What are pandemic pods, and what do they mean for education?
By Jason Weeby, Director of Strategic Initiatives, NewSchools Venture Fund Occasionally, after the kids are in bed, my neighbor comes over to have a beer. Sitting six feet apart in my backyard, we compare notes on how we’re coping as we raise young kids during a pandemic and a national reckoning with racism. After the […]
Do Black Lives Matter in Education Reform?
By Natalie Wilson, Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund I have spent the past five years searching for a public school that I am not certain exists. I am a single mom to a lively, brilliant, rising fifth grader, Gabrielle, who embodies the phrase #BlackGirlMagic. Over the last five years, we’ve moved from Chicago to Philadelphia to […]
Keep the older kids at home and use middle and high schools for elementary students
By Leo Bialis-White, Senior Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund Updates! Back in May, Greg Richmond and Peter Cunningham were some of the first to advocate for reallocating secondary school buildings in The 74. Evidence about how children in different age groups transmit the coronavirus wasn’t out then, which only strengthens their argument. Emily Oster of ParentData blog came to a similar […]
Eight Reasons I’m Hopeful for Racial Justice and Equity
By Antonio Tapia, Senior Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund Image via KPFA My daughter, Samira, and hundreds of other young people were protesting the death of George Floyd at Oakland Technical High School some weeks ago. Despite the risk of contracting COVID-19, she ultimately decided that she needed to have her presence felt, and her […]
How Leopards Change Their Spots: Five Attributes of Schools That Successfully Transitioned to Distance Learning
By Frances Messano, Senior Managing Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund As schools rapidly closed down their physical buildings across the country, we saw many of the leaders in our portfolio move quickly and nimbly to implement distance learning plans and provide critical support families need. Across them all, we found five common themes in the approaches they took. […]
School Redesign: Partnerships that Fit
Increasingly, educators are embracing an expanded definition of student success and looking for ways to realize this vision for their students. Too of…
There are many paths to becoming a model provider; the path for Appletree was nontraditional.
In this post we reflect on the sometimes windy paths organization must take in an effort to scale sustainably.
What I’m Grateful for This Season: Education Innovators
By Miho Kubagawa, Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund November is my favorite month of the year because of its focus on gratitude. A few years ago, I began the tradition of sending handwritten cards to 30 individuals during this month to thank them for something that made an impact on me. It started as a ritual […]
Five Things We’re Learning from Schools in Our Portfolio
By Stacey Childress, CEO, NewSchools Venture Fund Enthusiasm for social emotional learning has reached a fever pitch among policymakers and funders. Whether it’s framed as a focus on the whole child, comprehensive student development or a richer vision for student learning, expanding beyond math and reading scores as markers of school and student success has […]
How Entrepreneurs are Tackling Challenges in Ed Tech – Part Three
Andrew Coulson, Chief Data Science Officer of MIND Research Institute, on leveraging the right data (not just big data) We recently released an insight brief on what we’re learning from three years of ed tech investing. In the brief, we identified three consistent patterns we observed across all of our ed tech investments. This three-part […]