Learning Solutions
7 Generation Games
Entrepreneur: Maria Burns Ortiz, Gonzalo Serrano
For-profit | Founded: 2013 | Visit the Site
7 Generation Games is developing 7 Gen Ed Blocks, a no-code platform that enables educators to create interactive, culturally responsive literacy learning experiences in multiple languages. Since its founding, the organization has been focused on building narrative and gaming experiences that close equity gaps and improve outcomes for indigenous students and multilingual learners. Now they are working to adapt existing code libraries (originally used to develop proprietary games) into modularized, easily editable code blocks that educators can customize through a digital platform. This effort represents an attempt to scale their impact by putting more power into the hands of educators and enabling them to bring their content to life in engaging and culturally responsive ways.
Association of Two Way & Dual Language
Entrepreneur: Rosa G. Molina, Hortencia Piña
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
The Association of Two-Way & Dual Language Education (ATDLE) is a non-profit that provides professional development and technical support to schools/districts engaged in implementing Two-Way Bilingual Immersion and Dual Language Immersion (TWBI/DLI) programs. To date, they have reached 35 schools through deep, multi-year partnerships. The model includes task force development; professional development for teachers, administration, and parent leaders; and home engagement sessions. Further, ATDLE provides guidance on curriculum adoption and realignment
Attest Education Group
Entrepreneur: Regine Philippeaux, Rachel Jules
For-profit | Visit the Site
The Attest Excellence for All (EFA) model is a three-year partnership that centers cultural responsiveness and rigorous teaching. This models aims to reach schools and districts serving a moderate to a large population of Black and Latino students, as well as students with disabilities and English Learners.The solution aims to reimagine the school day through a three-year partnership in five primary areas: 1) Problem of Practice review, 2) professional learning (re)design and leadership coaching, 3) inquiry-based approaches, 4) curriculum audit and development, and 5) culturally responsive environment reviews. The Attest EFA model seeks to create an optimal environment for scholarship, which is based on learning that is relevant and responsive, as well as learning that centers on the histories of students.
Bee Partners LLC
Entrepreneur: Nora L. Garcia
For-profit | Visit the Site
BEE Partners is developing Responsive Social Solutions Reading Set/Colección de Soluciones Sociales para la Lectura, which provides teachers access to digital shared and levelled independent reading units with accompanying lesson plans, resources, and activities in both Spanish and English. It includes instructional scaffolds specific to English Learners in 3rd-5th grade bilingual, dual language and ESL classes. Selections will be authored by native Spanish and English speakers and will be written around several strands including literacy, social studies, and social-emotional learning.
BeeReaders
Entrepreneur: Ruben Arias
For-profit | Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
BeeReaders Español offers culturally responsive content, adaptive assessments, and educator/family supports to build Spanish-speaking students’ literacy skills in both Spanish and English. Research has shown that developing these students’ Spanish literacy is beneficial not only to their development of English reading and writing skills, but also to a positive sense of identity and belonging. While the solution was developed for use in Latin American countries, the team is now prioritizing growth in dual language and bilingual programs in the United States.
Center for Love and Justice
Entrepreneur: Kaleb Rashad, Melissa Daniels, Nikki Hinostro
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
The Center for Love and Justice partners with existing school districts to advance equity for K-12 students through Anti-Racist Deeper Learning. Anti-Racist Deeper Learning involves students doing authentic work while developing the democratic agency to identify, describe, and dismantle oppressive systems and create them anew. The Center provides tools, methods, maps, and coaching to support teachers, school leaders, and communities to achieve these outcomes over the course of a 3-year partnership. Some of these initiatives include Learning through Projects, Making Learning Public, and Activating Student Voice.
