Carnegie Institution for Science
BioEYES is a week-long, hands-on biology unit delivered by Carnegie Institution science outreach educators and co-teaching by City Schools science teachers using live fish as subjects. The program meets the Common Core science standards, and it demonstrates—and prepares teachers for—a student-centered lab approach to science instruction. BioEYES allows Baltimore City 8th grade students and teachers access to the world of high caliber, Nobel Prize-level science. In a recent study (Shuda, Butler, Farber, and Vary, 2015), the authors found significant gains in students’ knowledge and attitudes towards science as a result of BioEYES.
It is expected that up to 2,500 8th grade students and 45 science teachers will experience BioEYES in the 2020/2021 school year via online or in person instruction with a goal to produce 8 new Master Teachers.
Baltimore’s Promise, Fiscally Sponsored by Fund for Educational Excellence
Launched by a diverse group of civic leaders in 2014, Baltimore’s Promise is a collaboration to create a cradle to career pipeline to success for youth in Baltimore City by coordinating strategy, identifying quality programs, establishing shared outcomes, building public will, and advancing good policy. In Year 6, the work will focus on the expanded implementation of the Grads2Careers occupational training scholarships for graduates from Baltimore City Public Schools, a demonstration of the new Youth Data System, a planning and implementation effort around Young Adult Literacy, a landscape analysis of out-of school programming and a continuation of the Summer Funding Collaborative. Baltimore’s Promise also is serving as the backbone for a $4.3 million fund to support food and other needs in Baltimore as a result of the COVID pandemic.
Urban Teachers
With Abell Foundation start-up funding, Urban Teachers launched a new model of teacher preparation in 2009, recruiting outstanding college graduates, training them in a year-long clinical preparation, providing classroom support over four years, and linking their certification to demonstration of effective teaching practices and student learning gains. In summer 2020, Urban Teachers will begin training another 100 new incoming Resident Teachers who co-teach with mentor teachers for the first year of a four-year commitment. This grant will enable Urban Teachers to embark upon a strategic planning process to reaccess and design a new business and financial model that will garner more earned reveue and reduce costs without impacting program quality. This model will further reduce reliance on philanthropy to 20% of the total budget, and reduce the financial burdens on teacher candidates.
In summer 2020, Urban Teachers will begin training another 100 new incoming Resident Teachers who co-teach with mentor teachers for the first year of a four-year commitment.
Fund for Educational Excellence
The Fund for Educational Excellence is a Baltimore-based education intermediary that supports public education through its fundraising and collaboration with Baltimore City Public Schools, community-based research, convening stakeholders, and serving as a fiscal sponsor to education non-profits. This grant will enable the Fund to produce a Transportation report and act on its recommendations in CTE and School Choice, to raise federal and national funding for City Schools, to stewart $25 million as fiscal sponsor to 20 non-profits, and to recognize excellence among school principals.
Digital Harbor Foundation, Fiscally Sponsored by Fund for Educational Excellence
COVID-19 has exposed the lack of both devices, and as importantly, connectivity in the homes of Baltimore City school children. Coordinated by the Fund for Educational Excellence, this grant is part of a City Schools Tech Initiative to pilot the use of mesh-internet installed on the roofs of four high-poverty schools. These cost-effective access nodes tap into school broadband and provide free internet to homes in a four-to-eight-block radius of the school, serving an anticipated 820 students.