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"Giving Tuesday — the 'global generosity movement' that encourages people to engage in some post-Black Friday charitable giving — has arrived, and Mashable's rounded up some of this year’s biggest giveback campaigns. Started in 2012, Giving Tuesday falls on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, well-past Black Friday deals, small business Saturday roundups, and Cyber Monday sales. Through collaborations with national businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations, the day will hopefully catalyze millions of dollars in charitable donations to organizations around the country and the world. The official Giving Tuesday campaign hosts donation opportunities in 80 countries, and last year’s contributions totaled $2.47 billion in just the first 24 hours, according to the organization."
‍Read the full story on mashable.com.

Since 2015, Infosys Foundation USA has teamed up with DonorsChoose to bring computer science (CS) and making into classrooms. Through their Pathfinders Institute, thousands of K–12 teachers across the US trained up their CS skills, from coding, to makerspaces, to robotics, and beyond. Now, Infosys Foundation USA is helping teachers get the hands-on resources, kits and materials they need to bring those lessons to life for their students.

Support a project

A few months into the new school year, a key goal for teachers has come into focus: helping kids fall in love with learning after nearly two years of change and uncertainty. Our friends at Infosys Foundation USA recognize how transformational it can be for teachers to bring a robot or coding kit into the classroom to spark engaging, and innovative learning.  If you have never seen the way a student lights up when they see a robot in their classroom, you’ll have to take a teacher’s word for it — it’s unmatched!

“When students are given the opportunity to create something interactive that they think is cool, their engagement levels increase, and they retain more information. Robotics in schools can help students turn their frustration into creativity and innovation.” —Mrs. Bates, a middle school teacher from Michigan

Starting November 29, you can team up with Infosys Foundation USA to help teachers get computer science resources into their classroom.

While funding lasts, Infosys Foundation USA will double any donation made to qualifying computer science and maker ed projects from K-12 teachers.

Give today

Are you a teacher looking to create a project? Check out this help center article for full details on how to qualify for this Giving Tuesday opportunity!

Somewhere between the snack calendar and the bell schedule, there’s an open space on your classroom wall that’s perfect for posting your DonorsChoose pride. We’ve got you covered.

Our classroom decor gift to you: this snazzy poster that will let every parent, friend, and colleague who walks through the door know that A DonorsChoose Teacher Lives Here. Just download, print, and post!

And in case one poster isn’t enough to adequately express your DonorsChoose devotion, here are three more tools to help you spread the word:

• A pack of “Getting Started on DonorsChoose” flyers for new teachers. Pass them out, hand them to new teachers, or put them in teacher mailboxes.

• A pack of DonorsChoose postcards for any teacher at your school. These are perfect to hand to your colleagues or leave out in the faculty lounge.

• A poster to track and celebrate teachers posting projects at your school. Hang this in a common area and update it throughout the year.

Happy sharing! Many of these resources and more can be found in the Teacher Toolkit.

We tend to think about the challenges of our nation’s education system in broad strokes. The need for billions of dollars in capital improvements, sweeping modernizations to curricula and technology, and fundamental policy changes.

These big-ticket reforms are critical, yet they can have the adverse outcome of making people feel a little less empowered to be change agents themselves. 

I still remember watching my mom write a $25 check to the United Negro College Fund every month. Our family’s means were modest, but she knew that each of us has an opportunity and an obligation to be a changemaker. I’ve kept that lesson in my heart, and it rings true today.

The truth is that seemingly small things can make a world of difference – and technology can bring people of goodwill together to scale up all this change. 

DonorsChoose is one of the best vehicles I’ve found for doing this. This platform allows anyone to see the funding needs at local schools and make small-dollar contributions to help solve them. It’s a simple, tangible way to create positive change in a community, one project at a time.

My colleagues at Vista Equity Partners and I recently partnered with PowerSchool to fulfill more than 1,800 teacher funding requests worth about $1.25 million through DonorsChoose. These requests came from schools that serve predominately Black students in and around Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Houston, Memphis, and New Orleans. We specifically set out to help lift up communities of color and chip away at systemic racial inequities by investing in school districts that have historically received less state and local funding than majority-white districts.

