Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are pleased to share with you a Contributor Column from Darryl Cobb, President of the Charter School Growth Fund, and Host of Leader to Leader with Darryl Cobb.
We provide a bio for Darryl below.
Darryl leads all of CSGF’s portfolio investments and support work to build a community of ~150 outstanding charter networks across the country. He founded the Emerging CMO Fund in 2013, dedicated to helping charter school leaders of color build early-stage networks. He led CSGF’s investment strategy in Florida, Tennessee, and the Midwest for over 10 years. Prior to joining CSGF, Darryl was the CEO of a turnaround charter school in Chicago. He also previously served as the chief learning officer at the KIPP Foundation, where he led a portfolio of learning programs, including principal and teacher-leader development. Before KIPP, Darryl worked as a management consultant at Accenture and Diamond Cluster. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and has an MBA from Northwestern University. Darryl is a Pahara-Aspen fellow and Broad resident and serves on the board of the Surge Institute and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. Darryl resides in Chicago with his wife and two children.
Excellence, Not Just Expansion: How Charter Leaders Are Reclaiming the Movement’s Purpose
We are in the middle of the greatest choice expansion in the history of our country. And, public charter schools are showing the way on educating low-income students to their highest potential. But choice alone is not enough. If this movement is to live up to its promise, we must recommit to its original purpose: expanding access to excellent public schools. Growth without excellence is a hollow victory.
At the Charter School Growth Fund, we partner with some of the highest-performing charter schools in the nation. Across our portfolio, networks are graduating close to 100% of their students, many of whom are earning millions in full-ride scholarships. This is real success. But even among high-performing schools, we must resist the temptation to rest on our laurels. The urgency of the post-pandemic moment demands more from all of us. Too many schools are still struggling to rebound. Too many students are still behind. We can’t afford to confuse momentum with mastery.
That’s why we launched the limited podcast series Leader to Leader six months ago.
I wanted to talk directly with the school leaders who are delivering the kind of results we should be scaling. Not just for inspiration—but for clarity. What are these leaders doing differently? What can we learn from them? And how do we center excellence as the foundation of growth?
The leaders I interviewed are not abstract success stories. They are real people leading real schools in real communities—with real results. We begin in Chicago, where Constance Jones recently concluded her tenure as CEO of Noble Schools, one of the city’s most successful charter networks.
Her focus was clear: to make a lasting impact on the lives of students and on the city itself. “My greatest aspiration during my time leading Noble is to make this city a better place for thousands of students—our Noble students and students throughout Chicago,” she told me. That mindset came through not only in system-level strategy, but in deeply personal moments. Recalling a conversation with a student who had made a serious mistake, she said: “You need to know I’m here because I care. Your principal called me because he cares. And your mom is here because she cares.” That kind of leadership—rooted in accountability and compassion—is what sustained Noble’s success.
Amanda Johnson offers another compelling example of what it looks like to meet a community’s needs with vision and resolve.
She launched Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in rural Mississippi to expand access to high-quality education in one of the most underserved parts of the country.“ There wasn’t even a charter law here when I started,” she told me. Today, her school ranks among the top public schools in the state. One of her first students is now back as a teacher-in-residence. Amanda is building something that lasts, creating a school her community can count on for generations to come.
Another leader rethinking what success looks like for students is Oliver Sicat, CEO of Ednovate, a network grounded in a bigger vision of what it means to educate young people.
A former teacher and principal himself, Oliver didn’t just want to get students to college. He wanted to equip them for success in life. “We want to develop students who will thrive in life, not just pass tests,” he said. So Ednovate created a “Whole Child Report Card” to track not only academic progress, but growth in purpose, agency, and empathy. “It’s not about rejecting accountability,” he told me. “It’s about making sure we’re measuring what actually matters.” That’s not a retreat from accountability—it’s an expansion of it, grounded in what families and students value most.
That same blend of rigor and connection defines the work of Elsie Urueta Pollock, founder of Tulsa Honor Academy, in the city where she grew up.
She has set a high academic bar, but also has created a deep sense of belonging. “Families enrolled because they saw me and thought: she gets us,” she said. “I’m the first in my family to graduate high school. I speak Spanish. I still live here.” Academic excellence and cultural competence are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they reinforce each other. Her school holds students to a high academic bar, but it also creates a deep sense of belonging—precisely because families know it was built with them in mind.
Greg White exemplifies the power of proximity in leadership. At LEARN Charter School Network—serving families in Chicago and Washington, D.C.—he shows up where it matters most.
“I’m at morning drop-off. I talk to parents face-to-face. That’s where trust is built,” he said. LEARN’s results—particularly for military-connected students—consistently outperform state and district averages. Trust isn’t just a byproduct of success. It’s a precondition for it.
We end Season 1 in Colorado with Nella García Urban, who embodies what it means to lead with both vision and discipline.
Now at the helm of DSST Public Schools—a network of 16 campuses serving more than 7,000 students—she brings two decades of experience from her time at YES Prep in Houston. Her philosophy? “Systems with soul.” Her approach blends structure and heart. “We must have strong systems that ensure equity but allow each school to have its own identity,” she said. The results speak volumes: a 100% college acceptance rate for seniors, many on full scholarships. “They’ve been seeing themselves there for six years,” she explained.
These leaders are proof that excellence is possible—not someday, but right now. But they also serve as a reminder: we are moving too slowly. We need urgency. The charter sector has not yet recovered the academic momentum of the 2000s and 2010s. We can’t mistake expansion for impact. More schools do not automatically mean better schools. We must recommit to accountability, not just at the school level, but across our entire movement.
Expanding school choice is a step in the right direction, but it’s not the destination. The goal is excellence—real results, delivered at scale. The leaders featured on Leader to Leader understand that. They aren’t building schools to win political points. They’re building schools that work.
Leader to Leader gave me a chance to listen. It gives all of us a chance to focus on what matters most. In a moment when the sector is at risk of mistaking breadth for depth, these leaders remind us that the standard is—and must remain—excellence.
And they deserve our attention.
Watch Season One of Leader to Leader with Darryl Cobb on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.