Andre Agassi became a tennis legend as a young man. He started tennis early, having dropped out of school at the end of eighth grade to make his mark on clay courts.

Then he opened his own charter school in Las Vegas, and promised that every student would be prepared for a selective college (Agassi never completed high school). Agassi plowed $18 million into the school to assure that it had the best of everything. He told the New York Times in 2004 that he wanted his school to be a model for the nation.

Unfortunately the Agassi school was a disaster. Teachers and principals cycled in and out through a revolving door. It had six principals in its first decade. The cheerleading coach was accused of running a prostitution ring on the side. Security guards complained that the kids were out of control. The scores were about the same as the district’s, despite what teachers called “a chaotic learning environment.” (Source: Amy Kingsley, “Learning Curve,” Las Vegas Citylife, March 14, 2012).

It ended up on the state’s list of low-performing schools. At the very bottom.

What does a state do with a low-performing charter school? Turn it into a public school? Absolutely not! It was handed over to the Democracy Prep Charter chain of New York.

But the word “failure” is not in Andre Agassi’s vocabulary. Last year, he went to the big annual entrepreneur’s conference at Arizona State University to boast about the millions he was now making building new charters. And he pretends that his school in Las Vegas was a phenomenal success.

Andre Agassi, who was once the number one tennis player in the world, has helped build 70 charter schools in the past four years, educating 33,000 students. And that’s just the beginning, he told hundreds of attendees at the 2017 ASU/GSV Summit here Wednesday.

“We have $1 billion more to spend,” he said.

Agassi described his passion for education, his drive to scale up successful charter schools across the nation, and the business model he’s using to do so in an interview with sportscaster Ted Robinson.

“It took me 14 years to build one school in Clark County [Nev.] for 1,300 students,” said Agassi. That school, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, is a K-12 public charter school that educates students in a low-income neighborhood of West Las Vegas. The academy was constructed with $40 million raised by the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education

At least he has the good sense not to replicate his own failed charter school. Why bother, when he can make $1 Million for every charter school he builds and opens.

Charter schools that have been funded through the Turner-Agassi fund have included KIPP, Rocketship, Academica, Franklin Academy and Lighthouse Academies.

Agassi knows nothing about education but he knows how to turn a profit. In 2023, he bought a building in the Bronx, New York, for $4.3 Million. Five years later, in a related-party transaction, his charter building sold the site to his charter schools for $24 Million. Somebody pocketed $20 Million. Isn’t the charter industry amazing?

What a shame to see a tennis icon reduced to charter shill, profiting by hurting public schools.