This has been a wonderful way of experiencing the power of modest things. We bought one teacher cleaning supplies for her classroom; another received a set of bookshelves so their students could finally have a real library. Small though they may seem, they help teachers feel supported. They help students feel seen and cared for.

Browse DonorsChoose and you’ll see that many projects only need a few hundred dollars to get off the ground, yet they have the potential to make a profound impact. Buying that lab equipment or those art supplies could legitimately change a young person’s life.

That’s the power of education. That’s what my parents – both educators – believed in. That’s what they taught me to believe in.

"The Talk teamed up with Nature Made® to discuss their #TeachHealthy campaign, dedicated to empowering teachers to do their best work while supporting their immune health. Nature Made is donating $4 million to provide wellness supplies for their classrooms in partnership with DonorsChoose and over 7 million servings of immune-support products to teachers. Plus, today they announced a surprise donation of more than $1 million to flash fund every DonorsChoose project for the LA Unified School District."
‍Watch the full story on cbs.com.

"Marcella Lopez didn't always want to be a teacher — but once she became one, she found her passion. That's why she's stayed in the profession for 23 years, spending the past 16 at her current school in Los Angeles, where she mostly teaches children of color. 'I wanted purpose, to give back, to live a life of public service, to light the spark in others to think critically and to be kind human beings,' she says. 'More importantly, I wanted my students to see themselves when they saw me, to believe they could do it too.'Ms. Lopez didn't encounter a teacher of color until college. 'That moment was life-changing for me,' she recalls. 'It was the first time I felt comfortable in my own skin as a student. Always remembering how I felt in that college class many years ago has kept me grounded year after year.'"
‍Read the full story on upworthy.com.

Summer is over and school is officially in session! As teachers and students faced the toughest back-to-school season yet, our community rallied to show their support.

Take a look at how our generous community of donors and partners came together in a big way for over 78,467 teachers this back-to-school season!

1. Welcoming 5,000 New DonorsChoose Teachers 

Teachers have spent the past 18 months switching between in-person, remote, and hybrid learning set ups, and we wanted to ease that burden by giving a helping hand to teachers new to our platform.

We empowered our community of educators to welcome their colleagues to DonorsChoose — every teacher who requested resources through DonorsChoose for the first time got a guaranteed $50 dollar donation. DonorsChoose teachers showed up in force, encouraging more than 5,000 teachers to set up their first ever DonorsChoose project and get over $455,000 in donations.

2. A $7 Million Back-to-School Boost

We surveyed over 400 teachers over the summer, and 74% of them said they didn’t have everything they needed in their classroom to start the school year.

Imagine students coming back to school with supplies out on their desks. The smile on their faces and the love they feel when they are coming back to school.

Imagine students coming back to school with supplies out on their desks. The smile on their faces and the love they feel when they are coming back to school. —Ms. Westerfield, an elementary teacher

Thanks to a 50% back-to-school boost from Bill Gates and the 40,256 donors who showed up, we were able to give teachers $7 million worth of support! Thanks to that funding, over 13 thousand teachers were able to put a smile on their students’ faces.

3. Support for Equity and Inclusion in the Classroom

Our community rallied the public to help create inclusive, anti-racist, and culturally responsive learning environments. Thanks to the donors who showed their support, they funded 1,771 Racial Justice and Representation projects and 4,416 projects from teachers of color using DonorsChoose for the first time!

4. Partners for Success

At DonorsChoose, we know that to really create an impact, you need support! We’re lucky to have over 78 amazing corporate partners; this year thanks to companies like Bloomingdale’s, Clorox, Kleenex, T-Mobile and many others, we’ve been able to raise over $44 million and bring 95,990 classroom projects to life!

Are You Ready for an Amazing School Year?

Thank you to everyone in the DonorsChoose community who helped give teachers the strongest start to the year possible… and this is just the beginning! 

Our team of former educators, engineers, product fulfillment specialists, and partnerships experts are working hard to create more amazing moments for public school teachers — and we won’t stop until students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Teachers, if you're ready for an amazing year create a classroom request today!

Yvette Nicole Brown, Emmy-nominated* actress, host, producer, and Vice Chair of the DonorsChoose Board of Directors shares a heartfelt message for teachers entering the new school year.

