With a $20 million federal grant at stake, supporters of education innovation in North Carolina pledged $500,000 by a Dec. 10 deadline set by the U.S. Department of Education to secure the federal funding for an initiative aimed at transforming education in rural high schools.
The private contributions will supplement the major grant, announced last month, which NC New Schools will use to expand the reach of early college strategies in North Carolina and four other states.
Four foundations and a major North Carolina technology company helped NC New Schools meet the required match: Golden LEAF Foundation, SAS, Goodnight Educational Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Wells Fargo Foundation.
Tony Habit, president of NC New Schools, praised the donors for their timely and generous support.
“They’re champions of public education who see only potential and promise in our youth,” Habit said. “We’re confident that their investment will pay off in better outcomes for thousands of students.”
NC New Schools will work to scale up proven approaches to enhance the knowledge and skills of teachers in North Carolina and the four states through a districtwide model and in schools of all sizes, and also assist districts and organizations in other states in capacity-building efforts for greater implementation of early college strategies across the country.
More than 13,000 students and nearly 800 educators in North Carolina and the other states are projected to benefit from the effort, which will focus on developing new early college high schools, which blend high school and the first two years of college, and similar approaches in traditional high schools.
Final approval of funding from the Department of Education hinged on NC New Schools’ success in securing the additional financial support for the five-year initiative. Under the terms of the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) program, grantees must also raise private support to receive the federal funds. NC New Schools must raise an additional $500,000 in private support within the first six months of the project in order to meet a 5 percent total match. An additional $3.2 million in funding will be raised jointly over the five-year project by NC New Schools and participating districts and states.
The grant represents the largest of 26 grants nationally this year under the U.S. Department of Education’s i3 grant competition, aimed at developing innovative approaches to improve student achievement and replicating effective strategies across the country. Together, the 26 grants for 2014 totaled $129 million.
The grant to NC New Schools is the only “scale-up” effort to be funded this year, and the first since 2011, based on strong evidence of effectiveness. The grant amount is the maximum awarded under the program.
