K-12 Education

EarlyBird is the most promising development in the early detection and treatment of dyslexia in early childhood, winning major awards in 2021 including the Supes’ Choice Award (judged by superintendents), the Global Edtech Startups Award and the Best Tools for Back to School Tech & Learning Award. With our early support, EarlyBird developed and validated a breakthrough assessment tool that identifies and supports children at risk of learning differences, early – in kindergarten, when intervention is most effective.

EarlyBird is now in use in 17 states and 170 schools nationwide. For the 2021-2022 school year, we are helping bring EarlyBird’s diagnosis tool to New York City children in selected charter schools. These students are being assessed through the EarlyBird platform and provided with next-step resources for schools and families to address problems identified. EarlyBird is documenting the experiences of the participating New York City charter schools, evaluating the resources and recommendations provided within the EarlyBird dashboard and developing promotional materials. The tools developed through this partnership will be utilized to help increase the number of students and schools served for years to come.

New York City lacks not only adequate dyslexia diagnosis methods but also teacher training, curricula and public school options for students with dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities. Literacy Academy Collective, with our support and led by former Heckscher Leadership Fellow Ruth Genn, is tackling these gaps.

In Summer 2021, we supported the pilot of an intensive, evidence-based reading intervention for struggling readers with learning differences in the third and fourth grades in partnership with the world renowned Windward Institute in a five-week program addressing foundational reading skills.

Then, after the success of this summer program, we provided a grant to Literacy Academy Collective in its efforts to create the first New York City public K-8 public school that will provide scientifically proven instruction to support students with dyslexia and other struggling readers. This school will include direct, explicit instruction of structured literacy with repetition; opportunity for supported practice; a small group setting where individual student needs can be identified and regularly assessed, and integrated executive functioning training.

GO’s traditional programing is on Saturday. Last year, with our support, GO provided additional, remote weekday literacy instruction in partnership with Reading Rescue for K-2 students. The 1:1 sessions resulted in strong gains for GO’s youngest learners – all students’ reading levels grew at a faster rate than what was expected of them during the school year. Building on the success of the Reading Rescue remote model, we helped GO continue this literacy elevation with another program – the SIPPS curriculum – aimed at students in grades 3-5 who are in need of foundational skill building and have the most in reading proficiency.

In the most recent Educator’s Practice Guide for early reading instruction, published by the What Works Clearinghouse, HELPS was singled out for significantly improving children’s word reading, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension.

The most successful program in the DOE’s Summer Rising program was HELPS, which vetted, hired, and trained 68 tutors to provide its tutoring over a 6–7 week period, using both synchronous and asynchronous coaching methods. For students with pre-and post-test data available, 77.8% improved in oral reading fluency, 74.1% exceeded what may be considered typical reading growth and the average growth rate was 12.8 words correct per minute from pre to post.

We continued to support HELPS in Fall 2021 in selected New York City DOE schools. We are also considering how HELPS curriculum and tutoring can be implemented within community-based organizations.

The pilot received significant interest from the funder community and the model is now being supported by several other foundations in various iterations (further evidence of our Catalytic Giving approach).

In 2021, we supported year two of this model. The Reading Rescue lesson plan, which takes 30-40 minutes, integrates instruction on the essential components of literacy as determined by the National Reading Panel. At the end of this year two pilot, we will have a “playbook” of how best to implement Reading Rescue through CUNY so that it can be expanded more widely.

In 2021 we supported READ’s school year programing in selected New York City public school partners. READ tutoring provides dual impact – impact to both the elementary students and the teen tutors as the teen tutors receive meaningful employment.

At the start of the pandemic, we catalyzed the pilot of Read Alliance’s virtual one-on-one summer tutoring program for students in kindergarten through 2nd grade – the pilot resulted in an average reading level gain of 0.72 levels. We continued that support for both the 2020-21 academic year (reading level gains of 0.59 levels) and summer 2021 which enabled READ to extend programming into the summer months and resulted in gains of 0.49 reading levels.

We provided support in 2021 of READ 718 Remote, a new program that provides (virtual) individualized, evidence-based reading instruction to eligible children.

Based on Springboard’s success, and the continued need to address learning loss related to COVID-catalyzed school closures, we supported Springboard’s virtual summer and after-school programming in New York City charter schools.

