By Frances Messano

Here at NewSchools, we kicked off 2021 with the launch of a new three-year strategy, focused on four investment areas: Innovative Public Schools, Learning Solutions, Diverse Leaders, and Racial Equity. Our team is energized by the tremendous response from education innovators and leaders across the country. As we analyzed data from the first six months of investing, we see positive signs that we are on the right track. We are excited to share this update with you, which highlights three promising trends emerging from our first 62 investments.

We have increased diversity across our applicant pipeline, with a record-breaking response from diverse leaders and innovators.

In the past six months, we have reviewed 980 applications across our investment areas, which represents a 40% increase in applications over 2019, and there is more investment activity to come. This story is about more than just how many applications we received. It’s about who the applicants are and how they are finding us.

The team continues to spend countless hours deepening and broadening our pipeline and designing more inclusive and affirming processes for engaging with potential grantees. And it’s paying off. Our pool includes more Latino leadership, district representation and geographic diversity. Of the applications we received, 68% came from people of color. More than 80% of applicants were applying to NewSchools for the first time. In our innovative schools portfolio, close to 30% of applicants and funded school teams were from traditional public school districts, more than any previous year.

We are investing more intentionally in racial equity and diverse leaders to ensure students of color have equal access to a high-quality education.

The disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people of color and the compounding effects of racially motivated violence have made deeply rooted and systemic inequities in our country hard to ignore. Bringing about real change requires schools and support organizations to do more than say they are committed to social justice. They must adopt new practices and approaches that meet the unique needs of students and leaders of color.

That’s why we made two important pivots as part of our new investment strategy: We created a Racial Equity investment area and expanded our Diverse Leaders work to include supporting parent advocacy organizations. Over 300 innovators of colors responded to our Racial Equity open funding opportunity. Now a council of educators, parents, and students is deciding which ideas to fund. It’s the first time our organization has experimented with participatory grantmaking, and we’re excited to see how the council’s investments will improve and equalize the educational experience for children of color in this country.

We are investing in ideas focused on meeting this moment and reimagining education today.

Our portfolio of innovators this year offers a glimpse into what could be the future of learning, one in which all students receive a strong academic preparation, robust social-emotional and mental health supports, and culturally rich and relevant learning experiences. The 39 teams opening schools this fall and next year are embracing an expanded definition of student success and building schools that center students’ identities, expose them to diverse content and teachers, and equip them with the academic and social emotional skills they need in life.

This focus on equity is also shared by the innovators in our learning solutions portfolio, where we have invested in 17 organizations who are either developing interventions to improve literacy education or creating comprehensive, equity-based solutions to meet the needs of school system leaders today.

Across both of these portfolios, we also saw more innovations targeting the specific needs of students who continue to be overlooked by the education system such as English language learners, students who recently arrived in the U.S., LGBTQIA students, and students with learning differences. These innovations will not only tell us how to support these specific student groups better, but also how to serve all students more effectively, lessons that can inform and reshape education and improve outcomes for every child.

Across our investment areas, we are excited about the momentum, passion, and fresh thinking our ventures are bringing at a time when we need innovation more than ever. We look forward to learning and sharing the lessons from these innovators as their organizations grow and have an impact over time. Stay with us on this journey.

EXPLORE OUR CURRENT VENTURES 

Edgar Palacios founded Latinx Education Collaborative on the belief that representation matters. Teachers of color can enhance academic outcomes for young people, especially students of color. Since 2018, with funding and support from NewSchools, his organization has been working to recruit Latinx prospects to credentialing programs in the local region, connect certified educators to open positions, and retain current teachers through culturally responsive professional development. 

We talked with Palacios to find out what made him take the leap into social entrepreneurship and what his organization is doing to build a thriving community of Latinx educators and influential system leaders. The interview has been edited for clarity and concision. 

How did you become aware of the lack of diversity in the teaching profession? 

In my previous role, I had the opportunity to travel and visit different schools. Once, I walked into a school with 99.9% Latinx students and not one teacher of color. It’s something I noticed time and time again that was starting to eat away at me.

Why were there no educators of color at these schools?

