Entrepreneur seeks to lift charter school cap

PROVIDENCE -- Angus Davis divides his life between two worlds.

One is the technology world, which made him a very young multi-millionaire. The other is education reform -- his passion.

"I have a job at Microsoft where I'm a software technology guy. And then I've got a job at the Board of Regents and in many of our local schools where I'm trying to help low-income kids get a better education," Davis said.

His goal is to lift the charter school cap.

Davis, 30, is looking to open more charter schools in Rhode Island, like the Met School and Blackstone Academy.

He's also looking beyond state lines to a charter school in New York called Democracy Prep, which was started by native Rhode Islander Seth Andrews.

In just two years, the school said it went from 9 percent to 89 percent of its kids performing at grade level in math.

The transformation prompted Davis to open his Providence home to Democracy Prep students to learn first hand what works.

Davis said he makes sure he stays on his mission by posting letters children write to him on his walls.

"This girl was reading at a second-grade level two years ago. Now she's in seventh grade and her and her friends are studying things like dark matter, and all kinds of crazy stuff that's over my head," he said.

Some look at Davis, who made his millions selling his voice recognition software company to Microsoft, and say he's a technology guy that doesn't know a thing about education.

Others like Rhode Island Education Commissioner Peter McWalters said he has just what it takes.

"I've got a young, bright, aggressive, energetic fellow, who himself is an example of alternative pathways, who is making a moral high ground commitment to solving some of the most systemic -- both racial and economic -- problems of access in the country," McWalters said.

"Angus thinks really strategically," Andrews said. "And so it's about creating a sequence of structural changes in the law and in the system that's necessary for education reform to happen in Rhode Island."

Two strategic steps Davis wants to take are changing the 1995 legislation that limits charter schools to two per district, as well as bring Teach For America to Rhode Island, a program that by-passes the usual certifications to fast-track new college graduates into the classroom.

"I'd love to be able to point to 15 to 35 percent of the children in our urban schools five or 10 years from now achieving at the same level as kids in our suburban communities like East Greenwich and Barrington,” Davis said.

Until that happens, Davis said he'd love to learn how to drive a tractor-trailer.

"I like learning practical things. I'm always interested in learning something new," he said.

It's an attitude he wants to spark in Rhode Island's young people.