The Tech Giant That’s Playing Fairy Godmother to Teachers Nationwide

Google is getting an A+ in generosity this month.

Teachers in Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Kansas City, Austin and Washington D.C. and more have been #FlashFunded (a social media campaign we can get behind) by the tech titan — meaning that educators in these cities recently saw every single item on their DonorsChoose.org (a crowdfunding site where teachers post items or materials they need for their classrooms) wishlists completely funded.

In Los Angeles, Google donated $1 million to 769 teachers, who will receive school materials such as paper, pencils, books, laptops, musical instruments and microscopes for their 75,108 students, the Santa Monica Mirror reports.
And in Massachusets, Google forked out $175,000 to 202 Boston and Cambridge teachers. (If you click on this DonorsChoose link, for example, you’ll see that every project that was listed on Boston’s page has been removed.)
Google’s move got a hearty pat on the back from native son, Ben Affleck.
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Austin received $87,803 for 133 projects, and teachers in Seattle had 341 back-to-school projects funded. Incredibly, a $240,000 donation to Washington D.C.’s teachers has impacted a total of 31,362 of the area’s students.
“We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students,” says Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, after a $194,370 donation funded 175 projects in greater Kansas City. “This is a great day for Kansas City classrooms.”
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Google’s gesture not only ensures that teachers in high-need communities have the supplies and tools they need to help students succeed, but it also alleviates a very expensive burden many of them probably face. As we previously reported, the average educator spends $350 of his or her own money for classroom supplies and resources (and we already know that our country’s teachers don’t make a lot of money). By allowing our nation’s teachers spend less time worrying about money, they can devote more time educating students instead.
This isn’t the first time Google has made a generous donation to help our nation’s educators soar, and undoubtedly, their current nationwide blitz is getting teachers in other cities very excited.
We wait with baited breath to see which city’s deserving students and teachers get #FlashFunded next.
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These Students Look Beyond Books and Classrooms for the Future of Education

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to debate teacher evaluation and preparedness, several potential educators are hitting the road — instead of books — as part of a month-long road trip to find inspiration.
The TEACH Roadtrip, which is sponsored by Participant Media and Roadtrip Nation, follows three twenty-something students as they travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., stopping along the way to interview teachers, activists, lawmakers and entrepreneurs who are shaping the education field.
Over the next 10 years, America will need to replace the 1.6 million teachers expected to enter retirement, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But in order to do that, future educators need to see past the exhaustive debates that plague the education space. And that’s exactly why Rafael Silva, Nadia Bercovich, and Grace Worm are looking for affirmation as they contemplate heading into education.
Inspired by Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, TEACH (which airs on Pivot TV this fall), the group will travel 4,000 miles to spotlight influential leaders like Robert Florio, a veteran and special education teacher with Troops to Teachers; Kelly Meyer, creator of American Heart Association’s Teaching Gardens; and Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago.
Along the way, Bercovich, Silva and Grace hope to glean insight to inspire themselves, as well as the next generation of teachers.
“Every person has a responsibility to teach,” Worm says, “by being part of a world that kids can look to and learn from and, with our help, make it better.”
Worm graduated from the University of Texas at Austin this past summer and is hoping the journey will bridge her transition into a teaching role. Bercovich, who was born in Argentina, has spent the past year backpacking South America and teaching a combination of English, yoga and art therapy. She hopes to meet education innovators to inspire her goal to teach creatively.
University of California at Los Angeles junior Silva has been working toward a career in medicine. But he’s more interested in teaching and is looking to the road trip to convince him.

“I care about education because I have received such a great one, and it has made me who I am today,” Silva says. “I want to make sure other people have the opportunity to go through the same experience I did.”

Their journey may end on September 6 in the nation’s capital, but their potential to shape education is just starting.
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To Change Public Education, This Nonprofit Is Hacking the System

In order to effectively change American education, it’s imperative to understand what schools, students and their teachers are lacking. DonorsChoose, an online nonprofit that has channeled more than $220 million to classroom projects, has been collecting data on the country’s educational needs and charitable donations for the past 13 years, gathering a treasure trove of information into giving in the U.S. education system. Now, for the first time, DonorsChoose, in partnership with Looker, a software company that focuses on data discovery and business intelligence, is releasing this unprecedented data collection to the public, free of charge, through their Hacking Education initiative, in order to allow citizens to generate their own insights into the state of public education.
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Starting today, anyone with a valid email address can request access to explore DonorsChoose’s more than 20 million records, which Looker has combined with public education data. This allows people to learn about what schools need and which causes donors are more apt to support. “Exploring and analyzing our data through Looker has helped us develop strategies to increase charitable donations to schools,” Charles Best, CEO of DonorsChoose said in a press release announcing the initiative. “By identifying giving trends, we can better restructure and target our fundraising.”
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So what factors do drive funding to schools in need? Here are some examples [PDF] from DonorsChoose’s 2013 Giving Index — a report that analyzes 340,000 donors, $60.2 million in donations and more than 130,000 school projects during the course of the year:

  • People are far more likely to donate funds to schools within 25 miles of their zipcodes.
  • Elementary education received the most funding, topping other grades by more than $3 million.
  • Literacy and language projects received 42 percent of funding, followed by math and science, which received 30 percent. Health and sports received the least amount of funding, with 3%.
  • 50 percent of projects requested basic school supplies and books.
  • STEM projects were most funded for older students (grades 9–12).

These types of insights — many and more of which can be found through DonorsChoose’s Hacking Education initiative — can chart the course for research, spending and fundraising to help teachers find the tools they need to provide students with the quality education they deserve.
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