Margaret Fortune, CEO, Fortune School of Education

Margaret Fortune is the President and CEO of Fortune School. Under Fortunes leadership, the organization was recently approved to operate five K-8 public charter schools in Sacramento County to help close the African American achievement gap. In 2010, Fortune founded Hardy Brown College Prep, a K-8 school in San Bernardino, California named for Black Voice News publisher, Hardy Brown. Like the schools in Sacramento, Hardy Brown College Prep is open to all students and focused on raising academic achievement for the lowest performing subgroup of students in the regionAfrican American children. Fortune broke new ground in 2003 when she turned around Sacramento High School, changing the 1,600 student campus into a charter school. After years of underperformance, the campus was facing sanctions, including a state takeover. Now the school is the third highest performing high school out of 11 high schools in the Sacramento City Unified School District. The college going rate has increased from 20 percent before the reform to 80 percent today. In the same year, as the first Superintendent of St. HOPE Public Schools, Fortune opened PS7, a K-8 campus named a California Distinguished School in 2010. PS7 serves mostly low-income African American students and is the model Fortune is now replicating throughout Sacramento County and in San Bernardino. Margaret Fortune has a track record for taking on persistent inequities. Fortune School of Education also addresses education reform through the preparation of teachers and school leaders. Fortune School credentials teachers for a consortium of over 100 school districts, charter schools and nonpublic schools. Since its founding in 1989, Fortune School has credentialed over 1,000 teachers in shortage areas like math, science and special education. In 2011, Fortune School established a new credential program for charter school leaders and the organization offers professional development throughout California on state-adopted instructional materials as well as workshops on closing the achievement gap. A native of Sacramento, Margaret Fortune is a Trustee of the California State University system. With 450,000 students, the 23 campus system is the largest four-year, public university in the United States. Fortune has been an education advisor for two California governors most recently as Senior Advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fortune was Assistant Education Secretary under Governor Gray Davis, and served under State Education Secretary Gary Hart during the development of the states Academic Performance Index the index used today to measure public school outcomes. Fortune holds a baccalaureate degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was the first African American woman to be elected student body president. She earned her masters in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.