Our Blog

Perspectives: As Technology Use Explodes in Classrooms, Philanthropy Must Help Ensure All Students Benefit

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.

Q1 2023 Research Update

Overdeck Family Foundation is committed to promoting transparent research practices by lifting up timely findings. Here we share the results of six grantee research studies that concluded in the first quarter of this year.

2022 Bright Spots: Unlocking Evidence

In this blog post, we highlight stories of how Overdeck Family Foundation funding has helped Leading Educators, TalkingPoints, and Zearn unlock evidence to advance field knowledge or validate program models.

Students work together at a table in a classroom.

2022 End of Year Research Update

Overdeck Family Foundation is committed to promoting transparent research practices by lifting up timely findings. Here we share the results of seven grantee research studies that concluded at the end of this year.

Q2 2022 Funding Announcement

In Q2 2022, our foundation awarded 30 grants totaling over $12.5 million dollars. Of these, 13 grants were new and 17 were renewals. This post highlights just some of the many organizations we’re proud to support.

Download: 2021 Grantmaking & Impact Report

In 2021, Overdeck Family Foundation disbursed over $45 million to almost 100 grantee partners, collectively reaching over 24 million children. The inaugural Overdeck Family Foundation Grantmaking & Impact Report shares key grantmaking outcomes, lessons learned, and grantee stories of unlocking innovation, evidence, and growth across the education sector.

Bright Spots: Unlocking Growth

This blog post explores how five organizations—Waterford Upstart, Zearn, TalkingPoints, BellXcel, and Public Impact Opportunity Culture—successfully achieved growth in the past year with support from Overdeck Family Foundation.

Our Predictions for SY 2021-'22

Setting students up for success is crucial every year, but particularly so following the trauma and disruption caused by the pandemic. Here’s what we predict will be critical in ensuring children can both recover and accelerate in the upcoming academic year.

What To Keep When Schools Reopen: High Expectations, High-Quality Materials, and Flexibility

COVID-19 posed incredible challenges to our education system, but within those challenges came opportunities for growth and improvement. This piece focuses on what worked during COVID, and the importance of keeping high expectations, high-quality instructional materials, and choice and flexibility in a post-pandemic world.

Tech-Enabled Math Solutions: Investing in the Growth and Continued Innovation of Two High-Quality Math Platforms

The pandemic put the benefits of tech-enabled solutions front and center. While traditional math curriculum providers struggled to adapt, digital and tech-enabled curriculum and solution providers were able to quickly respond to student needs, decreasing the amount of interrupted learning that students experienced. In this post, we highlight two solutions that measurably accelerate math learning: Zearn and ST Math.

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