Giving Compass' Take:

• IDEA is a fast-growing charter network of 79 schools that has a specific focus on serving students of color, specifically Latino students from low-income areas. 

• What unique hurdles might the IDEA charter network run into?

• Read more about the success stories and challenges that charter networks are facing. 

It’s been 20 years since teachers Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama founded an after-school program in Donna, Texas, a city of about 16,000 along the U.S.-Mexico border. By 2000, Torkelson and Gama had turned the program into a charter school with a light bulb logo. They named it “Individuals Dedicated to Excellence and Achievement.”

Now, it’s just known as IDEA, and is a network of 79 schools.

The campus in Donna is the flagship of a network poised to become the second largest nonprofit charter network in the U.S. this year. IDEA already serves 45,000 students, mostly in the Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso areas, and it’s moving fast, starting 18 schools this fall alone. Four opened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the network’s first foray outside Texas.

Big ambitions are nothing new for charter school networks. But this is an expansion worth watching, as IDEA tries to export the model it forged by teaching mostly Latino students near the border to very different communities — at a pace that few, if any, others are looking to match.

Indeed, IDEA has a track record of doing well with students who often struggle. Nearly 90 percent of IDEA’s students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and most are students of color living in historically Latino-dominant communities. A national study of charter networks found IDEA was among those that had a positive impact on student learning.

But IDEA has been able to avoid some of the criticism that has dogged other no-excuses schools because observers also say IDEA is unusually culturally competent. The schools’ suspension numbers are low, and the network’s teaching staff is 85 percent non-white.

Read the full article about IDEA charter school network by Francisco Vara-Orta at Chalkbeat