One principal told me that it was hard to find educators of color in a competitive environment. But I thought that the real problem was with what the principal said next: ‘We can teach anybody to teach, but they have to be a good culture fit.’ I thought, ‘If you can teach anybody to teach, then why aren’t you teaching more Black and Brown folks to become teachers?’ And when someone says ‘You have to be a good culture fit to teach,’ whose culture are we talking about?

What were Latinx teachers telling you?

I found it interesting that for many Latinx teachers, isolation is a main reason they don’t feel sustained in the work. I expected the reason to be their pay. But it’s because often they are the only Latinx teachers at their schools. They become the ‘Chief Latino Officer’ or the ‘Chief Translator.’ Everything that’s related to the Latino community they have to handle. I could really empathize with that feeling of isolation and not belonging based on my own journey growing up.

What experiences made you feel like you didn’t belong? 

Growing up in Miami, I never felt like an outsider. I never felt othered. Miami was a place where I could speak Spanish at school and nobody would bat an eye. That all changed when my family moved to Spokane, Washington. I remember my first day in sixth grade sitting next to a girl who told the teacher, “I don’t want to sit next to a dirty Mexican.” I was confused: I’m not Mexican. My parents are actually from Nicaragua. They came to this country as immigrants fleeing the civil war. I also took a shower that day. So there was no reason to call me any names. But at the time I didn’t understand these things and the teacher didn’t address it. It was one of many such incidents that happened to me along the way. 

Is this what sparked the idea for Latinx Education Collaborative?

What I’ve learned is that there are a lot of little Edgars in places like the Midwest where they don’t see themselves in their teachers. They don’t see themselves reflected in important leadership roles. This is not a problem that’s going to magically solve itself.

I had this idea that there had to be a space where Latinx teachers could come together, commiserate, share resources, and build community because that’s crucial for the work. 

How are you supporting Latinx teachers to remain in the field longer?  

Our retention work is a mixture of coaching and convening. We use Clifton Strengths as a tool to get educators to know their strengths and as a framework for how they can survive and thrive in schools. We’re also bringing people together around topics of interest and the needs they have and we try to fill those gaps with professional development tailored to them. We’re also focused on providing recruitment support to local schools. We help them build cultures that will attract and retain Latinx educators. 

You are focused on developing pathways to teaching as well. How are you doing that? 

We love talking to middle school students about becoming teachers one day. Teaching was never an option I considered when I was growing up. My options were to be an attorney, a doctor, or an engineer — someone who makes money. Now we are starting to change that narrative within our own community and we’re getting students excited about becoming teachers. We’re working to scale this program to the high schools to start building bridges between those transitional years and so we can keep reminding students that they should consider teaching as a career. 

What difference have you seen since you launched Latinx Education Collaborative? 

We’ve been able to reach people beyond Kansas City; educators from small towns across the Midwest who now engage with us on a regular basis because they’re missing resources in their neck of the woods. We’re thinking about how we can encourage them to start their own local initiatives. We also released a report that started a conversation about the fact that only 1% of teachers in the Kansas City metro area are Latinx. We’ll use this baseline data to measure our impact and refine our strategies moving forward. 

What support has been critical for your organization to become sustainable? 

Obviously, the funding is great, but what is even more valuable are the additional layers of support from NewSchools. I have received technical assistance. I have been able to build relationships with other venture leaders. And I have a relationship manager who provides coaching support. 

Did you ever see yourself as the leader of an organization doing this work? 

I remember thinking, ‘One day I will have my own organization, maybe one day that’s a possibility.’ But it seemed so far away from my reality early on in my career. A year later, the Teacher Diversity funding opportunity came up. When I saw it, I was like, ‘That one is for me. That’s my opportunity right there.’

Photos courtesy of Latinx Education Collaborative.

Happy browsing and reading!   

