press, and local elected officials), manage student recruitment, support staff recruitment, and manage non-construction contracts (e.g., transportation).
To ensure robust instructional leadership support for IDEA principals located in the new region, we anticipate that an executive principal in the new region will provide day-to-day management for principals. The executive principal will initially report directly to the CSO at IDEA HQ, coordinating closely with the regional vice president.
Figure 3: Regional Support at scale (2017-2018)
Note: instructional coaches are included as part of school-level staffing
Regional Vice President
Executive Principal(s)
Launch Director/Regional Ops Coordinator
Director of Individual Giving
Coordinator of Professional Development
Special Ed/Program Coordinator
Regional support structure
during year 0/1 of student
enrollment
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Budget, Finance, and Facilities IDEA’s model requires that we achieve all of our educational outcomes while becoming self-sufficient on public dollars once our schools are at scale. We believe that it is critically important to demonstrate that we can meet our impact goals with a financially sustainable model that can be easily scaled within Texas. Because Texas per-pupil public funding for education ranks 44th of 50th in the United States, if we can operate off of public revenues in Texas, we have built a successful model for preparing low income students for college that could be replicated virtually anywhere in the country. For the next few years, as we implement the aggressive growth strategy outlined in this plan, additional funds are needed to cover start-up costs at both the campuses and central office. We expect to meet these capital needs by philanthropy and debt financing. In this section of the plan, we highlight financials over the next ten years to support the six-year expansion plan outlined here. Total Revenue The chart below shows IDEA’s revenue over the next ten years under the targets for growth outlined in this plan. During this time IDEA will grow from 20 schools with 9,300 students enrolled in 2011-2012 to 54 schools with 30,000 students enrolled in 2016-2017. At full enrollment (reached in 2023-2024 for this phase of growth), these campuses will serve a total of ~38,000 students.
During this time period, the vast majority of IDEA’s revenue (95%) comes from public sources, including primarily state-level per-pupil funds that originate from the education budget of Texas. We also receive federal public funds, including Special Education, Title I, Childhood Nutrition Program, and E-rate programs, all of which provide additional funds for underserved or special needs students. We expect our per-pupil funding to be roughly commensurate for our schools in the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio, despite significant differences in costs for these two regions.
$82 $105 $131 $159 $191 $225
$261 $286 $305 $319
$7 $9
$10 $9
$9 $9
$4 $2
$0 $0
$-
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
$300
$350
FY 2011/12
FY 2012/13
FY 2013/14
FY 2014/15
FY 2015/16
FY 2016/17
FY 2017/18
FY 2018/19
FY 2019/20
FY 2020/21
Millio
ns
IDEA Public Schools Revenue, 2011-2021
Total Public Funding Private Funding (incl fundraising gap)
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We project that the remaining 5% of our revenue during our growth phase comes from philanthropy and public grant programs. Over the next ten years, we project a total philanthropic funding need of $52 million dollars. Of this, ~60% is for opening schools within a new region, 25% is for continuing to build additional campuses to serve more students within the Rio Grande Valley, and ~15% is to support IDEA’s central and regional support. Total Costs The chart below shows the total costs (including non-operating expenditures, principally debt service) for IDEA Public Schools from 2011-2012, separated by IDEA schools and headquarters/regional support. We expect IDEA’s Headquarters and regional support to decrease as a total percent of expenses over time from 16% in 2011-2012 to 7% by 2020-2021.
