Education

Program Overview

We make grants that provide students with rigorous, relevant, and innovative educational opportunities, including open educational resources and practices, in order to foster mobility and help students contribute to the future of their communities and our country. In 2024, the program awarded $66.1M through 174 grants.

Grants

Priorities

Develop additional knowledge about how to strengthen the education systems to meet the needs of the communities they serve.
Support educators by funding research into best practices for student success and efforts to build a workforce that reflects the communities it serves.
Help students and their families become advocates for improvements in their own educational experiences.
Build capacity for schools, districts, and higher education institutions to integrate and implement open educational resources and practices.

Strategies

K-12 Teaching and Learning

The promise of public education is for every student to have meaningful opportunities to thrive, no matter who they are or where they come from. A rigorous education should encourage learners, prepare them to fulfill their own aspirations, and become engaged members of their communities and contributors to our democracy.

Our grantmaking promotes the adoption of high-quality educational experiences in public schools through a set of practices we call “deeper learning” — learning that combines content mastery with skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, communications, and collaboration. We invest in approaches that center student success and collective experiences in schools because we know that when systems of learning center student identity and shared achievements, our whole society benefits from the outcomes.

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Open Education

Openly creating and sharing knowledge as part of public education helps guarantee everyone – students, educators, families, and communities — has a part to play and something to gain. In school, every learner should have high-quality experiences that build the skills, mindsets, and agency they need to succeed. Open education ensures students have access to knowledge when and how they need it and that they can see themselves in what they are learning.

Our grantmaking supports open educational resources (OER) — which are free for educators and students to use, adapt, and share — as well as professional development so that OER enable effective teaching and learning. Open educational resources and practices democratize learning, strengthen teaching, and give educators tools to energize their classrooms.

Read the strategy