10 impact opportunities for donors and sponsors

Are you looking for investment opportunities to improve equality and equity in education? This week, we’ve compiled a list of 10 great philanthropic and sponsor opportunities:

  1. Make new state tests as good as possible by sponsoring a design prize for innovative math and logical reasoning assessment items. The first two phases of Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP) were sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation and conducted in conjunction with PARCC & SBAC.
  2. Sponsor an interactive 10 paper series on The Shift to Personal Digital Learning to support informed state and local decision making and investment in partnership with Digital Learning Now and leading advocacy groups.
  3. Launch a dynamic and cost effective approach to research and product testing by helping  teachers find/create experiments and share results.
  4. Develop a Common Core badge system to motivate learning and manage competency-based progress.
  5. Sponsor a national summer math learning initiative with the goal of demonstrating that one hour per week of math instruction offsets summer loss.
  6. Support a district-wide adoption of blended math programs with  MIND Research Institute and other math providers.
  7. With a leading platform, demonstrate the value of personalized learning and empowered teaching pilot in a couple cities.
  8. Boost engagement, drive issue awareness,and/or reward creativity with a SchoolTube video contest.
  9. Sponsor development of state digital learning plans that integrate college ready standards, online assessment, technology access, professional development, and communications.
  10. And, if you can write a bigger check, support implementation of one strand of the shift to digital learning in your state.

We are involved in all of these in one way or another and would be happy to send you more information and discuss them in more detail.

Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark is the CEO of Getting Smart. He has written or co-authored more than 50 books and papers including Getting Smart, Smart Cities, Smart Parents, Better Together, The Power of Place and Difference Making. He served as a public school superintendent and the first Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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1 Comment

David Potter
4/5/2012

Adding: support classrooms to link with partners worldwide, stand-alone or as part of many of your ten suggestions above.
More than 100 partners in this list that can help:
http://www.connectallschools.org/about/partners
And, 10K educators here who are doing work with impact: http://globaleducation.ning.com/
Cheers,
Dave

Replies

Tom Vander Ark
4/6/2012

Thanks David. Great project

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