Expanding to Scale: Part II of the Series
Yesterday I asked readers to imagine a scenario where they had billions of dollars to give away and a keen interest in charter schools. We put the "charter schools: good or bad" debate to the side and looked at the options available for expanding charters: the EMO (for-profit), the CMO (nonprofit version of EMO), and the stand alone version.
Philanthropy largely went with option #2, the CMO approach. They dropped $500 million on CMO expansion between 1999 and 2009. The Gates Foundation also invested in the small schools model (breaking up large high