Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools central office have cast their lot with the Academy of Urban School Leadership, a non-profit, Chicago-based private contractor. AUSL currently manages 19 Chicago Public Schools, including 12 turnarounds – all on the South and West sides and most in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

And pending Chicago Board of Education approval, AUSL will run six of the ten turnaround schools announced November 30 – meaning that the academy will hire its own principal, faculty and staff at schools where CPS fired all the personnel.

Like charter schools, some of the most powerful people in Chicago – and the country – see AUSL as a cure for decade’s old problems in Chicago’s worst schools, while the teachers union and many community groups are skeptical.

“Why is it okay for people with a lot of money to experiment on low-income black children?” says Jitu Aaron Brown, an education organizer at the Kenwood Oakland community organization.

Developing a relationship with CPS

Venture capitalist Martin Koldyke founded AUSL in 2001 with a belief familiar in education reform policy circles – that great teachers and a great environment within the school can somehow transcend socioeconomic issues brought from outside the school.

“Specially trained teachers are our ‘secret sauce,’” reads the AUSL web site, adding, “A turnaround creates a new climate and culture of success.”

According to AUSL spokesman Jim Blomberg, between one-third and one-half of all teachers at AUSL schools participated in the AUSL four-year training program, where the educators receive master’s degrees and apprentice with CPS teachers. Blomberg describes other AUSL teachers as “mid-career changers,” instructors that come over from other school systems – or erstwhile CPS teachers fired in a school turnaround.

AUSL got its first CPS contract in 2006 to turnaround Sherman Elementary school.

AUSL does not operate any schools outside of Chicago, though CPS spokesman Becky Carroll says that, “School districts across the country are vying to attract AUSL to their cities.”

Also, AUSL is the exclusive contractor of CPS turnaround contracts – either AUSL or the CPS office of school improvement operates each turnaround. “There are no other turnaround operators in Chicago,” Carroll says.

In other words, AUSL only contracts with CPS and, in regard to turnarounds, CPS only contracts with AUSL.

In addition to this symbiotic relationship, the new Board of Education Chairman David Vitale is the old chairman of AUSL (like AUSL founder Koldyke, Vitale’s background is in finance. He is chairman of Urban Partnership Bank and former president of the Chicago Board of Trade). And the new top finance man at CPS, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cawley, is the old finance administrator at AUSL.

CTU President Karen Lewis has called for an investigation into this cozy relationship, calling it a conflict of interest that prevents CPS from doing what’s best for neighborhood schools.

“Cowley is constantly going around singing the praises of AUSL,” grouses CTU spokesman Jackson Potter. “When you work for the district you have to take a more nuanced position.”

Carroll of CPS counters that AUSL, “has a proven track record of driving student achievement.” Carroll also points that AUSL is a non-profit.

AUSL v. Charters

While the political lines may be almost identical, AUSL is different from Chicago’s charter school networks in important ways. Charters are publicly funded schools that draw students from across the city, usually through a lottery, and almost none of their teachers are part of the Chicago Teachers Union.

By contrast, AUSL teachers are unionized and part of the CPS-CTU collective bargaining agreement. Also, they are taking over neighborhood public schools – meaning an AUSL school's obligation is to educate the students in those neighborhood boundaries.

“We are community-based schools,” Blomberg says. “We are pretty different from charters, but in performance we are the same and better.”

Blomberg is right by one measure. According to data supplied by CPS, the average student Illinois Standards Achievement Test score went up at all twelve turnaround schools that AUSL took over. By contrast, all but one of Chicago’s nine multisite charter operators actually did worse on the ISAT than the district wide average.

Where AUSL is like charters is in their financial backing. The U.S. Dept. of Education, lead by former CPS head Arne Duncan, who popularized the turnaround, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation each give about $10 million over five years.

Finally, where AUSL is most profoundly similar to charters – and the overall education reform movement advocated by Emanuel, Gates, and Duncan – are the dual overarching ideas of education reform. First, is holding schools accountable via student test scores. Second, that the biggest reason a student’s test scores are bad is not broader economic and environmental factors, but lousy teachers and a losing environment within the school.

AUSL might represent an improvement over charters and other education reform efforts. But its education reform mindset may forever leave it at odds with CTU and perhaps many of the city’s neighborhood organizations as well, who would like a change in the conversation.

For example, Wendy Katten, co-founder of the Raise Your Hands coalition wants the focus on a more diverse curriculum, more early childhood education, smaller class sizes, and even more physical education. “This punitive kind of blaming the schools mode is counter-intuitive,” Katten argues.