After returning home from dinner that night, Agassi and Perry Rogers, his agent and friend of many years, were once again pondering how best to use the wealth Agassi was earning in his thriving tennis career to further his personal goal of helping at-risk children. Both from well-off families, Agassi and Rogers had long been inspired by the educational philanthropy of Rogers’ father, James, who along with his wife, Beverly, has pledged or donated $275 million to various colleges and universities. For Agassi, the injury lent a new urgency to his long-running discussions with Rogers.

He decided to establish a nonprofit vehicle to fund educational and recreational programs for children in Nevada, and, by 1995, the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation was up and running. "One of the reasons I started my foundation was so that I could leverage opportunities," explains Agassi, who announced in June that he will retire from professional tennis after the U.S. Open. "The leverage that I thought I could bring was not just dollars, but also awareness to what the needs are."

TOP VIEW: Fueled by the burgeoning charter school movement, individuals, families and their foundations are crafting the future of education by establishing groundbreaking public schools for at-risk children across the country. These entrepreneurial educators face many challenges. A time-consuming and costly start-up process requires political savvy and the ability to withstand and manage community opposition. Backers must also be committed to a long—some say lifelong—endeavor.

Rogers is the foundation’s president and sits on its board. The nonprofit has raised more than $60 million since its inception, and supported more than 20 organizations. But by 1998, Agassi concluded that this approach alone could only ameliorate, and not eliminate, the problems faced by poor children.

"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?’" he recalls. "My conclusion was the best way to really address the needs of children is to educate them to make better choices for themselves."

Rather than trying to fund incremental improvements to existing schools, Agassi, like a growing number of wealthy individuals who are passionate about educational reform, decided to launch his own. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy opened with 150 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students in economically depressed West Las Vegas in 2001. The school expects to complete its new $37 million, 180,000-square-foot campus next year. By 2008, it will educate students in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

The affluent have funded private schools for centuries. Samuel Phillips Jr. founded Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts in 1778. The school, which now boasts an endowment in excess of $600 million, educated Samuel Morse, Walker Evans and both Bush presidents. The Choate family opened what is now Choate Rosemary Hall, the alma mater of John F. Kennedy and Edward Albee, in Wallingford, Conn., in 1890. But most of these institutions were designed to educate the children of the country’s elite.

In contrast, many of the educational activists launching schools today are seeking to explore and develop new educational models that can be applied far more broadly—models that cannot be explored within the often-stifling bureaucracy of public school systems. Individuals such as Agassi, retired diamond dealer Barnett Helzberg, Long Island real estate executive Ivan Kaufman and Courtney Sale Ross, widow of Time Warner CEO Steve Ross, also seek to invest their efforts with entrepreneurial vigor and vision.

The dramatic growth of the charter school movement is facilitating this trend. In the 15 years since Minnesota passed the original law allowing charter schools—essentially, public/private hybrids that operate outside educational bureaucracies but receive some governmental support—39 states and Washington, D.C., have followed suit. This movement has empowered many who would not have otherwise undertaken such a project. "There is a choice now for parents and philanthropists," Ross points out. "I could have never contributed to public education before." Today there are more than 3,600 charter schools in the U.S. These receive some public funding and must meet government performance standards. But they control their own hiring and curricula. Many have been established in urban areas and serve predominantly at-risk poor and minority students.

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.

Because of the investment required, potential backers, like Kaufman, must be truly committed to advancing their educational mission. "A school is only as good as the programs it offers," says Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports charter schools. "If you as the individual don’t fully understand what it takes to implement the program, you are not going to be a very good steward."

Political Headwinds
Those establishing charter schools must often garner political backing. Agassi and Rogers had to lobby the Nevada legislature to change its charter law so that Agassi Prep could extend the school day. This year, Curry helped launch a political action committee, Democrats for Education Reform, to press for an increase in New York’s limit of 100 charter schools. "What I think eventually strikes any funders of new schools is that they may need to get involved in the political system in a way they maybe hadn’t envisioned initially, because the public school system is where the money and the kids are," he says.

"What I think eventually strikes any funders of new schools is that they may need to get involved in the political system in a way they maybe hadn’t envisioned ..."   — Boykin Curry

Funders also soon discover the need for ample community support. Agassi and Rogers benefited from having already established their philanthropic credentials in Las Vegas. Agassi’s fame generated publicity and helped attract students. Rogers attended numerous town hall meetings to talk face-to-face with parents and residents. "I know a lot of people who would give the money," Agassi says. "It’s a question of how to bring a community together to support the program."

Community opposition to Ross’ recent charter project in Manhattan caused setbacks, although her first project, a fully private school on Long Island, is successful, and her teaching method has been adopted by other schools. She opened the Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1991 to educate her daughter and one other student. Ross subsequently invested roughly $100 million into that project and a variety of related educational initiatives. She donated 152 acres to create a Ross School campus, complete with an organic garden and a café where students and teachers can dine together. She is training 63 educators this fall at her teaching academy in the Hamptons.

