Our Blog
Each day, our grantee partners touch the lives of countless educators, students, and families across the country. Here, we’re thrilled to share four stories that illustrate how our grantee partners create meaningful change in the communities they serve.
Anu Malipatil, Vice President, Education, shares her lessons learned with the philanthropic sector, inspired by a decade of experience leading Overdeck Family Foundation.
In today’s K-12 education market, there is strong demand for technology-fueled solutions to close achievement gaps, but little to no guidance for educators on making decisions based on evidence of impact. Melanie Dukes and Lina Eroh outline the critical role philanthropy can play in strengthening evidence-based decision-making for edtech solutions, ultimately leading to better student outcomes.
Since the pandemic began, the federal government has provided nearly $190 billion in education funding to states and districts. As these rapid-relief dollars are set to expire, Anu Malipatil suggests that now is the time for schools and districts to assess whether the dollars have made a difference, and use that insight to inform what funding should be spent on going forward.
As nonprofits turn to funders for support beyond grantmaking dollars, foundations can play a strategic, hands-on role in helping them become more cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable. Anu Malipatil and Lucy Brainard describe how capacity building and trust-based philanthropy can work in concert to build grantees’ organizational capacities and lead to long-term success.
Technology has the potential to play a significant role in improving engagement with families, assessing student progress, and providing personalized learning solutions. But to have a real impact, edtech tools need to be evaluated and refined before they're made available at scale. John Overdeck, President of Overdeck Family Foundation, points to the need for philanthropic investment in new innovations and ongoing evidence-building to ensure these solutions improve learning for all students.
Our leadership team sat down to reflect on what they’ve seen across the education and philanthropic landscape, in addition to what the Foundation has learned from peer funders and grantees this past year. In this post, each department leader shares predictions for what they expect to see in 2023.
As was the case pre-Covid, many students continue to score below proficient in STEM subjects, with low-income, Black, and Hispanic students on average far behind where they would have been if not for Covid-related learning disruptions. Gemma Lenowitz calls for investment in affordable and scalable digital solutions that can help close this widening gap by engaging students in STEM learning beyond the classroom.
The pandemic disrupted learning and widened preexisting achievement gaps for students nationwide. John Overdeck, President of Overdeck Family Foundation, explains how funding cutting-edge, curriculum-aligned formative assessments can help to address unfinished learning.
Stephanie Banchero of The Joyce Foundation and Irene Chen write about why the traditional school staffing model must be reimagined. This challenging moment in education is an opportunity for district and school leaders to embrace innovative, differentiated staffing that creatively utilizes educators and plays to their strengths—positioning schools for long-term success.