• A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin
• A Joyful Pause by Nicole Taylor
• A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-one Writers of Color on the New American South, edited by Cinelle Barnes
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K–12 Education by Pedro Noguera and Federick Hess
• Acts of Faith (Daily Meditations for People of Color) by Iyanla Vanzant
• All Students Must Thrive by Patrick Camangian, Tyrone Caldwell Howard, Earl J. Edwards, Andrea C. Minkoff
• Always Running by Luis J Rodriguez
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
• Awakening the Natural Genius of Black Children by Amos N. Wilson
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and It’s Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr.
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
• Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, with accompanying workbook
• Brave, Not Perfect by Reshma Saujani
• Brown is the New White by Steve Phillips
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham
• Change: How to Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola
• Charter Schools and Their Enemies by Thomas Sowell
• Churchill by Andrew Roberts
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine
• Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
• Color of Law
• Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism by Ann Todd Jealous
• Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn E. Singleton
• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad
• Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva
• Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
• Despite the Best Intentions by Amanda Lewis & John Diamond
• Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 by James D Anderson
• Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
• Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker
• Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C Maxwell
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Richard Harries, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling
• Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
• Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis Givens
• Gather by Octavia Raheem
• Ghosts in the Schoolyard by Eve L. Ewing
• Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
• Home Body by Rupi Kaur
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• Language at the Speed of Sight by Mark Seidenberg
• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
• Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading by Heifeta and Linsky
• Leapfrogging Inequality by Rebecca Winthrop
• Looking Like A Language, Sounding Like A Race by Jonathan Rosa
• Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall
• Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children by Marjorie Ingall
• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
• Moral Leadership by Thomas Serviovanni
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Reesma Menakem
• Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen
• No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants by Alina Das
• Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph
• Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris, EdD
• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
• Radio Golf by August Wilson
• Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Reading With Patrick by Michelle Kuo
• Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
• Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan
• See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur
• Shifting by Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden
• Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks
• Subtractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela
• Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle
• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
• Teaching with Fire by Sam M. Intrator
• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp, Jim Dethmer
• The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
• The Black Excellence Project: Bard Early College D.C. written by 9th and 10th grade students
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict by Thomas Hatch
• The Element by Sir Ken Robinson
• The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others In Your Life by Helen Palmer
• The Essential Conversation by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
• The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E Baptist
• The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Purpose through Nature, Ritual, and Community by Malidoma Patrice Some
• The Inequality Machine – How Colleges Divide Us by Paul Tough
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Leavers by Lisa Ko
• The Lost Education of Horace Tate by Vanessa Siddle Walker
• The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G Woodson
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• The Power Within Me: The road back home to the real you by Dr. Annice E. Fisher
• The Price of the Ticket by James Baldwin
• The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
• The Sum of Us by Heather McChee
• The Sun Does Shine: How I found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton
• The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis
• There There by Tommy Orange
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro, Napoleon Hill
• This America: A Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore
• Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Waking Up White by Debbie Irving
• We Got This by Cornelius Minor
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love
• What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young
• What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey
• Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele
• Who Do We Choose To Be? by Margaret Wheatley
• Who Gets In and Why by Selingo
• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
• Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum
• Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
• Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Most of us remember the teachers who made a powerful difference in our lives. I remember the ones who felt like family.

For me, Ms. Heyward was one of those teachers. She was my seventh grade social studies teacher who kept a small Puerto Rican flag on her desk, gave instructions in Spanglish and  often said, “but you need to know that’s not the full story,” while teaching U.S. history. (In case you’re wondering, that’s me on the top row, first from the left, on Picture Day.)

Being Latina and the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, I felt connected to Ms. Heyward because she too was Latina. She spoke Spanish, like me and mami, who until then had relied on me to be her interpreter at parent-teacher conferences. I still remember the smile of relief that came over mami’s face when Ms. Heyward said, “No te preocupes. Hablo español tambien” “Don’t worry, I speak Spanish too.”

A few months later, Ms. Heyward was gone. I don’t know if she took a job at a different school or if she left teaching. All I know is that mami never came back for a parent-teacher conference and my connections to teachers from then on were few and far between. She was the first, and only, Latina teacher I had throughout my K-12 public school experience. 

Teachers of color like Ms. Heyward are still few and far between these days. 

Only about one in five educators in public schools are teachers of color. Meanwhile, students of color account for more than half of the PreK-12 student population. In some communities, students go all 14 years of their schooling without having a single teacher who looks like them.

Now more than ever, as the education sector plans for recovery from an unprecedented year, we must prioritize teacher diversity in our public schools. Hiring and retaining effective teachers of color is one of the ways that we can reimagine education to work better for all children, especially those most affected by racial and economic inequities. 

Today, NewSchools, with lead funding from the Walton Family Foundation, is opening a $2.5 million funding opportunity focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining educators of color.