IDEA School-Level Economic Model IDEA’s public revenue is the same across both campuses in Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio. For both regions, the largest source of revenue is the per pupil allocation from the state of Texas. The other sources of public funds are federal funds for special populations (e.g., Title I, Special Education Funding). In both the Valley and San Antonio, the largest source of expenses is personnel costs. We use the same staffing model in each region. However, because we set salary scales for educators based on the median for school districts in the area in which the campus is located, we have slightly different expense models in each of the two regions. In the Rio Grande Valley, we are able to give schools a larger discretionary budget and we set aside some funding for teacher performance bonuses. In San Antonio, which has the highest average teacher salaries in Texas, we focus on making sure we can meet or exceed the median salary level in surrounding school districts, and therefore need to reduce discretionary spending and performance bonuses. Other operating costs include non-FTE costs associated with these functions, as well as school-level allocations for discretionary spending, maintenance, utilities, and facilities management costs. Shared services include non-instructional staff that are shared and managed across IDEA
$74 $103 $127 $153
$183 $213 $236 $252
$283 $294
$13 $14
$15 $16
$13 $12
$8 $7
$6 $6
$0
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
$300
$350
FY 2011/12
FY 2012/13
FY 2013/14
FY 2014/15
FY 2015/16
FY 2016/17
FY 2017/18
FY 2018/19
FY 2019/20
FY 2020/21
Millio
ns
IDEA Public Schools, Expenses 2011-2021
Total schools expenses Total HQ expenses
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public schools to maximize efficiencies including transportation, health and wellness, technology, special education, and performance management. Debt service covers the interest payments on that fund IDEA’s construction costs for its campuses. Other non-operating costs include primarily depreciation. IDEA Campus time to sustainability The following tables provide a financial overview of the first seven years of a model K-12 campus for each region and show IDEA’s model for reaching sustainability on each new campus by year six of operation. In the Rio Grande Valley, sustainability is reached after ~$2.5 million in expenditures that require philanthropic support; in San Antonio, sustainability is reached after $4 million in expenditures. Per campus funding gap by year between public funds and expenses (including debt service and depreciation) Rio Grande Valley
San Antonio
IDEA HQ Revenue and Costs IDEA schools contribute 8% of total revenue to fund central and regional support. This enables IDEA to maximize efficiency and lessons learned across academic support services (curriculum development and coordination, instructional coaching, student support), human assets support (including talent recruitment, selection, on-boarding, and development), operations, IT, performance management, and finance. By 2015-2016, IDEA’s headquarters will require no additional funding beyond the fee from schools.
RGV Sustainability Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6
Revenue -$ 3,532,035$ 5,298,499$ 7,073,107$ 8,839,570$ 9,782,386$ 10,656,508$
Expenses 1,263,556$ 3,962,278$ 5,569,039$ 7,293,412$ 9,081,812$ 9,849,325$ 10,633,130$
Surplus (Deficit) (1,263,556)$ (430,243)$ (270,540)$ (220,305)$ (242,242)$ (66,939)$ 23,378$
Margin 0% -12% -5% -3% -3% -1% 0%
SA Sustainability Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6
Revenue -$ 3,512,086$ 5,268,598$ 7,033,208$ 8,789,720$ 9,672,453$ 10,597,208$
Expenses 1,477,715$ 4,336,660$ 5,769,502$ 7,530,908$ 9,235,293$ 9,831,188$ 10,523,349$
Surplus (Deficit) (1,477,715)$ (824,574)$ (500,904)$ (497,700)$ (445,572)$ (158,735)$ 73,859$
Margin 0% -23% -10% -7% -5% -2% 1%
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One additional lens through which to view the total cost of IDEA HQ is the per-pupil cost of these services. The per-pupil cost of IDEA headquarters and regional support goes down from $1200/student in 2011-2012 to $600/student in 2016-2017. Facilities Costs Finding or building appropriate and affordable facilities are a fundamental challenge for all charter schools. Unlike traditional public schools, IDEA is responsible for finding and paying for the costs of all of its buildings. To date, IDEA has funded capital expenditures primarily through bond offerings. To date, IDEA has issued $125 million in bonds. During this stage of growth (2011-2017), we expect that we will be able to fund our capital requirements primarily through bond offerings. We anticipate incremental capital requirements of $312 million to complete the construction of the new schools recommended in this plan.
