VA/R Foundation Impact

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Wired magazine Illustration: Todd St. John

Here's a short one-page article in Wired magazine that features Larry Rosenstock from High Tech High and Tom. Don't miss the math-based artwork Calculicious from HTH students that is discussed in Wired and currently on display at the San Diego airport.

Foundation Impact
Innovative education investment strategies

ARRA: a huge reform lever

The package of grant programs incorporated into ARRA may not be highly leveraged economic stimulus but they certainly could advance the agenda that many of us have been pushing for a decade. Most notable:

The competitive Race to the Top grant program creates incentives for a critical mass of states to create the new edu-frame
The massive Title 1 School Improvement program could help transform the worst 5,000 schools especially if states push 'restarts'
Investing in Innovation (i3) will scale successful programs and pilot some promising ideas

How will you leverage ARRA to advance your agenda?

Advocacy

Wow! If you want a new policy, there's nothing like bringing 3,000 friends to a school board meeting. LAUSD passed a ground breaking policy requiring the district to issue an RFP for new and PI5 schools-perhaps 250 total. Parent Revolution provided the strategy and muscle behind this important opening for charter schools and school operators like MLA Partner Schools.

Education Equality Project is providing air cover to battle for excellence and equity -- an important complement to DFER--with new partner UNCF. EEP is also mobilizing to support aggressive gap-closing Recovery Act reforms.

With NSVF, we're incubating EduInnovation.org, a catalyst (like TechCrunch) for education innovation and entrepreneurship.

Suggestion: An advocacy investment in Parent Revolution, EEP or EduInnovation will increase the likelihood of Recovery Act-related progress and lay the groundwork for successful ESEA reauthorization.

Charter Schools

State charter school associations play a vital role in creating a context for quality options. Facebook link

Most struggle for existence but offer a big potential impact. In particular, we like:

Jed Wallace is taking the CA association to a new level of advocacy effectiveness
Caroline Roemer Shirley leads Louisiana's association and will play a vital role in this RttT pole position state
Tony Roberts leads the GA association with a new world of opportunity
Bill Phillips has his work cut out for him with NY laws that need work

With $3.5 billion being pushed out to states for T1 School Improvement, the associates will play a critical role to make sure that states 'restart' their worst schools. Without charter advocates, much of the money will be wasted on weak 'transformations.'

We like Rhode Island Mayoral Academies. Mike Magee is leading a one of a kind effort to recruit and support high quality charters for mayor initiated charters with a lot of support from the energetic state superintendent Deb Gist.

Suggestion: Support your charter association's ARRA efforts or make a grant to the National Alliance.

Next: We're starting to investigate charter legal needs; more on two important grant opportunities in this space next month.

Human Capital

We're big fans of alternative certification and particularly like ADVANCE Innovative Education. They are a Louisiana principal program like NLNS but with an entrepreneurship component with LSU's business school.

Sincerely,

Tom, Karen, Bennet, Melissa

This newsletter features information on the work of organizations we admire and work with. Some of the above-mentioned leaders or organizations are clients of VA/R. To learn more, please contact us.