Today, NewSchools, with lead funding from the Walton Family Foundation, is opening a $2.5 million funding opportunity focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining educators of color. A significant body of research shows greater teacher diversity within a school yields higher expectations, fewer discipline referrals, richer curricula, less bias, and better academic results for all students, especially students of color and Black boys in particular. 

As the new Senior Partner leading the Diverse Leaders investment area, I am excited to work in partnership with innovators to launch bold ideas to diversify our nation’s public schools. I am also looking forward to supporting our existing ventures as they move from early stage planning to sustaining and scaling their ideas for increasing teacher diversity.

In 2019, our funding and customized support helped 14 organizations develop, pilot and scale their ideas. Our ventures are currently cultivating and sustaining teachers through a variety of efforts, including through teacher residency programs, fellowships, and experiences focused on providing affinity spaces, mentorship, resources, and support. 

Aside from grooming and sustaining teachers of color, these organizations are preparing teachers to lead in a different way. And in doing so they are causing schools to rethink how they engage and support students. Robert Hendricks III, one of our grantees, is the founder and executive director of He Is Me Institute, an organization working to grow the number of Black male educators. For him, teacher diversity is a means to a larger goal. “It is not just about the face of education being different but also about bringing in a difference of perspective and different impact, so that kids can grow up with a different relationship with school,” he tells us. 

“It is not just about the face of education being different but also about bringing in a difference of perspective and different impact, so that kids can grow up with a different relationship with school.” —Robert Hendricks III, NewSchools grantee and founder of He Is Me Institute. 

This brings me back to Ms. Heyward, the first teacher of color I had. Although she was my teacher for only a brief time, she connected with me and mami. I felt seen — we felt seen. It’s past time for all students, especially students of color to be seen and to see themselves reflected in the adults responsible for their learning. 

If you’re an innovator focused on recruiting and supporting teachers of color like Ms. Heyward, we want to partner with you and help you achieve your vision. Learn more here.

“Right now, one of the toughest math problems is figuring out how to get innovative new tools into the hands of students who need it most. That’s what we’re hearing from math teachers. While edtech has improved many aspects of teaching and learning, pockets of the industry crave innovation,” said Stacey Childress, CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund. “Our goal with this challenge is to further the work of those building tools with real promise to help students succeed.”

Open to for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations in both the early and growth stages, NewSchools Ignite will award $1.5M in funding to up to 15 winners developing digital tools with the potential to improve math learning outcomes for students in grades 6-12. Challenge winners will receive individual grants ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 as part of the edtech accelerator’s unique program, with no equity asked in return.

“We’re focused on math now because the need is tremendous. Despite the array of products already on the market, teachers are telling us these tools don’t meet their needs,” said Tonika Cheek Clayton, Managing Partner of NewSchools Ignite. “Based on any measure you want to use, American students are struggling in math, with low-income students and students of color struggling most. By helping entrepreneurs build truly effective math learning tools, we’re hoping to provide better resources to boost student success and dramatically reduce the 60 percent of students enrolled in developmental education courses each year.”

In partnership with education research nonprofit WestEd, NewSchools Ignite’s virtual accelerator—which does not require participants to relocate—will provide cohort members with highly customized, ongoing support and guidance through product development and growth. Access to valuable small-scale research studies, feedback from edtech experts, and field testing opportunities and evaluations are all part of the six-month long program.

This is the second in a series of national challenges, and follows last summer’s Science Learning Challenge, which formed the organization’s first cohort. Later this year, NewSchools Ignite will open applications for its English Language Learning Challenge.

Applications for this competition must be received no later than March 14, 2016, with the program running May through October. To apply for the Middle and High School Math Challenge, learn more at NewSchools Ignite.

About NewSchools Ignite

NewSchools Ignite, an initiative out of the NewSchools Venture Fund, is a uniquely focused education technology accelerator that supports entrepreneurs tackling the most pressing gaps in K-12 education technology. NewSchools Ignite cultivates high-impact, sustainable and scalable innovations meant to improve academic and social outcomes for millions of students nationwide by catalyzing product growth in academic areas where innovation is lagging. Through the organization’s national challenges, NewSchools Ignite mobilizes entrepreneurs to bring their best ideas forward—and into the classrooms that need them most.

