generative ai – NewSchools Venture Fund

Students Are Calling for Change, and We’re Listening

bmiller — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 17:00:38 +0000

As 2024 comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on both the challenges and the opportunities we’ve seen in education this year. Across the country, young people are asking for something better — learning experiences that are meaningful, engaging, and connected to their futures. At NewSchools, we’re inspired by how educators and entrepreneurs are stepping up to this moment. They’re designing solutions that respond to the needs of today’s learners. In this first year of our new investment strategy, we invested $13.4 million in 54 early-stage ventures reimagining education. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting themes across our investing activity, as well as promising innovations that bring us closer to ensuring every student is prepared to thrive in school and in life.

New High Schools Bridge Classrooms and Careers

High school should set students up for success, but right now, it isn’t working for everyone. Nearly 15 million students are chronically absent, and 42% say they feel disengaged, sad, or hopeless. Yet 80% of students say they value on-the-job training more than traditional post-secondary options (Gates Foundation). Career-connected learning is one way to make high school relevant again. By teaming up with colleges, businesses, and community organizations, schools are giving students opportunities to explore careers, gain hands-on experience, and earn credentials that lead to good jobs.

This year, 52% of the school teams we’ve funded are creating new middle and high school models that connect learning to real-world opportunities. For example, Philadelphia Middle College Foundation is designing a school where students begin exploring career and college pathways in middle school, then continue in high school with internships, early college credits, and certifications in fields like healthcare and technology. In Georgia, Simple Vue Academy will help students take on real-world challenges and prepare for entrepreneurship and financial management with internships, business pitch competitions, and mentorship programs. These models will not only help students build durable skills, but also give them a clear path to meaningful careers and economic mobility.

Namahana Education Foundation

A Resurgence in Rural Innovation

With more students leaving urban centers, there’s a renewed focus on ensuring rural communities have great schools and access to economic opportunities. We’re seeing creative approaches in rural education that address the unique challenges and incredible potential of these communities. Schools like Namahana School in Hawaii and Sledge Institute in North Carolina are designing models rooted in competency-based learning and career-focused programs aligned with local industries like agriculture and advanced manufacturing to prepare students for high-demand jobs.

Beyond academics, rural schools are becoming hubs for critical services like mental health support, food security, and healthcare. These partnerships aren’t an afterthought — they’re being built into the design of schools from the very beginning. In some cases, nonprofit organizations are leading the way by pooling resources and talent across districts and creating shared models that bring robust career and technical education (CTE) pathways to life. These efforts show how constraints can spark innovation.

Literacy Solutions Designed to Unlock Learning for Every Student

Education should work for all students, but too often, “one-size-fits-all” approaches leave too many learners behind. Generative AI is changing that, enabling solutions that adapt to students’ unique strengths and needs in ways we couldn’t imagine before. The innovators we’re supporting are tapping into this potential.

Bili App by Bilingual Generation

They are creating solutions that bridge research and practice and place learners furthest from opportunity at the center of their designs. Take Project Read AI, for example, which uses generative AI to create personalized reading experiences grounded in the Science of Reading and explicit instruction. With accessible fonts and an AI tutor, it supports early readers, including those with dyslexia, through oral instruction and repeated readings.

Other innovators in our portfolio are addressing the disconnect students feel when learning materials don’t reflect their lives. For example, Bilingual Generation’s BiliApp features Spanish-language stories and phonics games that celebrate students’ cultural backgrounds while building literacy skills. By strengthening literacy in their home language, Bili helps students build a strong foundation for learning English. What makes these solutions stand out is their ability to combine research-backed practices with approaches that honor students’ identities and lived experiences, ensuring every student feels seen, engaged, and inspired to learn.

Innovations in Reimagining the Teaching Profession

This year, I’m especially proud of the launch of our Teaching Reimagined investment area, which supports solutions that make teaching a more sustainable, effective, and fulfilling profession. I was inspired to see that over half of the ideas submitted came directly from former and current classroom teachers — people who understand the challenges firsthand and are driving change from within. We funded a range of efforts, including ventures that are bridging divides across traditional education roles and positioning teachers and community members as equal partners in reimagining the educator workforce. You can learn more about them in our latest blog.

To meet the challenges ahead, we need more visionary leaders with bold ideas — and supporters ready to step up and make a difference. If you’re an innovator with a vision to create more meaningful and relevant learning experiences for students, we invite you to apply to our funding opportunity.

Finally, thank you to our innovators, supporters, and partners who joined us this year to unlock new possibilities for students. Your dedication fuels our resolve to ensure every student has a life of choice and opportunity. Across the country, students are asking for something better — and with your partnership, we’re ready to deliver.

