Great Hearts Academies
"Classical Education, Revolutionary Schools"
Mission
The mission of Great Hearts Academies is to create a network of academically rigorous, liberal arts middle and high schools in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. This network will prepare its graduates for college and to be leaders in creating a more philosophical, humane, and just society. Through its graduates and presence in the market, Great Hearts will be a catalyst for improving public education opportunities in the region.
Profile
Great Hearts academies are public, independently operated charter schools with open admissions policies. Each school promises a traditional liberal arts education with small classes, a campus student/teacher ratio of no more than 15 to 1, and an advanced honours core curriculum.
Our founders commissioned the name Great Hearts because we never want to lose sight of our ultimate purpose: to graduate ’great-hearted’ seniors, magnanimous young men and women with the capacity for the meaningful leadership that our culture so desperately needs. Liberal education should bring each student to ask: what amongst the array of offerings and invitations spread before me in the future do I find meaningful? Graduates will then apply that confident self-understanding for a greater good beyond themselves.
Our model is defined by six key characteristics; all essential to establishing start-up schools according to a proven model: a Core Liberal Arts Curriculum, an Academy Ethos, Small Size, a Professionally Diverse and Uniquely Qualified Faculty, Visible Leadership, and Family Involvement.
Results
Great Hearts member schools are substantially outperforming other public schools and proving that schools can do a superb job of educating students if they are smaller, more efficient, and set higher expectations for all students through a core, liberal arts curriculum.
Based on the success of the founding academies, Great Hearts sets high goals for all of the schools in the network ranging from graduation rates to SAT scores. Great Hearts' students score near the highest in the state on standardized tests, with nationally-norm referenced test performance across grades and subjects typically in the 80th to 95th percentile. Despite having no admissions requirements, our students boast an average SAT score of 1270, above that of the local Private Schools’ average of 1211 and the Public Schools’ average of 1012. In addition, 90% of our students attend 4 year colleges, relative to 34% of public school students, and 12.5% of seniors are National Merit Finalists, compared to 5.3% at private schools and 0.3% at public schools.
We are pleased to issue the Great Hearts Quarterly Reports; their purpose is to foster candid conversation among us all regarding the constant improvement of our academies. This pursuit of best practices, we believe, will allow us to keep our eye on the performance of our schools as we grow to serve many more students over the next decade. We also conduct yearly Hearts Parent, Student, and Faculty Satisfaction Surveys.