About NewSchools Venture Fund

NewSchools Venture Fund is a national nonprofit that seeks to transform public education so that all children have the opportunity to succeed – especially those in schools that do not currently work for them. To achieve this goal, NewSchools identifies the most promising and innovative education entrepreneurs and helps them effectively accomplish their missions to achieve outstanding results for the children and educators they serve. Through our investing, management assistance, network building, and thought leadership, NewSchools helps to reinvent K-12 education to help students graduate high school prepared and inspired to achieve their most ambitious dreams and plans.

About WestEd

WestEd is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research, development, and service agency that works with education and other communities throughout the United States and abroad to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

This will be an exception.

For the last eight years, Julie Landry Petersen has served as the scribe to our movement, as well as our supporter, muse, and conscience. She joined NewSchools in its toddlerhood, as a former high-tech reporter who would collect, sift, and make sense of the ideas of a fast-growing sector, while fighting a daily war against misplaced apostrophes. She’s done all that, making sure that the movement for entrepreneurial, results-oriented education reform could back up its results with intellectual heft. She has explained not just NewSchools, but a whole family of work and ideas, to the world. If you’ve ever read anything with our name on it, chances are she played an important role in shaping it. She built a whole communications world (including the blog you’re reading now), and helped translate dozens of individual organizations and efforts into a powerful network.

In the process, she became a trusted friend to everyone inside our walls, and to many, many people outside. She was never afraid to tell the truth: when ideas didn’t match, when arguments didn’t make sense, when the words weren’t right, and even when the formatting was lame or the slide was cluttered. Yet she matched her candor with support and kindness. People will tell you that after working with her, they didn’t just end up with better ideas; sometimes, they ended up better people.

Julie leaves us tomorrow. She and her family are moving to the sunny climes north of the foggy Bay, and she’s taking the opportunity to hang out her shingle as a communications consultant. She’ll be great at it, and for the many organizations on the cusp of developing a communications strategy, you should call before she’s fully booked.

Since we are an organization that supports entrepreneurs, we all ought to be delighted that Julie is becoming one herself. But it’s hard to deny that the excitement for her next step is mixed, for all of us around here, with a twinge of sadness that we won’t see her when we come in to work next week.

Julie, good luck, and don’t be a stranger.

Back in September, we made a promise that if 150,000 people pledged to see the movie Waiting for “Superman”, we would invest $5 million in entrepreneurial organizations that improve public education for low-income kids. The movie gets viewers outraged—as they should be—at the fact that in some communities, a quality education is a matter of chance. We believe outrage can translate into action, and we wanted to see that message travel as fast and far as possible.

But it’s not enough to be outraged. It’s also important to know that there’s reason for hope—that if we invest time, energy, and treasure, we can make change. We believe that education innovators and entrepreneurs are an important part of that change. To that point, we were lucky enough to be invited by the makers of Waiting for “Superman” to create a video about what’s working. The video  highlights the amazing work being done by education innovators to change lives for low-income kids, and it’s included as an extra on the Waiting for “Superman” DVD, which  is now out. You can check out the video here, but you really ought to order a copy of the DVD, and maybe even host a house party to show it.

We’re taking the occasion of the release of the DVD to say that we’re keeping our $5 million promise, and we’re announcing the first three investments in that package. All of these investments are aimed at driving innovation toward specific areas where our system doesn’t do well enough in providing low-income kids with a quality public education, and these particular investments all bring innovative technology as part of the solution. (Not all NewSchools investments involve technology.) Here are the amazing organizations in which we’re delighted to invest:

• $725,000 in Beyond 12, an organization that aims to dramatically improve college success rates for low-income and first-generation college students. It tracks, coaches, and counsels college students and provides alumni tracking information to the high schools they graduated from. With the investment from NewSchools, Beyond 12 will increase the number of students it tracks and coaches from 1,800 to over 5,000. In addition, the NewSchools investment will allow Beyond 12 to enhance its alumni tracking platform by creating a Facebook application.
• $300,000 in Presence Telecare, an organization pioneering an innovative approach to address the needs of the more than three million students who suffer from communication disorders that affect their academic development. The NewSchools investment will support the creation of curriculum and evaluation tools.
• $1 million to Rocketship Education, a network of high-performing public charter schools that is doing pioneering work on a blended or “hybrid” learning model, which combines the best in face-to-face and online learning. The NewSchools investment will support the network’s national expansion, in particular the growth of its academic leadership development programs.