Introducing Our First Teaching Reimagined Ventures

bmiller — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:30:55 +0000

America’s teachers face immense pressures, from high workloads to increasingly complex student needs, fueling a narrative of burnout and dissatisfaction. But what if we could change the story?

Through our Teaching Reimagined portfolio, we’re investing in a variety of solutions to a shared problem: how to make teaching a role where educators thrive — all in service of better outcomes for students furthest from opportunity.

From better scheduling to AI-driven coaching to new roles for teachers and communities, we’re working with innovators and educators to make the profession more sustainable, joyful, and effective. Here’s a closer look at some of the emerging ideas in our Teaching Reimagined cohort.

Reimagining how we organize time and talent in schools

Photo Credit: Teacher-Powered Schools

Master scheduling might not seem like a top priority for reimagining teaching, but Timely Schools recognizes its transformative potential. Using AI, Timely’s platform helps schools and districts more efficiently map out different scheduling scenarios to meet their goals, such as increasing collaborative planning time, balancing class sizes, and making staffing models more flexible. For teachers, this can mean more manageable schedules and greater collaboration, paving the way for dynamic roles and more effective teaching. One early adopter generated 17 options before selecting the schedule that best aligned to their priorities. This facilitates more creativity around use of teacher and student time, a critical building block for new school staffing designs.

While Timely offers educators a tool, Teacher-Powered Schools is launching a coaching initiative to give educators a stronger voice in decision-making. In this “teacher-powered” model, school decision-making is distributed. Teachers shape school culture and instructional priorities, an approach that has shown promise: a 2023 analysis of 45 schools in the Teacher-Powered Schools network found that teacher retention rates exceeded 90%, notably higher than the national average. Now, Teacher-Powered Schools’ new coaching initiative will help more schools transition to this model with new teacher job descriptions, org charts, and teacher leadership roles. Coaches are experienced teachers in hybrid roles; many support other schools 20%-30% of the time while continuing to serve their own students and school community. This creates new roles for expert teachers while ensuring they spread their expertise to more schools.

Engaging caregivers and community experts in new school roles

CommunityShare is rethinking what it means to support teachers by bridging the gap between schools and local experts. Through a digital platform, teachers who need support designing real-world projects are matched with community members whose skills fit the bill — think of it as a “library of human books” that teachers can access. CommunityShare has already had a positive impact: in the past year, 98% of participating educators noted an increase in student engagement and problem-solving skills, while 92% saw improved social-emotional outcomes. Our reinvestment in CommunityShare will help them to offer their platform and services to individual schools. By broadening the definition of an educator, CommunityShare is empowering teachers to create meaningful, real-world learning opportunities without taking on every task themselves.

Supporting teachers’ instructional practice with Generative AI

Photo Credit: Relay Graduate School of Education

Teachers want roles that are sustainable; they also want to feel supported and to grow professionally. To meet these needs, Urban Assembly and the Relay Graduate School of Education are designing tools with educators to make high-quality instructional coaching and professional learning more accessible. Urban Assembly’s Classroom Automated Feedback Environment (CAFE) uses AI to analyze teacher-student interactions and classroom dialogue, generating data and insights to enrich teachers’ coaching sessions. This is especially valuable in schools where traditional instructional coaching can be cost-prohibitive and time-consuming.

Relay Graduate School of Education, in partnership with UnboundEd, is designing an AI-enabled teaching simulator to enhance professional development. Rather than sitting through one-size-fits-all training sessions, teachers will be able to use the simulator to practice responding to classroom scenarios anytime, anywhere. Similar to Urban Assembly’s effort, Relay’s innovation is in the early stages of development. The team is co-designing with educators to ensure it addresses real needs and protects teacher and student data and privacy. By offering targeted, flexible professional learning, the simulator holds promise for improving teacher effectiveness and making better use of teachers’ time.

Creating a new reality

Over the coming years, we aim to build on these efforts, catalyze new approaches, and leverage generative AI to reimagine teaching. If you have an idea to reimagine teaching, we invite you to explore our funding opportunity. We’re especially interested in solutions led by educators — those who understand firsthand what it takes to make teaching empowering and impactful.

The challenges facing the teaching profession are real and multi-faceted, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. By supporting innovative efforts to reimagine teaching like those in our portfolio, we can create a new reality — one of hope, progress, and support. Teachers are the backbone of our education system, and when we invest in their well-being and professional growth, we invest in the future of our students and society as a whole.

Featured Photo Credit: CommunityShare