Blog

In partnership with the NoVo Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, we are thrilled to announce the 2019 teacher and district awardees of the Social and Emotional Learning Innovation Fund! Since 2016, the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Innovation Fund has celebrated educators who practice innovative ways to support and center students’ social, emotional and academic needs, and who strive to...
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Design thinking — which encourages a focus on users and rapid experimentation — can help identify and address a range of problems by focusing on those most affected by the problem. Originally designed for a business context, what might a design thinking process  look like in a school district, where local politics, established policies and well-intentioned bureaucracy can stifle even...
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The Rhode Island Alliance for College and Career Readiness (RIACCR) is pursuing a policy agenda focused on promoting equity of educational opportunity and outcomes for all students in Rhode Island. A key part of the Alliance’s strategy is empowering students to be directly involved in policy design and advocacy. Through the statewide organization Young Voices, more than 10 Rhode Island...
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Education First, in partnership with the NoVo Foundation, is proud to announce the 2019 Regional SEL Convening grants. The goal of the Regional SEL Convenings grants—an outgrowth of the SEL Innovation Fund and national SEL in Action Convenings hosted by the NoVo Foundation—is to help district and school communities create a convening that builds educators’ and other adults’ capacity to meet...
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Last summer, two members of the MaineSpark Coalition traveled to Manchester, NH, to learn about something called “community mini-grants.” They’d heard that the New Hampshire Alliance for College and Career Readiness—recognizing the need for community engagement in a state that prizes local control above all else—had just awarded five small grants to organizations directly serving students. MaineSpark’s leaders were trying...
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Education First, in partnership with the NoVo Foundation, once again seeks applications for teacher-led and district-level projects that foster social and emotional skills in students in grades PK-12.  We will award up to $5,000 to individual teachers or teacher teams and up to $25,000 for district-level grants to implement an innovative project in their classrooms, schools and/or districts in the...
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This case study appears in our publication Partnering on Prep: A Toolkit for Building Strong District-Teacher Preparation Program Partnerships. You can access the full publication here. Effective partnerships often start with a mutual recognition that things need to change. Though Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) and Fresno State University (FSU) had been longtime neighbors, they agreed on a crucial point: it was...
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This op-ed was originally published in The 74. More than 9 million children attend our country’s lowest-performing schools, the vast majority of them students of color. While we are familiar with the components of successful schools — attributes such as high expectations for all students, strong leadership, highly capable teachers, excellent curriculum, regular use of data, a safe learning environment, and attention to...
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This essay was first published by Carnegie Corporation of New York. As the education laws came tumbling down from the statehouse, Alison Johnson’s head spun. New, more rigorous standards for student learning. New teacher evaluation procedures. New expectations for how teachers plan and deliver their instruction. As each law passed, the English teacher at “Typicaloosa” High School tried to understand them...
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This case study appears in our publication Partnering on Prep: A Toolkit for Building Strong District-Teacher Preparation Program Partnerships. You can access the full publication here. When Lisa Barron became the Director of Teacher Education and Partnerships at Austin Peay State University (APSU), she knew that APSU had work to do. Though the institution was placing student teachers in an...
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