A major Choate benefactor, Carl Icahn, has extended his educational interests into the world of charter schools, an important part of the national public school reform movement. The Carl C. Icahn Charter School (CCICS) in New York City has experienced notable success since September 2001, when it opened with 108 students in Kindergarten through second grade. Mr. Carl Icahn’s first charter school venture is located in the South Bronx. The school has now expanded to include 324 students in the grades Kindergarten through eighth grade. More significantly, in the New York State test that all schools in NY are required to take, the sixth graders in the charter school this year had 83% of the students pass the English test, and 100% of the students pass the math test, compared to their neighboring public school which had 7% pass the English test, and 21% pass the math test.
Charter schools are publicly funded and manage their own money, instead of the state’s Board of Education managing their money for them, as is the case for conventional public schools. Among other things, this freedom allows the charter schools to determine what programs they want to fund, which classes require more money, and how to establish their own teacher pay scale. Charter schools also control their own number of school days, the length of their school days, the number of students in the school and the after-school programs.
Charter schools require an application, but the application only establishes a student’s place in a pool of names from which the School holds a lottery for admission. This system means that it is not possible for the school to skim the “best” applicants to work with, and is therefore dealing with the same mix of students present in mainstream South Bronx public schools. The Icahn Charter School has smaller classes (18 students per class) than most conventional public schools, allowing for individual attention.
The school has won several prestigious academic awards, including the High Performing/Gap Closing school district citation awarded by the NY State Education Department in April, 2006. Last year, the school was one of seven charter schools in the country recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for “closing the educational gap” and was also featured on WNET Ch. 13’s “New York Voices”. Mr. Icahn himself will be the subject of a “60 Minutes” profile, to be broadcast later this winter, that will touch on his interest in education.
The Carl C. Icahn Charter School offers many extracurricular opportunities after school including the chess club, Einstein Club (for the more high scoring students), sports teams (the Falcons), step team, cheerleading, girl scouts, and boy scouts. The school has won many awards in the past seven years including first place on the step team charter school competition (2007), the Black Board Award for excellence in education (2006), Superbowl Football Champions in the Charter School Athletic Association (2006), and 2nd place in the Charter School Athletic Association for basketball (2006).
The school’s official website (www.ccics.org) states “Mr. Icahn’s goal [for the charter schools] is to prove that all children can learn if they are in a rigorous academic program. He believes that charter schools can radically improve public education.”
A well known investor, Mr. Icahn is the president of the school’s Board of Trustees and started the Foundation for a Greater Opportunity, which is sponsoring the school as well as several contemplated charter schools in other parts of New York City. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Trustee of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, trustee on the Board of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Mt. Sinai Hospital. The Choate community mainly knows him as the man who initiated and continues to support the Icahn Scholars Program. The Program sponsors about fifty students on full scholarship here at school.
Ms. Julie Goodyear, who served in the Choate Admission Office for eleven years, is executive director of Mr. Icahn’s foundation and works closely with Mr. Icahn to further his goals in education. Mrs. Goodyear said, “Mr. Icahn has said that public education in America is in a decline, and that if that decline continues, America will lose its influence in the world. Mr. Icahn once said to me in a meeting, ‘The brain is a muscle, and it should be used. If used, it will grow and allow for better thinking’. He wants all children to have a good education. I think that is why he is funding all of these educational opportunities.”
The Foundation for a Greater Opportunity opened another school this past September in the Bronx and plans to open more schools in different locations in the city. The new charter school is currently being housed in a public school, but Mrs. Goodyear is working on a new building and expansion to be finished in 2010. The school will follow the same mission statement of the 2001 original, and it is hoped that it will be as successful as the first.
The schools’ mission statement reads: “The Carl C. Icahn Charter School, using the Core Knowledge curriculum developed by E.D. Hirsch, will provide students with a rigorous academic program offered in an extended day/year setting. Students will graduate armed with the skills and knowledge to participate successfully in the most rigorous academic environments, and will have a sense of personal and community responsibility.”
Carl Icahn has plans to found a charter school. PHOTO/CONTRIBUTED
