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Guest Post: Talking About Reform

I’m eager to attend NewSchools Venture Fund’s Summit next week, and to have the opportunity to share ideas on what needs to be done to transform education in underserved communities.At New Teacher Center (NTC), we understand only too well the cycles that sustain inequity in our society. New principals and new teachers, who still have a lot to learn about how to be fully effective in the job, are all too often […] Read more

Guest Post: Kickstarting Innovation for ELLs and SPED Students

When I left my job as a software developer, my original intent was to become a third grade classroom teacher. But during my teacher-credentialing program, I became more interested in special education and felt that working with a wider variety of learners and abilities would make me a stronger and more versatile educator.I ended up as a middle school special educator in East Palo Alto, where I got to work alongside the […] Read more

Guest Post: Teaching in the Digital Age

 The upcoming NewSchools Summit features some stellar panels.  One you don’t want to miss is “Teaching in the Digital Age,” which will feature teachers from innovative school models, like School of One and Rocketship, mixed with teachers from traditional schools who are actively using technology in their classrooms. I’ll be moderating this discussion, and one of the questions I want to focus on is how the shift towards more technology has changed […] Read more

Summit 2012

“While the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period… [Between 1970 and 2007,] the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent … while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.” — The New York Times “In 2010, 37 percent of … additional earnings went to just […] Read more

The Supreme Court, Health Care–and Federal Education Policy?

Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the minimum coverage provision – otherwise known as the “individual mandate” – included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that Congress approved two years ago. Most legal commentators agree that today’s argument is the most important since Bush v. Gore, and indeed, some have even described it as the case of the century. The minimum coverage provision lies at […] Read more

DC to VC: Boston

There is a fast growing ecosystem of early-stage ventures focused on education. However, for those ventures working in and selling to the traditional K-12 system, access to capital remains challenging. There are venture philanthropies (like NewSchools) and an expanding network of angel investors that provide capital to many of these young companies. Yet most traditional venture capital firms continue to take a wait-and see-approach having concluded that long sales and adoption cycles, […] Read more

Unleashing great teaching

LearnZillion is all about celebrating teachers. In spite of what you might hear in the press, there are many superstars working in our schools, changing the lives of children every day. The problem is isolation. When one teacher figures out a highly-effective way to teach division of fractions, it doesn’t spread to all classrooms. Each teacher has to figure it out on his/her own—not a very efficient system, to say the least.  LearnZillion celebrates teachers […] Read more

GREAT Act Update

The movement to create a vibrant market for high-quality teacher training took another important step forward today. Due to vigorous championing by Representative Thomas Petri (R-WY), language to support states that want to create “GREAT” teacher and principal training academies has been added to the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act – the so-called “House teacher bill” for those of us wonks who live in Washington D.C. – introduced by Rep. John […] Read more

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