'i3' Grant Winners Slowly Building Momentum
Eight months into progam, recipients gain momentum
In rural Tennessee, seven college and career counselors are working in 29 high schools to get students on track for life after graduation. In New Orleans, a nonprofit group has hand picked three charter-management organizations that will take over three of the city’s lowest-performing schools. And in Beaverton, Ore., teachers are partnering with local artists to improve literacy in elementary grades.
The school districts and nonprofits behind those three programs—and the 46 others financed by the federal Investing in Innovation fund —are working to prove that their brand of intervention not only improves student achievement, but also can be duplicated across the country. The i3 winners are eight months into a $650 million experiment by the U.S. Department of Education to encourage partnerships between school districts and the nonprofit sector in a nationwide effort to identify and grow the most promising education ideas.
“We’re not seeing the impact yet in terms of statistical data, but what we are seeing already is the impact on attitudes and the impact of having this infusion of money coming into our system,” said Linda Irwin, the director of school partnerships for the Niswonger Foundation , in Greenville, Tenn., which won a $17.7 million award to better prepare students in 15 districts in the rural northeastern part of the state...
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