In 1998, Yale Law student Dacia Toll and a team of like-minded New Haven community leaders founded Amistad Academy, a public charter school in New Haven, Connecticut. With the belief that urban students could achieve at the same high levels as their affluent suburban counterparts, their goal was to prove that demographics are not destiny. Over the past 10 years, Amistad Academy has proved that the achievement gap can, in fact, be closed. Amistad Academy students—78 percent receive free and reduced lunch and 98 percent are African American or Hispanic—continue to surpass district and state averages in reading, writing and math, shattering the notion that urban kids cannot learn.

In 2003, Amistad Academy's leadership created a separate nonprofit, named Achievement First, to use Amistad Academy's knowledge and best practices to have a greater impact. Since its founding, Achievement First has grown into a network of 17 public charter schools in New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford, CT, and Brooklyn, NY, serving 4,500 students from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

The Power of the Network
Achievement First's approach is not based on any "silver bullet" about how to achieve breakthrough student achievement. Rather it consists of a set of basic principles that, when combined and executed well, have consistently demonstrated an ability to enable all students to succeed at the highest levels. The elements include a longer school day and year, regular use of assessments, integration of performance data planning, recruitment and development of talented teachers and leaders, intensive intervention for struggling students, and a disciplined and joyful school culture.

Achievement First is also much more than great individual schools. It is an interconnected network of students, teachers, parents, school leaders, data specialists, operations and finance professionals, content experts, and more. Achievement First's network approach frees schools to focus on student achievement by centralizing the functions of teacher recruitment, fundraising, budgeting and fiscal operations, data management, information technology, and facilities. In addition, the network model enables successful practices at one Achievement First school to be systematized and shared so that the entire network benefits. Through economies of scale and higher levels of specialization, Achievement First enables the network to execute key tasks with significantly less expense and with higher levels of quality than the schools can on their own.

Reaching 10,000 Students by 2013
Achievement First's theory of change is that by creating the equivalent of an urban public school "district," Achievement First can serve as proof that closing the achievement gap is possible at district scale and inspire broader reform. Over the next five years, Achievement First plans to grow to a network of 30 schools serving more than 12,000 students—students like Mayro Valenzuela, who celebrated Amistad Academy's tenth anniversary by writing, "When my mom grew up in Guatemala, she didn't have a good education. She can't help us too much on homework because her education was very low. I come to school to accomplish my goals and be able to help my kids some day. Right now, I am just a kid, but I am evolving. Someday, I will have freedom to do anything I want to do in my future and fulfill my big dreams."