USA Today Editorial: Our view on education: Charter school successes supply a lesson plan
NATIONAL—When Philadelphia’s violence-prone Shoemaker Middle School morphed into Mastery Charter School at Shoemaker two years ago, it remained a public school with the same students. What changed dramatically were the adults in charge and their expectations.
Opinion: Expand college grants
By Ted Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of NewSchools Venture Fund and and Jonathan Schorr, Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. As seen in the Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2008.
Aisha Ford was a sociology major. But she was forced to take on a second course of study that doesn’t show up on her college transcript. In addition to being a full-time student, she had to become a skilled fundraiser.
Fund set up to boost public education
SANTA CLARA – Worried that low educational achievement in the United State is beginning to hamper the economy, one venture capital association on Wednesday set up a multimillion-dollar fund to invest in ideas that would boost public school education.
The NewSchools K-12 Education Infrastructure Fund is a joint project of the National Venture Capital Association and an already established investment group called the NewSchools Venture Fund.
Opinion: Graduation Madness
By Ted Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of NewSchools Venture Fund and and Jonathan Schorr, Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. As seen in the Washington Post, April 6, 2008.
Odds are, your bracket for the NCAA men’s final didn’t match up Butler and Western Kentucky.
But that’s the way it would go in an alternate universe where graduation rates, rather than baskets scored, decided the game. As it stands today, only one of the schools in this year’s Final Four, North Carolina, manages to graduate a majority of its players — or more than a third of its black players.
Opinion: The schools that Katrina built
By James A. Peyser, Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund. As seen in the Boston Globe, October 14, 2007
The flood waters that submerged New Orleans two years ago also sank the local school district. What had been a system comparable in size to Boston’s, with more than 60,000 students and 125 schools, resurfaced in the spring of 2006 at just a fraction of the size, with only 11,000 students and 26 schools.
The Greatest Education Lab
Paul Vallas, the man who took over the troubled school systems of Chicago and then Philadelphia and upended them, stood before a crowd of New Orleans parents in a French Quarter courtyard earlier this summer and offered a promise. “This will be the greatest opportunity for educational entrepreneurs, charter schools, competition and parental choice in America,” he said. Call it the silver lining: Hurricane Katrina washed away what was one of the nation’s worst school systems and opened the path for energetic reformers who want to make New Orleans a laboratory of new ideas for urban schools .
Inner City Education Foundation Receives Over $4 million To Open Four New Schools
Los Angeles, CA — August 16, 2007 — The Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) announced today that it has received three grants totaling close to $4.2 million, which will enable it to open four much-needed charter schools in South Los Angeles this fall. The contributions include up to $1.8 million from NewSchools Venture Fund, $1.45 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and $920,000 from the Walton Family Foundation.
New Leadership Vows to Make New Orleans Schools a Model
NEW ORLEANS, LA – May 9, 2007 – Days after being tapped to head this city’s state-run schools, Paul G. Vallas pledged here at an elite national gathering of education leaders, funders, and entrepreneurs to help spearhead an effort to make the hurricane-ravaged system a model of both choice and accountability.
Venture Fund Fueling Push for New Schools
A nonprofit group in California is plowing millions of donated dollars into new charter schools around the country, with uneven but largely promising results.
The NewSchools Venture Fund, launched nine years ago to support educational entrepreneurs, recently hit a milestone: It has raised $100 million, helped along by a big gift last summer that propelled it to the top of the heap among the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s education grantees. So, what’s it doing with all that money?
Venture Capitalists Are Investing in Educational Reform
Venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, who have backed hundreds of high-technology entrepreneurs, are eagerly financing a new group these days: schoolmasters.
“We give education entrepreneurs money to start or to speed up building their companies,” said L. John Doerr, who over 26 years has helped start dozens of ventures, including Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and Google. He helped found NewSchools Venture Fund in San Francisco six years ago for a new breed of entrepreneur – the kind who doesn’t have to produce a profit.