The college prep schools Agassi and Helzberg founded serve primarily black students who had been performing below grade level. Agassi and Helzberg, who started University Academy in Kansas City, both strive to improve results by extending the school day and year. They may require students and parents to sign contracts committing to reading assignments and homework. Agassi Prep also hires teachers on one-year contracts, which Rogers believes forces the staff to continually prove their worth and innovate. "At the end of the day, we feel like it’s a blueprint for education in this country," Agassi says.

Leveraged Learning
The partnership with the public sector allows these educational entrepreneurs to leverage their own financial contributions. "For a one-time investment of $1 million, you can build up and run a great organization that can educate hundreds of children a year," says Manhattan money manager Boykin Curry, who founded Girls Preparatory in New York in September 2005. Girls Prep aims to offer less-affluent parents the option of a single-sex school for their daughters. "I can’t imagine anything that you can do with that amount of money that’s so powerful," he says. After a founder makes this initial investment, the school receives public money as long as it meets regulatory standards. Private backers often donate an additional $1,000 or more per student per year beyond government funds.

"We started realizing that we were putting a lot of Band-Aids on issues that weren’t being solved, and we started to think, ‘How can we get ahead of the curve?’" — Andre Agassi

The Bush administration has supported the movement by allocating more than $1.1 billion to the federal Charter Schools Program. It has also threatened that those traditional public schools that fail to make yearly progress in meeting the standards set in the administration’s controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which became law in 2002, may be shut down and reopened as charters, beginning next year. (These underperforming schools were given five years to meet the act’s standards.)

Private backers have responded enthusiastically. "We have about 80 schools in the pipeline," says Paula Gavin, CEO of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, launched in 2004 to foster growth and aid existing charter schools. "Tons of people are coming forward."

However, even the most motivated educational activists encounter challenges. Individuals who have established schools admit that the process is a lengthy, time-consuming obstacle course. Staffing, construction, engaging community support and funding top the list of hurdles. Delays and ballooning expenses, especially in the start-up phase, are routine. The costs of a building on a multi-acre campus with athletic facilities run into the tens of millions of dollars. Some, like Ross, recommend sharing the building; the facility that houses her private Ross School in the Hamptons is also used for vocational training to help defray expenses.

"Do not get into this unless you are passionate and can withstand the ups and downs," says Ivan Kaufman, chairman of Arbor Realty Trust in Uniondale, N.Y. Kaufman was motivated by the goal of establishing a yeshiva high school, which his community lacked. He had attended a private school that was not a full-fledged yeshiva, or Jewish school in the Orthodox tradition, and emerged dissatisfied. After marrying and having three children, Kaufman and his wife, Lisa, moved to Great Neck, Long Island, so the children could attend the North Shore Hebrew Academy elementary and middle school there. When his daughter outgrew that school, however, she faced a three-hour commute to attend the nearest yeshiva high school. Kaufman decided to raise funding for a new high school. He and his wife turned to 12 local families, who each contributed $250,000. "I’ve been very active in our community, and we had always talked about the need for a high school," he says. "Our kids were scattered, and other schools didn’t necessarily have the ideological component."

The result is the private North Shore Hebrew Academy High School, which opened in 2001 with 110 freshmen and sophomores. Since then, the high school has expanded to include the 11th and 12th grades. The school is welcoming 380 students this fall, and will soon complete a $50 million, 11-acre campus that can accommodate 450 students.