Our Mission & Work 

Message from our CEO

Dear Friends,

This year has been extremely active for the Foundation. We have worked diligently to implement our new mission and vision. Our emphasis has been centered on activities for our charter school, Agassi Prep. We celebrated the graduation ceremonies for another successful class of seniors. We also reveled in the news that our high school was deemed high achieving for the very first time.  

We look forward to a new legislative session in 2011 and will be active in introducing policy to change education in our state. Although it will be a tough year for legislators as they work through another year of budget cuts, we need to push forward to continue to change the face of education in Nevada.  

In October we completed our 15th Grand Slam for Children event at Wynn Las Vegas. We appreciate our longstanding partners and sponsors as well as embrace our new participants to the event. We hope you all return and continue to help the Foundation grow and prosper.

Foundation Mission

The Andre Agassi Foundation for Education is an educational organization dedicated to transforming U.S. public education for underserved youth. The Foundation drives reform by engaging in practice, policy and partnerships that provide quality education and enrichment opportunities.

Creating Opportunities through Education: Agassi Prep

We put these beliefs into practice at Agassi Prep by closing the gap between the low level of funding the state of Nevada provides and the appropriate level of funding that is required to deliver a quality education.  By applying passion and discipline to our work we create an environment in which children can excel.  

In 2001, with the help of generous donors, and in partnership with Clark County School District, we opened our award-winning campus, which today houses three schools –elementary, middle and high school – in the heart of one of our city’s most historically underserved and economically challenged neighborhoods.

We inspire learning through academic rigor, shared responsibility and a culture of respect in which every student, parent, teacher and administrator plays a valuable role. Our approach to education is surprisingly straightforward – and it is proven:

• We provide small classrooms focused on curricula that are aligned with state standards and coordinated across grade levels to ensure continuity;
• We emphasize more time on task, with two extra hours of class work each day and two extra weeks in school each year;
• We offer a full-day kindergarten program to enhance early learning; and
• We emphasize ongoing staff development to ensure that our educators grow alongside our students.

Bringing About Positive Changes in the Public Education System

As we directly impact students and our community through our charitable foundation, our work has broader implications for educational policies and practices nationwide.  After all, if we can achieve a 100% graduation and college acceptance rate among our senior class imagine what we can accomplish in Clark County, Nevada - one of the largest, yet overall lowest performing school districts in the country - we must be on to something.

Through advocacy – whether it’s bringing together educational leaders to advance the national conversation about what works, or by supporting legislation – we seek to make the following priorities a reality in public schools nationwide:

• Increased investment to give all public schools the resources they need to succeed;
• Enhanced accountability through uniform standards to measure student, teacher, principals and school success;
• Greater flexibility in rewarding great teachers, regardless of tenure or union status; and
• Longer days and an extended school year to ensure students not only attend, but also excel in, college.

Click here to learn how you can help us advance these educational policies, which hold promise for every U.S. public school student.