Over time, we expect our total debt service to reach $28 million/annually. The below charts include IDEA’s total debt service, debt service as percent of revenue, and the historical debt service coverage ratio from 2011-2018. These figures include both existing interest commitments and expected commitments. IDEA’s debt service as a percent of revenue over time is between 8-10%. Historically IDEA’s goal has been to keep its debt service below 11% of revenue. In addition, our historical debt service coverage ratio remains significantly above the target historical debt service coverage ratio of 1.3. Finally, our Maximum Annual Debt Coverage (or Advanced Bonds Test) is consistently above both 1.1 (the minimum), and 1.25, which is the average for S&P-covered charter schools.
5.7 8.4
10.4 12.7
15.3 18.0
20.8 22.8
24.4 25.5
11.7 12.7 14.0 14.6 14.4 15.2 14.7 15.2 15.6 15.9
$-
$5
$10
$15
$20
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FY 2011/12
FY 2012/13
FY 2013/14
FY 2014/15
FY 2015/16
FY 2016/17
FY 2017/18
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FY 2019/20
FY 2020/21
Millio
ns
HQ Revenue and Expense Over Time
HQ Management Fee Expenses
Metric
FY 2011/12 FY 2012/13 FY 2013/14 FY 2014/15 FY 2015/16 FY 2016/17 FY 2017/18 FY 2018/19 FY 2019/20 FY 2020/21
Debt service as % of revenue 8% 9% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 9% 9% 9%
Historical Debt Coverage Ratio 2.55 1.64 1.75 1.83 1.97 1.98 2.11 2.19 2.26 2.35
ABT (if funding needs are met) 1.30 1.26 1.40 1.51 1.67 1.78 2.00 2.14 2.26 2.38
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Facilities Plan
IDEA recently adopted a standard campus design to minimize facilities planning costs. Historically, within the Rio Grande Valley, IDEA developed “greenfield” campus sites because there were few facilities available that were appropriate for repurposing. We expect to continue building new facilities within the Rio Grande Valley for the foreseeable future. In San Antonio, we anticipate developing 45% of campuses by repurposing existing sites or through lease/partnership agreements with local school districts or college/universities, which should reduce our capital expenditures by roughly ~25% per campus.
IDEA uses and builds both its new and repurposed sites with a phased approach (typically including four phases of construction). This helps ensure that IDEA only builds the facilities required for the students who will be enrolled at the school the following year. The chart below illustrates the phased capital expenditures expected for a typical “greenfield” IDEA campus within the Rio Grande Valley. Note that we expect costs for the same campus design to be 10-15% higher in San Antonio.
$7.2
$3.2 $3.1 $3.4
$-
$1
$2
$3
$4
$5
$6
$7
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4
Millio
ns
IDEA Greenfield Capital Expenditures by Phase
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Philanthropy Needs
To meet the $52 million in unmet philanthropic need over the next 9 years, we need to raise $14 million to fund school launches in the Rio Grande Valley, $33 MM to fund school launches in San Antonio, and $6 MM for the headquarters and regional offices that support these schools.