For more, check out the detailed announcement of the investments, which has already been picked up in the innovation media.

It’s not a schoolhouse rock segment (the song would be pretty lame), nor even a Civics class topic—it’s the question that NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell will be addressing at tomorrow’s hearing of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Thursday. Ted will be among one of four witnesses testifying about the crucial things that only the federal government can do in driving reform in the education for low-income children. He will testify to the importance of an appropriate, smart federal role in fostering badly needed innovation in education, and to the power of the federal government to drive attention to the achievement of traditionally underserved student populations, as well as the power of voluntary common-core standards to help high-impact reforms spread across state lines. The hearing title says nothing about the possibility of renewal of the nation’s most important education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), but some think the hearing may be a warm-up for movement on ESEA.

Watch the hearing at the House Committee on Education and the Workforce website.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend NewSchools Summits pretty much since they started. [Editor’s note: we checked, and as of tomorrow, Andy will have indeed attended every single one of the 11 NewSchools Summits.] Back when I started going it was a gathering of freaks, good people from various parts of the education sector who believed there were better ways to serve kids. The Summit was generally held in small hotels, out in California’s Silicon Valley.

Now it’s held at big hotels and sometimes in Washington D.C. It used to attract out of work or retired politicians. Now it’s a magnet for active ones.

It’s an apt parallel for how the entrepreneurial education reform movement morphed from a marginal presence to a component of education reform today.

Organizations that were just getting their sea legs when the Summits started are now household names.

There are former KIPP students in Teach for America now. And Teach For America teachers who were themselves taught by Teach For America corps members.

In Houston, YES Prep is poised so send more students to college than the entire Houston Independent School District.

The Aspen Institute-NewSchools Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Leaders in Education is on its third cohort.

Harvard is launching an advanced degree for education leaders this fall.

John King is a deputy commissioner of education in a major state.

“Talk to Joe” is part of the lexicon.

This little movement is still overwhelmed by the challenges it faces. It’s chastened by some hard-won lessons and has more humility. But there is also an even deeper and subtler determination as a result. At the early Summits, cynics suggested that everyone would be onto other things within a few years. Instead, the numbers have multiplied.

NewSchools didn’t do all this alone, of course. But it was a catalyst and a rally point, something social movements need. The Summit has been the symbol of that.

These days pretty much everyone has busier lives so a few days is a bigger commitment than it used to be. Still, people make an effort to go to the NewSchools Summit because the content is good and it’s nice to see some old friends. But mostly it’s because what happened over a relatively short period of time gives you hope that for all its warts, positive social change is possible. How many meetings can you say that about?

Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a non-profit organization working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students, where he leads the firm’s thought leadership, idea generation, and policy strategy work. Rotherham previously served at The White House as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy during the Clinton administration and is a former member of the Virginia Board of Education. In addition to Bellwether, Rotherham has founded or co-founded two other successful education reform organizations including Education Sector and served on the boards of several other successful education start-ups. He is a senior fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and also at the PostPartisan Foundation.  He serves on advisory boards and committees for a variety of organizations including The Broad Foundation, Education Pioneers, Harvard University, and the National Governors Association. He is on the board of directors for the Mind Trust, Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, and Democrats for Education Reform.

The recent death of achievement-gap closing hero Jaime Escalante (whose story was brought to life via the film “Stand and Deliver”) has got me thinking anew about how we can close the achievement gap. If Escalante did one thing, he debunked the myth that “those” kids – the ones from high-poverty and/or high-minority schools – can’t achieve to great heights. Escalante’s motto was that  “students will rise to the level of your expectations,” and he made good on it. At his peak, in 1987, his students accounted for 26% of the Mexican-American students who passed the AP Calculus exam. Not in L.A. (where Escalante taught at Garfield High School), and not in California, but in the country. (Kudos to Jay Mathews, whose book and recent article on Escalante do this man and his story real justice.)

