For almost twenty years, Courtney Sale Ross has dedicated her time to improving the education system, and she has made great strides towards accomplishing her goals. Ross is well-known in the education arena, as she began the Ross School, opened Ross Global Academy in New York City in 2006, and also operates the Ross Institute for Advanced Study and Innovation in Education, along with the Ross Institute Teacher Academy.
A Different Kind of School
Ross is passionate about educational reform, especially in terms of including globalization as a prime education topic in school. She formed the Ross School in 1991 with her late husband, Steven Ross. Steven Ross was also the co-chairman of TimeWarner, Inc. when they founded this innovative school designed to launch students into the 21st century. The Ross School was developed around a group of international scholars specializing in subjects of math, psychology, engineering, cultural history, literature, economics, anthropology and even neuroscience to name a few.
The idea behind the Ross School is to educate children from preschool through 12th grade, and they currently have 562 students enrolled. The Ross School combines educational research with teaching so that students learn to research answers for themselves in an effort to deepen the educational experience. After the success of the Ross School, she worked closely with New York University's Steinhardt School and Education, as well as with New York City's Board of Education to establish a public charter school Ross Global Academy.
Ross is committed to opening the lines of communication between private and public sectors so she goes beyond traditional boundaries to support her efforts and schools. Ross solicits and gets government grants, as well as corporate and private foundation grants, to ensure her schools have the necessary funding to succeed.
The Ross Institutes
Ross firmly believes that research on an international scale is directly related with taking the education system to the next level. The Ross Institute for Advanced Study and Innovation in Education promotes an interdisciplinary study of both globalization and education. Ross wants to promote cross-cultural understanding and use these studies to develop models for alternative schools. Graduate schools of education have access to the Ross Institute's findings and studies to extrapolate pertinent information. These even provide educational discoveries to public school teachers that serve in challenging teaching environments.
The Ross Institute Teacher Academy trains educators the "Ross" way and strives to especially influence inner-city students by focusing on training their teachers. International immigrants at these inner-city schools are also a focus, and Ross desires to alter the education system to benefit these groups of students in particular. Teachers here are trained by scholars, master teachers and mentors, and the training offers teachers access to workshops, conferences and collaborations to promote the Ross method.
Ross is uniquely positioned to change the education system by serving on boards, including the Asia Society, New York University and the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California. Ross's daughter was even part of the first graduating class of the Ross School, giving Ross the confidence to continue her lifelong passion for education reform