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
Entrepreneur: David Rogers, Michael Rodriguez, Lisa Meyer
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
Dual Language Education of New Mexico (DLeNM) is an educational non-profit serving school, district, and state entities in the development and refinement of dual language programs. The solution reimagines the student experience by ensuring ownership of the selected dual language model, commitments to the program, and a common approach to supporting language acquisition through content. DLeNM offers partner schools facilitated training sessions to select, align, and/or analyze existing and potential curriculum and assessments within their programs. Within their R-squared offering, DLeNM guides decision-makers in choosing formative assessments that support the goals of dual language and biliteracy.
EarlyBird Education
Entrepreneur: Carla E. Small, Nadine Gaab
For-profit | Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
EarlyBird is a game-based assessment that screens for dyslexia as well as moderate reading risk that can be addressed through multi-tiered systems of support. Based on research conducted by the co-founders at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the FSU-Florida Center for Reading Research, it can accurately identify students who might benefit from specialized support related to foundational reading skills. Such “early identification” practices are a key lever for supporting long-term literacy and health outcomes.
Evision Academy Programs
Entrepreneur: Angela Hilson
For-profit | Visit the Site
Evision Academy Programs offers a “Braille Box” as a braille-based literacy program to support blind and visually limited learners nationwide, in both public and homeschool settings. Through the Braille Box and comprehensive support services, Evision Academy Programs seeks to provide distance curriculum to students, advocacy support for parents, and training for classroom teachers to better understand the need for literacy instruction that is accessible to all students.
Fugees Family
Entrepreneur: Luma Mufleh
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
Fugees Family launched Teranga, a solution designed to create comprehensive change in English Learner (EL) education for communities with newcomer centers and higher populations of immigrants. Teranga’s three-pillar approach — Redesigning Schools, Retraining Teachers, and Realigning Policy — will lead to systemic changes that advance educational justice for EL students in school districts with newcomer programs across the country. Through a three-year partnership, Teranga will effectively turnaround partner districts’ EL programming with a comprehensive intervention designed to achieve significant gains in student enrollment, retention, test scores, and graduation rates.
Green Schools National Network
Entrepreneur: Jennifer Seydel
Nonprofit | Founded: 2007 | Visit the Site
Green Schools National Network’s mission is to create schools that are healthy, equitable, and sustainable. GSNN partners with schools for 5 years to produce and implement a strategic plan for whole-school and whole-district change in the areas of leadership, culture / climate, curriculum / instruction, and facilities. Started as a network of affiliated schools in 2007, GSNN relaunched in 2021 with a more structured GreenPrint 2.0 to provide whole-school model supports for their network schools. Curriculum and instruction in GSNN schools use phenomena-, place-, project-, and problem-based learning to increase student engagement, deepen learning, and breathe life into standards. This cross-curricular approach allows students to build knowledge, skills, and mindsets for taking action in their schools and communities.
Hoogalit Inc.
Entrepreneur: Aparna Ramanathan, Deepak Ramanathan
For-profit | Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
Hoogalit presents Sound Town, an early literacy program that has three core functions: a daily, 5-minute speech interactive lesson played through a web application, a progress assessment that helps to tailor lessons, and in-the-flow professional development for teachers. This solution may be used in school and at home, with teachers able to share activities with parents and caregivers. Sound Town uses integrated mnemonics (letter shapes closely embedded in a picture) to teach letters, which studies show can double the rate of letter learning in young children.
ImmSchools
Entrepreneur: Viridiana Carrizales, Vanessa Luna
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
Founded and led by formerly undocumented educators, ImmSchools proposes an intersectional and community-driven solution where immigrant students and families elevate their power to transform the K-12 education system into one that is welcoming, inclusive, and affirming of every child’s diverse and cultural experiences. ImmSchools’ builds a network of support around undocumented and mixed-status students by collaborating with school districts, educators, families, and students themselves. A one-year partnership with the school includes: 1)family-led workshops about the rights and access that undocumented students and families have in K-12 and beyond; 2) professional development that equips educators with tools and resources to holistically support undocumented students; and 3) partnerships with school districts to enact equitable policies that protect the rights of our all students.