Millions of Dollars FY 11/12 FY 12/13 FY 13/14 FY 14/15 FY 15/16 FY 16/17 FY 17/18 FY 18/19 FY 19/20 Total Gap
Headquarters
Revenue - HQ Fee 5.73$ 8.35$ 10.42$ 12.72$ 15.26$ 17.96$ 20.81$ 22.82$ 24.40$
Revenue - Funds Already Committed 2.50$ 2.79$ 2.92$ 0.42$ 0.42$ 0.42$ 0.42$ 0.42$ 0.42$
Costs 10.74$ 12.67$ 13.98$ 14.59$ 14.36$ 15.16$ 14.69$ 15.20$ 15.55$
Total Surplus (Deficit) (2.51) (1.52) (0.64) (1.45) 1.32 3.23 6.54 8.04 9.27 (6.12)$
Margin % -30% -14% -5% -11% 8% 18% 31% 35% 37%
New Schools - RGV
Revenue - all entitlement and other -$ 7.06$ 14.13$ 22.98$ 33.58$ 44.31$ 55.84$ 64.67$ 70.88$
Costs 2.53$ 9.19$ 16.32$ 25.24$ 35.91$ 46.26$ 56.10$ 63.82$ 69.41$
Total Surplus (Deficit) (2.53)$ (2.12)$ (2.19)$ (2.26)$ (2.33)$ (1.96)$ (0.26)$ 0.85$ 1.47$ (13.65)$
Margin % 0% -30% -15% -10% -7% -4% 0% 1% 2%
New Schools - New Region
Revenue - all entitlement and other -$ -$ 7.02$ 17.56$ 31.63$ 49.21$ 68.55$ 82.72$ 94.66$
Costs -$ 2.96$ 11.62$ 23.09$ 38.00$ 56.21$ 72.55$ 84.50$ 95.04$
Total Surplus (Deficit) -$ (2.96)$ (4.59)$ (5.53)$ (6.37)$ (7.00)$ (3.99)$ (1.78)$ (0.39)$ (32.61)$
Margin % 0% 0% -65% -31% -20% -14% -6% -2% 0%
Annual Gap (5.03) (6.60) (7.43) (9.24) (8.70) (8.96) (4.25) (1.78) (0.39) (52.39)
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Metrics
To achieve the organization’s theory of change, the expansion efforts must be executed with incredible fidelity to the proven IDEA model and with an intentional focus on key organizational priorities. The following goals and measures are tracked by the senior leadership team and tie to the goals of every professional in the organization:
GOAL 1: ACHIEVE COLLEGE-READY STUDENT RESULTS FROM TARGET STUDENT POPULATION
Objectives and Outcomes:
Exemplary System Rating from TEA
75% of students score 24 or higher on the ACT and 90% score 19 or higher
100% of graduates are accepted to and enter a 4-year college or university
100% of K-2 students are on grade level in reading by the end of the school year
80% + of IDEA’s students qualify as low income
GOAL 2: BUILD STRONG AND SUSTAINABLE ORGANIZATION
Objectives and Outcomes:
At least $52 million private funds raised through 2019-2020
At least 97.5% Average Daily Attendance (to enable projected revenue)
At least $3 million in revenue over expenses
Organizational Debt Service Ratio above 1.4 and Advanced Bond Test Ratio above 1.25
All campuses sustainable off public funding at scale (including non-operating expenses) by year 6
Headquarters costs covered by 8% CMO Fee by 2015-2016
At least 90% of staff who are rated Exceptional or Proficient retained each year
GOAL 3: GROW TO SCALE WITH QUALITY
Objectives and Outcomes:
20 schools in operation by 2011; 24 schools in operation by 2012; new community launch in 2013 and 30 schools in operation organization-wide; 54 schools in operation by 2017
100% of principal vacancies filled with a candidate that meets standards on or before July 1 each year
95% of expected teacher vacancies filled with a candidate that meets standard on or before July 1 each year
At least 95% of K-5 students persist from beginning of one school year to the next
At least 92% of 6-12 students persist from beginning of one year to the next
Each IDEA high school graduates 80 or more seniors each year
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Risks
Scaling to 54 schools serving 38,000 students presents several risks we must acknowledge, address, and actively monitor throughout the execution of the growth plan. The upside of an aggressive plan is that IDEA will serve more students and families in communities across Texas. At scale, we will become the largest producer of low-income college graduates in Texas and prove that all students can achieve at the same level of their affluent peers, resetting expectations for what is possible in underserved communities. Ultimately, our 2017 growth plan will change the face of the communities we serve by increasing the number of local college graduates by 50% and create new life trajectories for the families we serve. These ‘rewards’ inspire our leadership team, board of directors, principals, teachers, and staff to give 100% every day in pursuit of educational equity.
We see two groups of significant risks—internal and external.
