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.

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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.

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.

So it’s a little bit amazing to read through the agenda for the Aspen Institute Education Innovation Forum and Expo, which takes place not in some hotel lounge, but in the DC Convention Center Jan. 20-21. (Disclosure: NewSchools will be presenting a venture idea at the Expo, together with turnaround wizards Mastery Charter Schools.) The idea behind the event is to build on the federal Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), which last year delivered some $650 million to 49 innovation efforts at a wide range of stages of maturity. (Disclosure #2: nine of NewSchools’ portfolio members won. We’re really proud of them.) The event will bring private funders together with folks who didn’t win in i3, either because they weren’t eligible (for example, because they are for-profit organizations) or because they scored high but not quite high enough. It’ll be the science fair of the year.

But for folks like us, who’ve been pulling together events on education innovation for a decade, it’s equally cool to see the bang-up agenda for the day. Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute will kick off the day and introduce Education Secretary Arne Duncan; next up is… Alan Greenspan? And that’s the beginning to a day of smart, interesting folks—too many to list here but check out the agenda. The conversations in DC will help to tee up topics we’ll explore at our own Summit, which we’re excited to be planning together with the good Aspen Institute folks who are behind the event next week. (And among the many cool speakers next week is Sandy Speicher of the innovation design firm IDEO, who’s been helping us think about new formats and content at our Summit.)

Watch our Twitter feed throughout the event (hashtag #edinno) on Jan. 20-21 for all the updates that fit in 140 characters.

Tucked away in a military spending bill in the House of Representatives is a false choice: saving jobs vs. education reform.

The proposal, by Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, came to light yesterday thanks to the considerable candlepower of Alyson Klein, half of the dynamic duo that covers federal education policy at Education Week. The measure is ostensibly aimed at finding $10 billion to save teacher jobs, but does so through what even Sec. Arne Duncan says are unnecessary cuts to the key education reform efforts.

Specifically, these cuts would take from currently funded areas: $500 million from Race to the Top, $200 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund, and $100 million from federal support for charter schools. These cuts would be catastrophic for 3 main reasons:

1. This amendment will cut deeply into funds that are driving historic change in public education systems around the country.
2. Many states have embarked already on politically difficult reforms based on the promised availability of funds that would be cut under this amendment. This will pull the rug out and betray promises to the states.
3. This amendment pits jobs against reform—a choice that the Department of Education has made clear America does not need to make. As Department spokesman Peter Cunningham told Education Week today, “If Congress is determined to find offsets, we will help them do that, but these are not the right ones.” (See also this letter drafted by Democrats for Education Reform and signed by 26 education reform organizations — including NewSchools.)

A statement from the Obama Administration late today suggested that if the cuts were made, the President would veto the bill. “The President believes that we need to keep teachers in the classroom, and we have worked with Congress to find a way to pay for it. But the President also feels very strongly that we should not cut funding for Race to the Top, one of the most sweeping reform initiatives in a generation,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House, in an email to Ed Week’s Klein.

Reform advocates, including Education Trust’s Kati Haycock and Cynthia Brown of the Center for American Progress, have come out vocally against these unnecessary cuts. In addition, editorials in the Washington Post and Sacramento Bee have urged Congress to change course. (The entire issue is laid out well in a Post article yesterday, which quotes The New Teacher Project’s Tim Daly as rightly predicting rage among state education leaders if the Race to the Top rug is pulled out.)

But what can you do? Contact your member of Congress (find contact info for members of the House here and Senators here) via email or through the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121 (if you call, ask to speak with the person responsible for education issues), and encourage others to do likewise. Let Congress know that you oppose the Obey Supplemental Appropriations Bill for the three reasons named above, and that they should find other places to make cuts than in the key funds for education reform.

Attendees at the NewSchools Summit 2010 were treated to a special conversation between Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Representative George Miller, and NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell.  The lively conversation covered the topical Investing In Innovation Fund (application deadline is this afternoon!), Race to the Top funding, special education, financing college, teacher training, and much more. Secretary Duncan rallied the troops, calling the educational reform movement a “generational opportunity”.

The excitement surrounding the administration’s focus of federal dollars on social innovation was palpable in the conference room. Secretary Duncan and Representative Miller received a standing ovation as they took the stage. In his opening comments, Secretary Duncan shared his confidence in entrepreneurs to lead the charge in systematic change throughout America’s underserved communities, saying, “we’ll keep moving until we move the entire country” towards success. His enthusiasm was warmly received.

With the increase in federal monies and national exposure comes a weighty responsibility, though, and the onus to deliver results in a field notorious for glacially-paced change. “We’re making a huge bet with our resources,” Duncan warned, “believing that these schools can be turned around.”  “This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. We’re doing this for the children.”

Echoing the Secretary’s emphasis on the urgency of the moment, Representative George Miller asked the audience to “think of that 3-, 4-, 5-year old child. The most devastating thing to them is a 5 year plan,” he said.

Many in the audience – themselves entrepreneurs and philanthropists – acknowledged the responsibility they now carry to prove they deserve this redoubling of money and attention. One questioner asked how best to continue advocating for federal support. Representative Miller responded that, in his view, “the most effective lobbying is local.” We’ll wait and see if reformers take note and refocus advocacy efforts on the district and state levels.

What does the alignment of reformers and federal policy-makers mean for the movement? The ideas that defined the education reform movement (standards, testing, and choice) must now prove their ability to dramatically improve student achievement or face the possibility of losing the nation’s trust.

But here’s a website that might be new to you: the Foundation Registry i3, at http://foundationregistryi3.org/. This website was created as a resource for organizations pursuing i3 funding.  It was set up by a group of leading foundations to simplify the process for organizations seeking the private matching funds required in i3.

Here’s a bit of background the Foundation Registry folks have provided:

Applicants who register their i3 proposal on the Foundation Registry will make their proposal accessible and viewable to participating member foundations. Member foundations will have access to applicants’ information and be able to identify potential funding opportunities. The site also has additional information and Q&A for applicants. 

The group of foundations is encouraging all grantees pursuing i3 funding to complete an application on the registry. The Foundation Registry i3 is only a registry of project proposals. There is no commitment by any of the participating foundations to contact you or fund your proposal and not all organizations that register a proposal will be contacted and/or funded. Rather the registry is intended to provide an opportunity for applicants to broaden the visibility of their proposal across a broader number of funders and for funders to identify potential partners.

There is currently no specific deadline for the Foundation Registry i3 submission, but due to the short timelines around the i3 program, it is recommended that applicants register their proposals as soon as possible on the registry to maximize review time by foundations.  Since i3 applications are due to the Department of Education by May 12th , we recommend that applicants aim to register their proposal on the Foundation i3 registry within 1-2 weeks of this deadline.

You can email your questions to: registryhelp@gatesfoundation.org