On August 5th, Yvette joined expert teachers, leaders in equity and mental health, and DonorsChoose Founder, Charles Best for the first-ever DonorsChoose Teacher Summit. Check out more key moments from the summit and a free opportunity to learn, invest, and start the school year feeling energized and ready!

*She is already a winner in our eyes!

"Two decades ago, as a 23-year-old history and English teacher at Wings Academy in the Bronx, Charles Best noticed he was spending a lot of his $30,000 salary on school supplies. The public high school was a bright place in a newish building, but copy paper was often rationed and teachers with ideas for science experiments or art projects usually had to fund them themselves. During his 5 a.m. excursions to Staples to photocopy pages of 'Little House on the Prairie' for his class, Mr. Best began dreaming of a website that would invite donors to help pay for the books and field trips that he and his colleagues wanted for their students. In 2000, he founded the nonprofit DonorsChoose, initially running it out of his classroom.Since then, DonorsChoose has raised over $1.1 billion to support 2 million projects in public schools across the country. Because the organization vets requests and purchases the materials or services itself, it has become a rare 'force for equity in crowdfunding,' says Mr. Best, 45, over the phone from his home in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife, Bridget, and their two children. 'A teacher does not have to have friends with money or students with money to get a classroom dream funded,' he explains, noting that most of the projects serve students from low-income communities and around three-quarters of the funds raised on the site come from sources teachers don’t know personally. Four out of five public schools in America have a teacher who has posted a request on DonorsChoose."
‍Read the full story on wsj.com.

Every back-to-school season, “learning loss” re-enters the conversation. This year, as the public tries to understand the impact of COVID-19 on education, the term has been in the media more than ever. With the first wave of schools starting, we’re diving into how the term is being used. We asked our teacher community how they are thinking about “learning loss”, and whether this catchphrase paints an accurate picture of what students experienced over the last year and a half. 

The history of learning loss

Before the coronavirus pandemic even began, the idea that students “lost learning” based on their home environment over the summer was dubious. 

Prior to COVID-19, learning loss typically referred to the “summer slide” — the idea that students lose progress over summer break — and how it impacts achievement along economic lines. In 2017, the National Summer Learning Association posited that the achievement gap (i.e. different educational outcomes based on economic lines) was largely due to learning loss over the summer.

But whether or not that conventional wisdom holds true isn’t certain; for example, remedial summer programs have not had huge successes, and in a recent study by the Iowa Reading Research Center it was suggested that learning wasn’t lost over the summer, even among communities considered to be most vulnerable to the summer slide. 

Assumptions about learning loss and the achievement gap

Home environment was the focus of most articles about educational inequity during the pandemic, but it may not be the main factor in disparities present when students return.

As the pandemic progressed and schools started to close, concerns about equity and student access to learning took over the conversation. Sources from the CDC to The New York Times talked about how the pandemic would widen existing equity gaps and put students of color and students from low-income households at risk of falling behind.

Much of the news focused on the hardships students faced learning from home, but few articles discussed the existing and systemic inequities in the education system. As the pandemic progressed, a new inequity developed: who was staying home, and who was receiving in-person instruction?

Moving the focus from resources available at home to resources available in the classroom

“The ‘achievement gap,’ then, isn’t inevitable. It’s baked into the system, resulting from the decisions adults make, consciously and unconsciously, about which students get what resources. It’s a gap of our own design.” — The Opportunity Myth, TNTP.org, 2018

In the United States, not all school communities have the same access to resources. During the pandemic, the most precious resource became in-person access to teachers.

A recent report from McKinsey & Company found that “Black and Hispanic students are twice as likely as White students to have received no live contact with teachers over the previous week and are... less likely to be receiving consistent live instruction.” Our survey of 1,100 DonorsChoose teachers found the same: teachers at schools in low-income communities were more likely to report that they were providing all instruction via remote learning, compared to teachers at schools in more affluent communities. The same was also true for teachers at schools that serve a majority of Black, Latino/a, and Indigenous students, with more of these teachers reporting being fully remote than teachers from schools with mostly White students.

Where students are learning according to community income level

Where students are learning according to race

New ways to think about COVID-19 learning outcomes

Rather than attributing student academic struggles to traditional terms like “learning loss”, there are other ways to think about educational inequity that get closer to the heart of the matter: Access to the classroom and the resources in it (including teachers themselves) widens the equity gap. Moving away from the idea of “learning loss” opens up new avenues to help students succeed, and — as usual — teachers are way ahead of the curve here.

