AFT - American Federation of Teachers

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Innovation Fund 2010

We are now accepting letters of interest for 2010 Innovation Fund grants. Deadline is March 15.

 

AFT Innovation Fund

girl with lightbulbThe AFT Innovation Fund is the first union-led, private foundation-supported effort that provides grants to AFT affiliates nationwide to develop bold education innovations in public schools. The initial $3.3 million secured for the fund comes from the AFT and five prominent private philanthropic foundations.

"Many out there will be surprised to learn these proposals come from teacher unions, which are not afraid to take risks and share the responsibility for student success,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "These projects are designed by teachers and their unions, and include school and community partners—a vital combination that gives these new ventures the potential to be sustainable and improve student outcomes. That’s the real promise of these exciting initiatives.”

She added: "We’re public school entrepreneurs who want to push the envelope to improve student learning.”

The AFT Innovation Fund recipients’ projects vary—including fresh ways to evaluate, pay and recruit teachers—but the thread running through all of them is collaboration. "This is bottom-up reform at its best,” Weingarten said.

The initial funding for the AFT Innovation Fund comes from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, as well as from the AFT.

"The AFT is taking significant strides to improve educational outcomes for our students by investing in strengthened accountability, including using student achievement measures as part of both teacher evaluation and differentiated professional development, and creating innovative model contracts that could be expanded across the country,” said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, program officer in urban education at Carnegie Corporation of New York.

"Teachers play an enormously powerful role in the push for education reform—they are closest to the challenges and to the solutions in our schools,” said Fred Frelow, program officer for education and scholarship at the Ford Foundation. "We hope that these awards will encourage teachers and their partners to take bold, new approaches to teaching and learning. Their ideas and innovations will help us all think creatively about how to improve the quality of education for all our students.”

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, chair of the AFT Innovation Fund advisory board and chief academic and accountability auditor for the Detroit Public Schools, said: "These projects show teacher unions’ willingness to think creatively and collaboratively about improving student and teacher performance. They hold great promise for education reform in their school districts and around the country.”