Imagine Schools states openly that it operates at the top like a business--even though in many states, including Florida, it is required to operate its schools like non-profits.
Imagine brings financial security to an area's educational system, the company's development director, Karl Huber, told the St. Petersburg Times in a May 2010 article about a struggling Imagine School. "If it doesn't make it financially," he said about the school, "it will close."
In the same article, a critic of the education-as-business model, Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, said, "We have these management companies that should be supporting schools as a vendor, and they're running them like private franchises."
Standardized learning is frowned upon in Imagine Schools. Its mission statement claims that "there is no standardized student." With just a few administrators at company headquarters overseeing the educational component, principals are given breadth to help teachers employ more individual learning plans.
Imagine's president and chief executive officer, Dennis Bakke, was a federal official and businessman before he and his wife co-founded the Imagine Schools organization in 2004. In his biography, he focuses on the system's "decentralized leadership, freedom with responsibility, utilizing each person's gifts to their maximum, and giving decision-making power to people closest to the action." Little information was available to rate employee satisfaction with that model.
To tailor the curriculum, teachers follow a variety of educational models: Imagine Schools Standards Based Curriculum; Direct instruction; Core Knowledge; Project CHILD; Micro-Society; The International Baccalaureate; Single-sex education; and Arts or Science Focus Schools. These various approaches allow teachers to open students' eyes in a variety of ways to many subjects, according to the students' particular learning strengths.
On its curriculum web page, Imagine Schools abhors "one size fits all" approaches, preferring instead a learning environment in which children can be educated by teachers employing several models.
Most teachers in any school system attempt to employ character-building components in their lesson plans, but some parents have praised charter schools for a more concerted effort. Imagine Schools' "Character Development" Web page says this is not a "nice add-on in the curriculum--it is a crucial aspect of a quality school." Issues of "right and wrong, justice and the importance of serving others" are core elements, according to Imagine. It holds a national "caring" essay contest and urges principals and teachers to wrap character-building into other lessons.
To see whether Imagine Schools is building character in a way that conforms to your family's values, visit a school near you and speak with a principal.