And they are looking closely at charter schools in states like Illinois, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia. While some of the more established companies, such as the Edison Project in New York City and Education Alternatives Inc. in Minneapolis, are using charter schools to expand their existing portfolios of public and private schools, other, lesser-known companies were created more recently specifically to enter the nascent charter school market. Among them are Educational Development Corp. Established in 1995 in Grand Rapids, Mich., the company runs eight charter schools in the state. William F. Weld who helped draft Massachusetts' charter school law.
Advantage has contracts for three charter schools in three states.
Mosaica, formed less than a year ago, is the brainchild of an educator and entrepreneur who used to run a company that developed and operated child-care centers. Mosaica Academy of Saginaw is the company's first charter school, but in the next two years, Mosaica aims to manage 20 charter and other public schools. And charter schools seemed like the perfect way to do this. They're about results. That's what will win us further business.