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Welcoming Rich Crandall to the NewSchools Team

We are proud to announce that Rich Crandall will be joining NewSchools Venture Fund. Rich comes to NewSchools following a four-year stint as director of the K-12 Lab at the Hasso Plattner Instititute of Design at Stanford (the d.school). Rich is a well-recognized leader in the field, and particularly in helping education innovators applying the principles of user-centered design. He has helped to cement a strong partnership between NewSchools and the d.school, […] Read more

We’re moving!

We’re moving. NewSchools’ Bay Area offices have been situated in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood since education innovation involved smoother slate and sharper chalk. Come the end of this week, we’re moving to the other side of the Bay, atop Oakland’s 19th Street BART station. We’ll be thrilled to be in a neighborhood that is home to so many of our fellow education reform organizations. The move to Oakland is a good one fiscally […] Read more

The NewSchools Seed Fund

NewSchools Venture Fund is excited to announce the launch of the Seed Fund, an initiative to support high-impact, K-12 education technology companies. We’ve been supporting education entrepreneurs for 13 years through four funds and have invested over $180 million dollars in some of the leading education organizations—including, Aspire, KIPP, BetterLesson, GreatSchools, Revolution Foods and Education Elements. We’ve had the great privilege of collaborating with many entrepreneurs during the earliest stages—including Don Shalvey […] Read more

Educreations Policy Update

NewSchools Policy Director Ben Riley provides a great overview of two new education bills that were introduced last Friday, January 6 in the House Education and Workforce Committee. In his short video, Ben provides a run-down of the Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation & Effective Teachers Act. Ben’s using a great new app called Educreations, which allows users to create video “lessons” à la Khan Academy. (Their tagline is “Teach what you know. […] Read more

Grading the New York Times on Education Technology

This morning, the New York Times had the latest in its occasional series, “Wouldn’t It Be Nicer If There Were No Technology in Schools” –wait, sorry, I read it wrong, the correct title is “Grading the Digital School.” The piece, titled “Teachers Resist High-Tech Push in Idaho Schools,” reveals that a new law in Idaho “requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and […] Read more