We believe that curiosity and the desire to learn is a defined characteristic of all human beings and that learning needs to be nurtured, supported, and guided toward independent thinking and self-motivation.
The educators we support empower our students through a comprehensive program encompassing active learning and attention to the individual. The schools we support have active programs to aggressively encourage and foster parent involvement.
Our mission
To reverse negative educational outcomes in underserved communities by helping client schools provide safe and secure learning environments with state of the art equipment and facilities; environments where the schools’ Boards and administrations can offer superior academic curricula and instruction delivered by first class educators.
To assist our clients in establishing cultures of high expectations that can instill in students the self-confidence and determination to take advantage of their innate curiosity and desire to learn.
To apply fundamental business principles and expert managers to perform non-academic school consulting functions thus freeing teachers and administrators to focus exclusively on academics and professional development.
To create the financial stability that allows client schools to deliver proven academic programs that focus on active learning and attention to the individual.
To provide a pathway for client schools to enable personal success by encouraging and aggressively supporting ascension to high-performing and advanced secondary schools and colleges.
Successful outcomes
As a result of CSMI’s trailblazing approach, Chester Community Charter School has become one of Pennsylvania’s great educational success stories. The school began with 97 students in 1998 and has steadily increased to roughly 4,500 students on four campuses with newly constructed, state-of-the-art buildings. The school is a true community success story that has transformed the lives of thousands of students and their families.
The school’s success is particularly inspiring because of the circumstances in which it was established. Chester was once a vibrant middle-class community. When the big manufacturing plants left, taking with them thousands of jobs, the community went on a downhill trajectory. Chester became a community besieged by poverty, violent crime, and drug use. The population declined, as did home values and median income. Likewise, the Chester-Upland School District began experiencing significant declines in educational outcomes for its students. The effects were devastating: approximately half of all eighth grade students were not graduating from high school.
In this setting, Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) engaged CSMI to helps its administrators establish a safe and secure learning environment, thus breathing life back into the community and giving hope to its children. CSMI helped CCCS to create a “private public school” culture: in which the school’s campuses, facilities, and first-class, certified teaching staff surpass those of the standard charter school. The school boasts a 10-to-1, adult-to-child ratio; advanced academic programs, which include partnerships with many of the region’s best colleges and universities; uniform attire/dress; extracurricular activities; intra-scholastic sports; and state-of-the-art equipment and computer labs. This has all been achieved under the ultimate leadership of CCCS’s Board of Trustees.
The success of CCCS is manifested in student outcomes. More than 200 qualified students have attended, and received scholarships for, some of the area’s most academically rigorous and prestigious high schools, including: Episcopal Academy; Ursuline Academy; Tatnall School; Wilmington Friends School; Neumann & Goretti; St, Marks High School; St. Joseph’s Preparatory School; Cardinal O’Hara High School; Milton Hershey School; Hallahan Catholic Girls High School; and The School of Science and Discovery, Chester, PA; New Beginnings Academy Concord Christian Academy; Delaware Valley High School; Charter High School for Art & Design; World Communications Charter School.
The many non-academic functions CSMI provides can be seen on our Services page.
“I said to my children, ‘I’m going to work and do everything I can to see that you get a good education. I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions of God’s children who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don’t want you feeling you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.’”