Berkley Scholar Chunyan Yang says, “When we talk about learning loss with teachers, it triggers a lot of questioning and resistance. Teachers feel that they have been making so much effort during the pandemic. They’ve imposed on their family’s time and neglected their own mental health to try to minimize the loss among their students.”

The pandemic had an undeniable impact on students, but the impact wasn’t as simple as students failing to absorb information. Researchers such as McKinsey & Company use the term “unfinished learning” to “convey the reality that students were not given the opportunity this year to complete all the learning they would have completed in a typical year.” 

Similarly, when asked about the term, DonorsChoose teachers say it doesn’t give a clear picture of the year and its challenges. Instead of the term learning loss, they would use labels like:

• Impact learning: “Students that have lost a year of learning will need extra support routines and practices in place to build skills and confidence… Learning loss implies that kids have lost the ability to learn or that learning has not occurred. Learning takes so many forms and occurs in so many ways it’s unfair to say students have learning loss because they were not physically in a school building. ” - Leslie, New Jersey

• Digital Learning: “There is no learning loss. Our children just focus on a different set of skills — mainly life skills — and learn to adapt to a different style of learning (mostly digital).” - Katie, Massachusetts

• Pandemic disconnection: “We shouldn't approach this year with a deficit mindset but rather what our students have gained. They've learned technology skills that will benefit them in their future. Many have learned more life skills. There was a great deal of learning last year, just maybe not with the standard curriculum.” - Becky, Massachusetts

• Nothing - the term shouldn't exist at all! “Our educational system is so focused on outdated scheduling and materials that were intended back during the Industrial Revolution, rather than skills and subjects that would benefit today's technological-based society. While students as a whole may not know the same things the previous generations knew, how many times has someone said ‘I didn't need _______ in my adult life’?” - Shaylyn, California

Supporting students this school year and beyond

When asked about their top priorities for the back-to-school season in a recent survey, most DonorsChoose teachers shared their focus was on developing relationships with students and their families and building and fostering a classroom community.

“For many students, their mental and emotional health need to be stabilized in order for learning to take place.” — Crystal, Pennsylvania

There is also the learning curve that comes with re-entering the classroom. Many of our teachers note that their students haven’t been in a classroom for the last 18 months. They are excited to see each other and it will take time to relearn the behaviors and norms that make a fun and engaging classroom.

“We need the kids to be safe and rebuild the engagement with school...if they feel like it is too much, they are going to become permanently disengaged from school.” — Laura, Connecticut

Over the last year and a half, teachers have adapted to a whole new teaching style, which often requires additional resources. This back-to-school season, public school teachers have already submitted over 80,000 requests on DonorsChoose, and our recent back-to-school site-wide matching campaign supported by Bill Gates was our first big giving day of the school year. Our donors know that the way to give students access to the education they deserve is to support teachers; by listening to the wisdom of teachers on the frontlines, and ensuring they have the resources they need we can set students up for success academically while giving them much-needed social emotional learning support.

Ready to help students access the resources they need? Support a classroom today!

This is the first post in our Equity Focus series. To learn more about our Equity Focus and how DonorsChoose directly addresses inequity in education, go here.

Recently, The New York Times ran an article about the communities and students most effected by the coronavirus outbreak in the United States: “​The Pandemic Hurt These Students the Most”. They concluded that “an education system plagued by racial and socioeconomic inequities [has] only gotten worse during the coronavirus pandemic”.

While the COVID-19 pandemic made learning disparities more glaring, inequity in education is hardly a new phenomenon. As students return back to the classroom this fall and disparities are laid ever more bare, we thought this would be the right moment to share three studies that dig into the who, what, why, and how of educational inequity over the past decade — and how funding classroom resources is one avenue for change.

#1. The $23 billion resource gap

The Headline: “School districts serving mostly students of color get $23 billion less than districts serving mostly White students, despite serving the same number of students.”

The Story: EdBuild points to racial and economic segregation created by gerrymandered school district boundaries and overallocation of resources to smaller districts as two of the variables leading to this constant: “Financially, it is far better in the United States to have the luck and lot to attend a school district that is predominantly White than one that enrolls a concentration of children of color.”