Springboard helps teachers and parents to team up to accelerate student learning with personalized instruction for pre-K through 3rd-grade students, workshop trainings for parents (to teach reading at home), and professional development for teachers. The afterschool programming supports and enhances the regular school-day academic work, and has proven to make a significant impact on reading results. In Spring 2021, one of its school partners captured running records for guided reading levels and found that 74% of Springboard students increased in reading levels (some as much as 5 levels) – compared to an overall 1st grade total of 39%.

As part of our Venture Philanthropy approach, in 2021, we joined a strategic partnership with the Gray Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, and America Achieves to work with TNTP, devising and implementing an action plan to bring high-dosage, high-impact tutoring to New York City. Partners will likely also include CUNY and the DOE.

AF developed Navigator to provide intensive coaching and tools enabling other districts and schools to effectively implement its curriculum. Navigator is a train-the-trainer model that works with network / school leaders through 4-6 week coaching cycles.  In 2021, we provided funds for Achievement First to further develop self-directed learning modules and personalized learning playlists for students, implementation guides for teachers and stronger data tracking tools. We also supported Navigator’s work with eight New York City school partners. The grant was an opportunity is to show how this curriculum can support gains in New York City student achievement. For two years in a row, 75% of the partners supported in adopting Achievement First’s math curriculum had at least 5 percentage point growth on their state tests each year – and nearly a third had 10+ percentage point growth.

This ensures students are able to truly comprehend different math concepts, making it easier for them to remember and apply their skills. We provided Almost Fun with a challenge grant to build 58 foundational 6th-8th grade math lessons available freely on its website to support 800,000 students in their math learning. It is also developing an instructional layer that allows teachers to assign its math lessons to students and track student progress and math literacy exercises that accompany its math lessons to help students build their math vocabulary and understand problem statements.

To meet the needs of students experiencing learning loss in 2021, we supported Teach for America to launch a New York City pilot of its Ignite Fellowship. The Fellowship recruits college-aged fellows to be matched with small groups of 3rd-4th grade students in select partner schools to provide weekly tutoring in reading and math. Apart from the impact on the individual students, this program is also a way for Teach for America, which the Foundation has supported since its founding, to recruit potential corps members as well as deepen its involvement and acceptance in particular schools.

The program enhances teachers’ capacity to accelerate student learning during the pandemic instead of just remediate the learning losses. Teaching Matters is creating a “math playbook” that codifies the work done, in order to scale it to future school partners.

The network parents communicated the need for in-person schooling, and Partnership responded – providing a full-time, in-person educational option for any family seeking it from day one of the 2020-21 school year.

On the most recent state exams in 2019, Partnership schools met achievement levels that outperformed City and State school averages. Partnership students beat pre-pandemic national averages on the NWEA reading test in every grade in reading, and they significantly out-performed schools with similar percentages of students living in poverty. And in math, students beat pre-pandemic national averages in crucial middle school grades, while continuing to outperform peer schools in every grade.

Notre Dame has had a reputation for high academic standards which historically results in 100% acceptance to four-year colleges and universities and 95% awarded academic scholarships for its graduates. The school provides tuition assistance to 70% of students.

Cristo Rey schools serve over 13,000 underserved high school students nationally. Its students’ college acceptance rate is 98%, and 91% of graduates enroll in college. Its model includes a Corporate Work Study Program which involves training in executive function skills with hands-on experience working five days each month with a local corporate job partner.

The user-friendly, publicly available web tools identify key milestones, in particular college persistence and graduation, for each high school.  They also show the percentage of students from every New York high school that receive TAP funds (families earning under $80,000 per year) and who are attending (and persisting at) private and public New York universities. We also supported Education Trust in making this resource available through InsideSchools – one of the best places that parents use to seek information on New York City schools. And we supported the expansion of InsideSchool’s own data to make it most useful to families. Further, we conceived of an innovative way of marketing Ed Trusts’ tools – we discovered that the free WiFi portals around New York City (called “Link” portals – the old phone booths) house advertising space, a portion of which is supposed to be utilized for public purposes. We helped Ed Trust take advantage of this free digital advertising for its FAFSA completion tools throughout Queens and the Bronx.