Post date: Apr 21, 2015 4:52:09 PM
Oakland, CA — In the next phase of a nationwide effort to establish regional hubs of K-12 innovation, the Rogers Family Foundation (RFF) has awarded $720,000 in planning grant funding to support personalized learning in 10 schools in the Oakland Unified School District.
A team of local and national personalized and blended learning experts chose the winning campuses from a pool of 26 applications. The 10 “breakthrough schools” – five District-run and five charter – represent innovation, novel combinations of promising and proven solutions, and groundbreaking partnerships. The school teams will spend the next year developing their school designs, ultimately competing to be among the three to five schools to receive launch funding for the 2016-2017 school year.
“I am very excited to support these ten schools as they take this next step on their journeys of personalization and greater student self-direction,” said Greg Klein, Senior Director of Innovation and Learning at RFF. “These school teams have come together to dream, explore and create new school models that will prepare our students for college, career and community.”
“This partnership between Oakland Unified School District and the Rogers Family Foundation is a result of the great work that our students and teachers are undertaking at many of our community schools,” said Antwan Wilson, OUSD Superintendent. “This is just the beginning of a very exciting process that we believe will assist these school communities with creating more personalized learning opportunities in the classroom.”
The 10 schools receiving planning grants are:
• ASCEND
• Envision Academy
• Garfield Elementary
• La Escuelita
• Lighthouse II
• Redwood Heights Elementary
• Roosevelt Middle School
• Unity Middle School
• Urban Montessori Charter School
• Urban Promise Academy
These schools serve roughly 3,000 students, 80 percent of whom receive free or reduced-price lunch, and nearly 40 percent are English Language Learners. RFF and the schools themselves will use a range of measures to evaluate grantee schools’ ability to “break through” and achieve several goals, including learning growth of 1.5 years in Math and English, and a clear demonstration of college readiness based on California’s Early Assessment Program performance.
This grant award announcement comes after Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) named Oakland one of its six Regional Funds for Breakthrough Schools partnership organizations across the U.S. to serve as hubs of education innovation. The Rogers Family Foundation, which was tapped to lead the initiative’s design and launch locally, is well positioned to drive the work. The organization has piloted blended learning in eight Oakland public schools over the last two and a half years. Those pilot programs aimed to improve student achievement and teacher effectiveness by supporting use of technology in ways that rethought teaching and learning.
About the Oakland Unified School District
We are building a school district where “Every Student Thrives!” by:
• Providing every student with access to a high-quality school
• Ensuring each student is prepared for college, career, and community success
• Staffing every school with talented individuals committed to working in service of children
• Creating a school district that holds itself and its partners accountable for superior outcomes
• Guaranteeing rigorous instruction in every classroom, every day
To learn more about OUSD’s “Community Schools, Thriving Students” vision and our work to make schools safe places where students are engaged, challenged to meet college and career standards, encouraged to have fun, and to build productive and sustaining relationships, please visit: www.ousd.k12.ca.us.
About the Rogers Family Foundation
The Rogers Family Foundation (RFF) is committed to Oakland’s public schools where it seeks to positively transform the educational experience for Oakland’s students furthest from the opportunity of a quality education. Investing both staffing and funding resources, the Foundation envisions a future in which all Oakland students will graduate college-, career-, and community-ready. For more on RFF’s Blended Learning pilot program, click here. For more information on NGLC in Oakland, click here.
About the Oakland Public Education Fund
The Oakland Public Education Fund (the Ed Fund) leads the development and management of community resources in Oakland public schools so that all students can learn, grow, and thrive. The Ed Fund is the fiscal sponsor for Oakland’s NGLC regional funds.
About Next Generation Learning Challenges
Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) accelerates educational innovation through applied technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion. NGLC is managed by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education through the use of information technology. Since 2011, NGLC has provided more than $65 million in investment capital to foster the development of transformational K-12 and postsecondary models aimed at improving the quality and depth of learning outcomes in the U.S., particularly for low-income students. Funding for NGLC has been provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and theWilliam and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
See more information about our winners here.