Swedish teachers discovered her methods when a friend of Ross’ ex-husband, Swedish businessman Anders Holst, toured her school. Over the past three years, the city of Stockholm and the Stockholm Education Association have partnered with Ross to implement her methods at Stockholm’s Tensta Gymnasium, where more than 80 percent of the students are immigrants and many are refugees. For Ross, founding a successful private school creates a moral obligation to expand its strategies to public school students. "I wanted to build something that was transformative," she explains, speaking in her Manhattan apartment while attended by her miniature schnauzers, aptly named Apollo and Plato. "Our school is a combination of research and application—more of a think tank."

But Ross’ recent attempts to implement her ideas in New York have gone less smoothly. She wanted to bring a two-year effort to fruition this fall by opening Ross Global Academy, a public charter school, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, sharing a building already occupied by an existing public school, New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math, or NEST. But protests from NEST parents, students and lawmakers, including State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, prompted the New York Department of Education to renege on its space-sharing offer and expel Ross’ school. As Worth went to press in late June, Ross expected the Department of Education to offer the school another space in Lower Manhattan, according to her spokesman, Stuart Fischer. "People say you have so much money you could buy your own building," Ross said before learning of the department’s about-face. "[But] we want to take this to public education and prove it can be done through the system."

The New York City Department of Education, not Ross, originally decided to locate Ross Global Academy in the building with NEST. Start-up charter schools often share facilities with existing schools that are thought to have excess capacity; Curry’s school shares a building with other public schools. Thanks to the pro-charter stance of New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, Ross and Curry are each paying only $1 a year to lease their facilities.

Large Commitments
Notwithstanding the occasional charter school sweetheart lease, like the ones offered Ross and Curry, many benefactors shoulder enormous infrastructure costs. Ross has spent between $500,000 and $750,000 during her charter school’s start-up phase, and Helzberg contributed almost all the $40 million needed to foot the bill for the 172,000-square-foot building that University Academy moved into last year in Kansas City. "We kind of follow the principle: If you’re giving while you’re living, you’re knowing where it’s going," he says.

A beautiful, modern campus can greatly benefit students, but it needs an experienced, capable leader. Kaufman elicited controversy at his yeshiva over his decision to hire headmaster Daniel Vitow, a secular director in what is traditionally a religious role. They spent a year developing curriculum and strategy before opening the school. "Do not get started unless you have the right administrator," says Kaufman, who refers to Vitow as the school’s CEO.

"There’s a choice now for parents and philanthropists. I could have never contributed to public education before."   — Courtney Sale Ross

Fundraising rounds out the list of critical elements for a school’s success. Rogers and Agassi initially planned to leverage the two-time U.S. Open champion’s talent by hosting tennis exhibitions. After six months of research, the executive director they hired returned with a 157-page report and concluded they could never raise enough money with a tennis exhibition.

Rogers’ first reaction was that the director had just talked herself out of a job. He then decided to adapt and planned a broader event. The result, the Grand Slam for Children, has become an annual tradition in Las Vegas, drawing performers such as Barbra Streisand and Usher. Last year’s concert brought in $10.5 million, including $2.5 million from Agassi and Rogers. Ten more concerts are planned to raise the second half of a $120 million endowment. Agassi personally donates about $1 million annually to fund the foundation’s administrative costs, so donors know their contributions will go directly toward programs for the children.

Failing Grades
There is some evidence that many of these investments of time, effort and resources are in vain. Indeed, a national report on the charter movement shows that, overall, the regulatory freedom these schools enjoy does not guarantee their success. Based on test scores, charter schools’ average performance is no higher than that of public schools, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, D.C. Then there are the outright failures: More than 400 charter schools have closed, including 60 in California in 2004 alone.

Charter schools’ lackluster track record raises the larger issue of whether they are the most effective answer to the achievement problems educational philanthropists wish to address. "For every case that’s cited as an exemplary charter school, there’s one at the other end," points out Rebecca Jacobsen, an EPI researcher. "The real question becomes: Is that worth it?"

Many school backers say they look beyond metrics such as test scores. Both Ross and Kaufman say they established their schools to nurture each student’s individual strengths. Students at the original private Ross School are not measured by the yardstick of the New York State Regents exams. Instead, they engage in broader endeavors, such as senior projects that range from digitally animating a feudal Japanese short story to creating a business plan for a clothing line. Every member of the 2006 graduating classes of Ross and the North Shore Hebrew Academy High School is going to college, with 20 percent of North Shore’s grads attending Ivy League schools.

Helzberg boasts that 100 percent of University Academy’s graduates go to college, but admits he is not proud of the school’s 30 percent attrition rate. While some student test scores have improved, University Academy failed to make adequate yearly progress in 2004-05 as mandated by No Child Left Behind. This year, the Missouri State Department of Education deemed the school in need of further improvement. Agassi Prep made satisfactory progress last year under No Child Left Behind, but has had to weather what Rogers terms "massive principal turnover."

Since beginning their journey in November 1993, Agassi and Rogers have devoted far more hours—and dollars—than they expected. Rogers says he now spends about 20 to 25 percent of his time volunteering, while Agassi has conducted 75 tours of Agassi Prep for potential donors and other influential visitors. But they have discovered they enjoy philanthropy with no graduation date. "I feel like it’s become a life commitment," Agassi says. "This isn’t something you just do once and forget about."

Catherine Curan, based in Brooklyn, is a frequent contributor to Worth.

Photograph by Larsen & Talbert/Icon International.

Additional Information
 The Arithmetic of Reading and Writing