Progress With Chess, Inc. is a non-profit 501(c)(3) Ohio corporation founded in 2001. We are dedicated to improving the lives of students through our chess programs. Many studies have proven that students who play chess show significant improvement in their proficiency scores, academic achievement, emotional intelligence and self-esteem. Chess participation promotes critical thinking skills such as concentration, memory, and pattern recognition. Chess teaches the player the value of hard work, objectivity, and responsibility for one.s actions. Chess promotes healthy social interaction between people of different ages and diverse cultural, racial and economic backgrounds.

Progress With Chess founder and President, Michael Joelson, (2003 Ohio Chess Champion) is a national chess master and senior tournament director who has been teaching and directing chess programs in the Cleveland area since 1995. He has been the private coach of seven state scholastic champions and has been the chief tournament director at several state scholastic tournaments attended by 250-600 students. During the 02-03 school year, Joelson personally taught chess in fourteen different area schools, and directed programs which provided chess instruction in sixteen additional schools.

Cleveland Municipal Schools Chess Program

Chief Executive Officer Barbara Byrd-Bennett was anxious to have a chess program in the Cleveland Municipal Schools after witnessing the positive results that the New York Chess-In-The-Schools Program had achieved in improving academic performance in one hundred and seventy five New York Schools.

Progress With Chess, Inc., with extensive experience in directing suburban chess programs, had been interested in starting a chess program in the Cleveland Municipal Schools for many years, but the necessary funding was lacking. In 2001 Frank Sullivan, a chess enthusiast and C.E.O. of R.P.M., Inc., had a chance conversation with Carl Bowers, a Cleveland police detective who is a former scholastic champion from John Adams High School.

Detective Bowers was excited by the prospect of having the Progress With Chess Program in the Cleveland Municipal Schools and mentioned the possibility to Frank Sullivan, who generously agreed to give us a grant to fund the program, as well as the assistance of his talented staff.

Our Cleveland school program, under the Department of New Initiatives, commenced during the 2001-2002 school year. The chess program has been met with enthusiastic support from administrators, principals, teachers, and students, as well as Barbara Byrd-Bennett. We have taught chess in six schools during the past two years, three elementary schools and three middle schools, serving over five hundred students each year. Chess instruction occurs during the regular school day, once a week, in 3-4 classrooms per day for twelve weeks. The Cleveland schools have supported us financially by providing the chess sets and paying for the expenses involved in our year-end Chess Challenge, a tournament and exhibition at the downtown public library. These expenses include transportation, lunches, table rental, trophies and medals for every student involved in our program.

The Cleveland Public Library has been instrumental in our efforts. For the past two years, they have donated the use of their auditorium and an entire floor of the old wing of the downtown library for two days during our Chess Challenge. In addition, they have donated hundreds of hours of staff time to help with planning and conducting this event, which has run smoothly and brought a lot of joy to the participants. The Chess Challenge has brought a lot of positive publicity for the Cleveland Municipal Schools, including front page articles and photographs in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Call and Post.

Additional support for our Cleveland chess program has come from the Cleveland Police Department, which has sent officers to play chess with our students. The Black Shield, an African-American patrolman.s organization, donated scholarship money to the schools with the most trophy winners at the 2003 Chess Challenge.

Forest City Enterprises and Key Bank joined our corporate sponsors for the 2002-2003 school year. Key Bank provided over six hundred tee shirts for everyone involved in our program.

During the past school year Progress With Chess, Inc., received a grant from the Cleveland Municipal Schools 21st Century after school program, under the direction of Gerald Johnson. We taught chess in fifteen schools, once a week for twenty four weeks. At the end of the year we directed a tournament at Cuyahoga Community College, attended by over one hundred fifty students.

Our 21st Century Progress With Chess program was well received by students, teachers, and administrators. This is a federally funded program whose budget will be greatly reduced this year. The 21st Century Progress With Chess program will continue next year, but on a smaller scale.

Chess4Success will be changing its name to Progress With Chess beginning with the 2007-2008 school year.