| | Who We’re Looking For
The CSP Fellowship  seeks to recruit the compelling, courageous leaders who will lead a core of revolutionary exemplar schools and change the character of the state’s expectations about what schools are capable of doing for our neediest students. Using a highly selective process, CSP will invite a small number of talented school and community leaders annually to engage in its two year, experiential fellowship.
We believe that the most effective school leaders are those who have learned the critical lesson that, given a high-quality education, all children- even in under-resourced communities- can learn and achieve at the highest levels. We believe the surest and best way to learn this critical lesson is to bring about high levels of student achievement in one’s own transformational classroom. Accordingly, prospective CSP Fellows should be able to demonstrate a compelling track record of success in classroom and school settings as we believe this predicts their ability to chart an ambitious course to academic achievement for all students at their school.
While we are agnostic about the character or educational approach of the charters our Fellows will start, we are not ambivalent about the results we believe our schools must achieve: we are committed to helping open schools that will close the Twin Cities’ durable and egregious opportunity gaps through a demonstrable combination of high academic growth as measured by the NWEA MAP test, and high levels of overall proficiency (85% or higher) in grades tested on the MCA-II.
CSP will select Fellows that embody the Fellowship’s Core Values:
Urgent Focus on Results: Fellows will maintain a relentless focus on high levels of academic achievement as measured by objective measures. Other worthwhile curricular and extra-curricular aims must be considered in the context of their impact on student academic achievement.College Preparatory Mindset: Fellows will have extremely high academic and cultural expectations for all students regardless of their race or socio-economic background. Fellows will found schools with the expectation that all of their graduates are on track to apply, be accepted to, and graduate from a four year colleges upon high-school graduation. Fellows are fundamentally committed to their students achieving at levels comparable to those in Minnesota’s most affluent school districts.Data-Driven Philosophy:Fellows commit to fact-based decision making at every level of their school’s operations. They are committed to collecting, analyzing and leveraging sound data as they make instructional, staffing, budgeting, and programmatic decisions for their schools.
Whatever It Takes Orientation: Fellows believe it is neither appropriate nor correct to blame poverty, family challenges,
or any other external conditions for their children’s poor academic results or the presence of a damaging school culture in their building. They assume personal responsibility for all that is in their control in order to ensure high levels of student achievement and civic engagement. Movement Mindset:Fellows will demonstrate a sense of responsibility for the broader education reform movement in the Twin Cities. They understand that their schools are meant to be the vanguard of a new, national caliber charter movement in the region and a renaissance for public education in under-resourced communities in the Twin Cities. Accordingly, Fellows will be willing to share their best-practices with other schools- district and charter- and to consider expansion and replication as means to broaden their impact. |
