Education reformers have learned over the past decade that philanthropic donations will often be much more effective if they are combined with political advocacy that supports innovation and defends new Read more…
In 1996 a national group calling itself Stand for Children was founded as a broad, soup-to-nuts supporter of children’s causes. Over a period of years the group shifted toward education Read more…
A giant experiment is now taking place in Chicago to see what tools work best to improve the academic performance of underachieving inner-city children. Thanks to a $10 million grant Read more…
For years, when disappointed observers noted how little was being learned by children in inner-city schools, the riposte from the public-school establishment would be “it’s not the teaching, these kids Read more…
In 2004, high-school-age cousins living 1,500 miles from his Boston home) were begging hedge-fund employee Sal Khan for help on their math homework. In response he began doing online tutoring, Read more…
The nation’s seventh-largest school district in Houston, Texas, has been plagued by the familiar problems of urban public education—including four out of every ten students failing to graduate from high Read more…
Business education has been an American specialty ever since Joseph Wharton’s gift launched a special school at the University of Pennsylvania (see 1881 entry in this same section). Philanthropy remains Read more…
Three of the nation’s most accomplished creators of charter schools—Dave Levin of KIPP, Norman Atkins from Uncommon Schools, and Dacia Toll of Achievement First—found they were constantly short on great Read more…
Created in 2007, the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History was a response to the low level of civics knowledge among American undergraduates. The center identifies Read more…
In 2007 a panel of business leaders and academics organized by the National Academy of Sciences published a report expressing alarm over the state of math and science education in Read more…
The University of Chicago has long been known for its Common Core—a curriculum based on the foundational texts of Western civilization, like Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey. It was thus Read more…
Henry Shaw came to America as a teenager, the son of a man who was looking for new markets for his family’s English steel business. The family set up a Read more…
Vermont’s first national park, described at its opening as “an entirely new kind…one where the human stories and the natural history are intertwined,” was a gift of Laurance Rockefeller and Read more…
Native son David Jones co-founded Humana Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky, and built it into one of America’s largest private health-care companies. Along the way he participated in many initiatives to Read more…
Chester County, one of the three original counties established in Pennsylvania by William Penn, lies west of Philadelphia, and is home to about half a million people. It is a Read more…
The world’s greatest collection of dinosaur fossils is not located at the Smithsonian, or Field, or British museums, not in New York or Oxford or Boston. It is housed in Read more…
In the early 1990s, an employee in an Atlanta Home Depot outlet had been missing work, then showing up sleepless and unkempt. Company co-founder Bernie Marcus took her aside and Read more…
After their son suffered serious neurological injury in a surfing accident, Alana and Harold Shepherd (who runs one of the largest construction companies in Georgia) decided to build up a Read more…
“You have many parks for recreation, but you have nothing in the performing arts,” Catherine Filene Shouse told the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. “Do you want Wolf Trap?” Heiress Read more…
The Statue of Liberty may be the best known monument in the world, and the adjoining Ellis Island immigration halls are among America’s most historic sites. Both venues have been Read more…