News

Ed Tech Market Map Goes Live Today; Helps Investors, Donors, and Entrepreneurs

Visual Presentation of Ed Tech Ventures Cuts through Clutter Created by Highly Dynamic MarketSan Francisco, CA— October 12, 2011—NewSchools Venture Fund announced the release of a graphical, interactive representation of the burgeoning K-12 education technology market to help investors, donors, and entrepreneurs better evaluate today’s landscape of education technology ventures. After launching at The Philanthropy Roundtable’s K-12 Education conference today, the education technology market map of more than 230 companies is available […] Read more

Blended Learning Startup Education Elements Raises $2.1 Million

Blended learning startup Education Elements raises $2.1 million to expand upon early successPalo Alto, CA—October 5, 2011—Blended learning startup Education Elements announced today that it has closed a $2.1 million seed round of funding from a range of leading investors, led by Tugboat Ventures and NewSchools Venture Fund and joined by venture capitalist Wally Hawley and education investors Imagine K12. The funding will allow Education Elements to continue building out its team, […] Read more

BetterLesson Grabs $1.6 Million to Let Educators Find and Share the Best Lesson Plans

Since launching, BetterLesson has attracted a community of “tens of thousands of educators”,according to the company’s blog post, and has collected hundreds of thousands K-12 lesson plans. Last year, KIPP, the 112-school charter network, joined the platform and helped the team “develop a suite of premium features” for schools. In less than a year, the site’s paying customers have grown to over 200 schools.To help it grow, the startup has announced that it […] Read more

NewSchools Presents “Innovation Challenge” at 2011 Education Nation Summit

Young entrepreneurs put their education innovations to the test to win $100,000 prize and supportNew York—September 24, 2011—Working with NBC News and Citi, NewSchools venture Fund announced today the “Innovation Challenge”, a multi-day competition between three teams of entrepreneurs to be aired as part of the 2011 NBC News Education Nation Summit. The competition carries $100,000 in prize money, and the winning team will receive support in developing and growing their organization […] Read more

NewSchools Venture Fund Announces $150,000 Investment in LearnZillion

NewSchools Venture Fund Announces $150,000 Investment in LearnZillion, Personalized Learning Tool for Math and Literacy EducationSan Francisco, CA—September 21, 2011—NewSchools Venture Fund announced today a $150,000 investment in LearnZillion, a new web-based education tool and video library of math and literacy lessons, designed to accelerate student learning by helping teachers personalize instruction, and providing teachers with example lessons taught by some of the nation’s best teachers. LearnZillion will launch a beta version on […] Read more

NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell: My Best Idea For K-12 Education

America’s school system is broken. On that the Forbes 400 can agree. America’s richest men and women give more to education-related causes than to any other issue. But in terms of how best to improve education, there is less consensus.Education-related causes that have benefited from the Forbes 400 wealth vary widely: Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark’s public schools. Michael Moritz and his wife gave $50 million to his alma-mater Christ Church college. […] Read more

‘Hacking Education’ Dinner Series Announces Detroit Event

The event brings together entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and educators to leverage innovation to improve public educationSan Francisco, CA – September 13, 2011 – NewSchools Venture Fund joins Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the University of Michigan’s Social Venture Fund to sponsor a ‘Hacking Education’ Dinner in Detroit, Michigan on September 16.Founded by Jon Bischke of RG Labs, the Hacking Education Dinner Series hosts events across the country to connect technology entrepreneurs, policy leaders, venture […] Read more

The Intersection of Technology and Test Scores

“In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores” blared the headline in New York Times on September 4th. The paper’s editors decided that the top-of-the-fold story on Page 1 also warranted two full pages inside, plus four color photos and a graph. That’s a huge part of the news hole on any day, but particularly on Sunday, when circulation is at its highest.The long piece is worth reading, but at the end of […] Read more

The Super-Connected Classroom: Experiments in Ingenuity From the Ground Up

When Chris Lehmann, principal of the technology-rich Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, wanted to give teachers feedback on their lessons last year, he turned to his iPad. Lehmann wanted to deliver comments to teachers faster than typing them into Microsoft Word documents would allow. So he started entering compliments, critiques, and notes into teachers’ personal Google spreadsheets as he observed them, triggering instant alerts in their email inboxes.“It led to wonderful dialogue […] Read more

Charter Operators Face Challenges in ‘Scaling Up’

The pace at which the highest-performing charter-management organizations are “scaling up” is being determined largely by how rapidly they can develop and hire strong leaders and acquire physical space, and by the level of support they receive for growth from city or state policies, say leaders from some charter organizations viewed by advocates as successful.From the 1999-2000 to 2008-09 school years, the number of students enrolled in charter schools more than tripled, […] Read more