INTERNAL RISK FACTORS
Producing College Ready Results: IDEA’s mission is to get its students to and through a four-year college or university. Inadequate preparation for the rigors of college—academic, social, and emotional—will keep IDEA from producing transformational change for the students, families, and communities we serve. As IDEA continues to scale we must significantly outperform national averages for Latino achievement and enhance college readiness by ensuring that all students score 24 or higher on the ACT exam (the college readiness benchmark set by the ACT organization).
Creating a Sustainable Human Capital Pipeline: Teachers and school leaders are the core of our success; continued growth requires more teachers, teacher leaders, rising leaders, and school leaders to drive college ready results. Because we plan to fill 75% or more of our leadership roles with internal talent, we must build a three deep leadership bench for each key position at IDEA. Better teacher selection, on boarding, and coaching will ensure high quality teaching in every classroom across the network of schools. Moreover, we must be intentional in how we train and support our emerging leaders (assistant principals, coaches, and counselors) and campus principals.
Balancing Strategy with Opportunity: IDEA’s results have attracted the attention of national foundations, school districts, state education agencies, and community leaders in Texas and beyond. While it is tempting to pursue ‘one-off’ opportunities that allow us to reach new communities and serve more students, we must be realistic about our ability to grow our impact while delivering college ready results and not creating unnecessary strain on our human capital pipeline. Therefore, we must embrace our entrepreneurial DNA while simultaneously assessing opportunities like a mature organization. IDEA will follow the 80/20 innovation model pioneered by Google—80% of our work will focus purely on our core programs while 20% of our collective work will focus on innovation—new demonstration projects, partnerships, and strategies that may ultimately revolutionize our work and our student achievement results. Recent examples of our innovation time include the hybrid learning pilot and our i3 partnership with a local independent school district. These early projects are already driving better human capital outcomes and student achievement results.
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These internal risk factors require disciplined thought and action but they are within our locus of control. Fidelity to our core values and an obsessive focus on continuous improvement will mitigate these risks. Most importantly, aligning all of our actions with the simple question ‘what’s best for kids,’ will guide our growth and impact.
EXTERNAL RISK FACTORS
Additionally there are two external risk factors that require the attention of the organization’s board of directors and senior leaders:
Creating and Maintaining a Charter Friendly Environment: Open-enrollment charter schools are enjoying unprecedented support from the U.S. Department of Education, many state legislatures, and the philanthropic community. A material shift from any one of these groups can drastically hinder our ability to scale with quality. IDEA and other CMO’s must continue to produce transformational results, innovate to drive even better student outcomes, and enhance the charter brand by creating a legislative strategy that recognizes & rewards high performing CMO’s while closing those that do not serve students well. IDEA can only drive these outcomes as part of a collaborative effort with high performing CMO’s, legislators, and the advocacy community.
Equitable Funding and Access to Capital: IDEA receives roughly $2,000 less per student annually (current fiscal year impact: $13.5M) because we cannot raise revenue through property taxes. Moreover, IDEA does not have access to the State’s Permanent School Fund, a program that allows local schools to build facilities for pennies on the dollar with local match. As such, IDEA must access the bond market to raise capital for buildings and rely on grants/contributions to fund our short-term operating deficits when we launch a new school. Long-term sustainability and continued growth requires that we close the funding gap and receive a facilities allotment, access to the permanent school fund, or subsidized interest rates from the bond market.
While these issues are outside of our immediate locus of control we can, and should, do more to mitigate their risks. All of our senior leaders & board of directors must (1) advocate for IDEA and high performing charters and (2) build a broad coalition of supporters including parents, students, legislators, and philanthropic partners to enhance the charter brand with opinion leaders and thought leaders. Finally, high performing CMO’s must collaborate and tackle these issues in a thoughtful, strategic way. We have largely stayed out of the fray to focus on our core business, preparing kids for college. However, advocacy must become a key strategy that allows us to continue our core business.
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