The Data:

• For every student enrolled, the average school district serving students of color receives $2,226 less than a majority White school district. 
• Low-income, mostly White school districts receive over $1,400 more per student than school districts that serve low-income students of color.
• In the United States, 20% of students are enrolled in districts that are both low-income and mostly students of color, but just 5% of students live in low-income districts with mostly White students.

The Source: EdBuild, $23 Billion
By design, EdBuild was a limited-term (2015–2020), nonprofit organization that developed key reports and tools in three key areas: The School Funding System is Broken; There are Ways to Fix It; and There are Tools to Guide You.

#2. Teachers are trying to meet student needs with their own money

The Headline: Teacher out-of-pocket spending might be a key indication of student need.

What’s the story? Of the many ways to identify areas of educational imbalance, this study proposes that higher teacher out-of-pocket spending may be a useful barometer of student need otherwise going unmet in classrooms. Another key aspect of the story: “As the share of racial/ethnic minority students in a school increases, teacher out-of-pocket spending also increases...”

The Data:

• Student demographics — both student race/ethnicity and student household economic level — are important predictors of teacher spending.
• Teachers in schools with 75–100% racial & ethnic minority students spend about $130 more per year than peer teachers in schools with 0–24% racial & ethnic minority students (a 31% difference).
• More teacher control over purchasing classroom supplies (within school-based budgets) means less out-of-pocket spending. Teachers who said they had more autonomy over their classroom spending budget said they spend on average $135 less of their own money than teachers who reported not having much say in what they spend funds on.

The Source: University of Virginia, EdPolicyWorks, Supporting Students at Any Cost?
This study comes from Brian H. Kim at the University of Virginia’s Center on Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness (EdPolicyWorks) with research partner DonorsChoose.

#3. Teachers know their students best

The Headline: ”Crowdfunding the Front Lines: An Empirical Study of Teacher-Driven School Improvement”

What’s the story? The preK–12 system is filled with wide inequities, operational inefficiencies, and now COVID-related learning disruptions. This University of Michigan study analyzed student test scores in Pennsylvania to determine the educational impact of teachers selecting resources based on their students' individual needs and context.

The Data:

• Overall, the study’s results indicate that, despite overwhelming obstacles within the existing ecosystem, crowdfunding platforms that empower teachers have the potential to be an equalizing tool.
• At low-income schools, each teacher-driven funded resource request on average moves between 4 and 10 additional students to at least a basic level of proficiency in tested subjects.
• By analyzing 20,000+ teacher-submitted impact reports, the study found that teachers selecting their own resources led to four areas of consistent improvement: Knowledge Retention, Repeated or Shared Use of Resources, Differentiated Learning, and Streamline Work Processes.

The Source: University of Michigan, Crowdfunding the Front Lines | Stop The Revolving Door
This study came from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan (specifically, Samantha M. Keppler, Jun Li, and Di (Andrew) Wu) with research partner DonorsChoose.

Without a doubt, this is the most “back-to-school” Back to School EVER! Right now, our nation’s kids are returning to school to get back to learning. Their success isn’t a given, but when teachers have the tools they need, it is achievable.

On Thursday, August 12, the DonorsChoose Community kicked off the school year with a back-to-school boost thanks to Bill Gates. On this day, every donation to a teacher’s project on DonorsChoose got a 50% match.

Thanks to the generosity of 40,255 donors and the boosting funds, we were able to raise over $7 million and fully fund 12,549 projects — in just one day! Congrats to the 21,080 teachers who received donations to their projects.

Here are a few of our favorite moments from social media celebrations.

Celebrities helped rally the public

‍Parents (tried to) anonymously support their kids who are teachers

Huge shoutout to my parents for helping with my @DonorsChoose project. I especially enjoyed them pretending they didn’t do it, even though their name was on the donation. — Kim Kahan (@MsKahansClass) August 12, 2021

School districts bolstered teacher fundraising efforts

Teachers celebrated their success (and cheered each other on)

This is the first of many big days we have planned for teachers and students as the school year unfolds. We can’t wait to see how teachers use these classroom supplies to help their students fall in love with learning this year.