As Wendy Kopp recently reminded me – and more than 500 other go-getter education reformers at the Yale Education Leadership Conference – Escalante used to be our only example of such success.  But there are now many high-poverty, high-minority schools that are also high-achieving. These schools have changed the landscape of education in our country permanently. It’s worth emphasizing that many of them are traditional public schools, not just stand-out charters. Karin Chenoweth of Education Trust has done an incredible job of telling their stories; I wish It’s Being Done and How It’s Being Done were mandatory reading for anyone who’s given up on public education.

But . . . we’re still talking about pockets of success. We haven’t gotten to that elusive tipping point where these extraordinary schools become ordinary. Speaking last week at KIPP Houston’s annual dinner, Secretary Duncan had this to say:

“I am getting impatient with talking about ‘islands’ of educational excellence. If no man is an island, no school should be either…. I want to flip that presumption. I want to stop treating success as though it was a one-off, attributable just to heroic teachers or charismatic principals. I want to ask instead: Why can’t success be the norm?”

Duncan‘s question is the right one. However, there is no single, pat answer for how to make success the norm, or  for how to ensure that every student, regardless of race, income, or zip code, is guaranteed a world-class education. Instead, to achieve such profound change on such a huge scale, we’re going to need a long list of strategies.

And here’s my bet on who’s going to provide most of those: edupreneurs. In fact, as readers of this blog know very well, edupreneurs are already hard at work—starting new schools; transforming and turning around existing schools; coming up with entirely new paradigms for learning (check out the School of One); turning old-school curricula on their heads; experimenting with incentives and the demand-side of the education equation; rethinking how we recruit, develop, and retain top education talent; etc. They’re showing exactly the boldness, creativity, and impatience with stale truisms that our kids need and deserve.

I’d like to challenge our edupreneurs to keep the national impact of their work in mind, even as they stay primarily focused on their particular innovations in particular schools. If we’re going to be really serious about our mission to transform all schools, we’ve got to bake equity in from the get-go. And as a starting point, I’d like to propose the following set of equity principles to guide our work:

1. Scale. Every time we create a great new school, a great new teacher, or a powerful new learning tool, there are the lucky students who benefit and the unlucky ones who don’t. (The most powerful representation of this inequity I’ve ever seen is the soon-to-be-released documentary “The Lottery,” in which parent after parent asks why they must “win the lotto” to give their child a chance at a good education.) Without sacrificing quality, we must plan for and communicate efforts to bring innovation and equity to scale from the beginning.
2. Inclusivity. All means all. In our various efforts, we must ensure that we’re serving every student – English Language Learners, special education students, students who enter far below grade level, etc. Let’s put an end to the creaming criticism by making it clear that our reforms work for all kids.
3. Impact. If we’re serious about impact—equity and excellence at scale ASAP—we have to work inside as well as outside the traditional public school system. (See Tom Vander Ark on how Cristo Rey parochial schools are closing the gap in 24 communities.) That doesn’t mean that charter schools can’t be excellent laboratories of change (they clearly are) but we have to hammer out strategies that can be brought to all public schools.
4. Diversity. We serve communities in need—communities that have been underserved for generations. And we have to appreciate the importance, for our teams and for the children we serve, of training, incubating, and growing minority leadership across the board.  (Teach for America has been committed to diversity from the start, and their applicants and corps members reflect these efforts. Of course, however, there is far more work to be done.)

By all means, let’s throw the proverbial spaghetti on the wall of the education crisis in America and see what sticks. But let’s not forget for a moment how urgent it is that our best new ideas and practices be brought to every school and every child.

P.S. Escalante has been a hero of mine since my 8^th grade algebra teacher, Mr. Zekany (Tappan Jr. High School in Ann Arbor, MI), showed us “Stand and Deliver,” telling us Escalante was his hero.

Ellen Winn is the Director of the Education Equality Project (EEP) and can also be found blogging for National Journal. Before joining EEP, Ellen directed the Office of Strategic Partnerships at the NYC Department of Education; prior work included stints in philanthropy, child poverty alleviation, and for-profit health care research. Ellen holds a BA from Haverford and an MPP from University of California-Berkeley. Ellen serves on the board of the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies and on the advisory board of Education Pioneers NYC Metro Area and City Prep Academies.