Inlier Learning
Entrepreneur: Orly Klapholz, Merary Martinez
For-profit | Visit the Site
The Inlier Learning literacy solution is a multi-step approach to ensuring culturally and linguistically relevant literacy instruction for a wide range of English language learners, with particular support to Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). Designed with audio and speech-to-text for optimal access, Inlier Learning pairs its intake screener with native language literacy and numeracy assessments for school districts to better understand a student’s educational background and determine if a student can be classified as SLIFE. Teachers are equipped with culturally and linguistically appropriate instructional materials and teacher training to fully meet the needs of their culturally diverse students.
Intensified Accelerated Systems, Inc.
Entrepreneur: Augusta Mann
For-profit | Founded: 1998
Building on years of highly effective, standalone, literacy-based video courses, Intensified Accelerated Systems has created Student Academic Mastery Performances (SAMP), an initiative that cultivates school and community partnerships to advance Black students’ early literacy skills. Teachers, community groups and families leverage original, online videos to support students in developing foundational literacy skills at school, at community centers including churches, and at home. Literacy skills are reinforced in the different spaces of a student’s life. The culmination of students’ learning results in a school performance (in a classroom) and community performance (in a community center).
Journalistic Learning Initiative
Entrepreneur: Ed Madison
Nonprofit | Founded: 2016 | Visit the Site
The Journalistic Learning Initiative has launched Effective Communicators, a course for underserved rural students of color that improves written and oral communication skills. Educators participate in a teaching fellowship that trains them to deliver and tailor the curriculum to their respective classrooms. Students are able to go through the course and select topics of interest to research, write, and produce stories about, learning how to distinguish fact from fiction along the way.
Liberated Way (powered by AUSL)
Entrepreneur: Martin Green, Ulric Shannon, Shelby Hildreth
Nonprofit | Visit the Site
AUSL’s LiberatED Way is an anti-racist, whole-school revitalization model enlivened by local context and assets. It empowers entire school communities to author their school vision and partner in unprecedented ways to catalyze sustainable student academic and whole-child growth in preparation for post-secondary success. This is an 18-month partnership effort where school partners co-design an anti-racist school vision, governance structures, and professional learning and coaching. The anti-racist school vision design and calibration involved a tangible “graduate portrait” developed through an inclusive liberatory design process. Key outcomes include student belonging as well as math and reading growth.
Liberation Journeys
Entrepreneur: Aiyeshia Hudson
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
Liberation Journeys partners with district and school leaders to build anti-racist middle and high schools that center student voice in the design process. There are three components of the program. First is Liberation Leaders, a two-year student leadership development institute that develops the next generation of racial equity leaders. Second is an anti-racist curriculum that centers students’ social emotional development and untapped design skills with a literacy component. Finally, Liberation Journeys offers training for school leaders and teachers on how to co-design liberatory learning spaces with students.
Local Civics
Entrepreneur: Beverly Leon
For-profit | Founded: 2018 | Visit the Site
Local Civics aims to transform civics education for young people across the United States. At its core, the model teaches young people about power: how to identify it, how to navigate it, and ultimately, how to harness their unique gifts to empower themselves and their communities. The model has standards-aligned, project-based curricular programming, and goal-based learning that is accessible to all students.
Montessori For All
Entrepreneur: Sara Cotner
Nonprofit | Founded: 2014 | Visit the Site
Montessori For All is developing Reading Remediation Pathway, which brings together research-based literacy instruction with the learning principles of Montessori and a focus on kindergarten readiness. Their unique approach is built on a foundation of systematic phonics instruction, while also utilizing culturally responsive texts and focusing on comprehension and meaning. It also emphasizes the importance of ongoing support, engaging educators and families in both the “why” and “how” of reading instruction as they work to support student outcomes. The approach is aligned with ELA Common Core State Standards and also incorporates Montessori principles such as the use of hands-on materials, emphasizing writing with younger learners, and intentionally introducing complex sounds earlier.