The Chicago Public Education Fund

Everyone talks about finding a Superman to save urban school systems. But Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel knows that it will take much more. He needs a dream team of talent focused on creating a world-class school system, and his announcement today demonstrates that commitment to sustainable reform.

“The team he announced today represents a blend of visionary talent — experienced educators, innovative managers, and civic leaders committed to leading the kind of ambitious reforms that demand a lot from adults but show the greatest promise for improving the lives and outcomes of students. Many of these leaders have worked closely with The Fund on a series of innovations around how to prepare, develop and compensate great principals and teachers.”

These leaders include:

New Chicago School Board member Penny Pritzker is the chairman and a founding director of The Fund. Throughout the life of The Fund, Pritzker has played an integral role in shaping strategy and driving investments that have had measurable impact on the quality of principals and teachers. Most notably, she led The Fund’s overhaul of the CPS principal eligibility process that resulted in some of the toughest principal standards in the nation.

New Chicago School Board President David Vitale served as a director at The Fund from 2008 to 2010 and lent critical expertise to The Fund's work, providing perspective as a former member of the CPS leadership team and offering insight into how our investments can be most successful.

Chief Financial Officer Diana Ferguson and Chief Human Capital Officer Alicia Winckler are partnering with The Fund in implementing systemic reforms aimed at elevating the quality of principals and teachers across CPS. The Fund played the lead role in recruiting both executives to CPS.

“We’ve been working on this challenge for a decade, and now all the stars are aligned around this singular vision for advancing student achievement -- building the best pipeline of principal and teacher talent in the nation. Education Secretary Arne Duncan talks about a perfect storm for reform. Well, we are facing our own perfect storm here in Chicago -- a new mayor committed to innovation, a seismic shift in our teacher evaluation system, and a massive school reform bill pending in Springfield.”

The Fund also has worked closely with Jesse Ruiz and Elizabeth Swanson. Ruiz has been a long-time champion of the Fund’s efforts to improve teacher quality, and Swanson has been a thoughtful leader during both her time at CPS in the Duncan administration and at the Pritzker Foundation.

The Fund was the first venture philanthropy in the city devoted to education and one of the first in the nation to bet on talent as the most powerful lever of change in schools. The Fund’s Board of Directors is comprised of Chicago’s most prominent corporate and civic leaders, who invest a significant amount of time and personal dollars on these priorities. By staying relentlessly focused on sustainable improvements in human capital across Chicago, The Fund helped transform the district’s pipeline of educators.

These appointments come at a critical time, when the new administration will be hiring a new generation of educators, negotiating a new teachers’ contract, creating a new state-mandated performance-based framework for teacher and principal evaluation, and looking to expand learning time in a district with one of the shortest school days in the nation.