Charter school leaders have always functioned more like entrepreneurs than traditional principals. As the primary drivers of their schools’ missions, they manage the academic program, finance and operational systems, strategic planning and development, external relations and any other domains that impact their “bottom line”: the academic success of every one of their students. Over the past two decades, this entrepreneurial spirit has created numerous high-performing schools from the ground up – schools that have defied expectations and impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.
Today, the demands on school leadership are changing as the charter school movement seeks to respond to new challenges: the turnaround of failing district schools, the demand to scale up effective school models and the need to introduce new ones. When faced with such challenges, there is often discussion within the movement about the need to recruit new talent; but we also must create avenues for existing leaders to continue to develop the skills needed to tackle these new frontiers in education reform. Our charter school leaders have been doing this work for years across the country in schools they have built from scratch. It’s time for some of these school leaders to return to their entrepreneurial roots to develop innovative solutions to these new challenges. Last week, we created an avenue at the Tennessee Charter School Incubator through our new Education Entrepreneurs Fellowship. This national program will give up to eight fellows the chance to expand on the best possible models across the country, design their own schools and/or management organizations, and launch them with financial and operational support, not as fresh-start charters, but as replacements for some of the lowest-performing public schools in Tennessee and, by extension, the country. The opportunity and resources available to leaders who endeavor to do this work in Tennessee have never been greater. But this work requires time, targeted training, and personal and professional resources that go beyond those typically offered in some of our movement’s best training programs. Leaders need to master executive, political and turnaround competencies at levels few have had the opportunity to develop until now. The Education Entrepreneurs Fellowship is committed to providing these necessary tools and resources to exceptional leaders ready to transform education for our neediest students in Memphis and Nashville. It provides recipients more than three years of continuous and personalized support, from training to incubation to early launch services, as well as a competitive salary and benefits package. We believe the talent to overcome our most pressing challenges already exists in our movement. It just needs programs like the Education Entrepreneurs Fellowship to provide the time, resources and space needed to develop. Greg Thompson is the chief executive officer for the Tennessee Charter School Incubator. See information about the Education Entrepreneurs Fellowship at http://www.charterexcellence.org.
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