Improving Student Achievement

The Community Foundation believes that education is the base on which long-term social progress is built, and our grantmaking history has long reflected this view. In 2009-2010, The Community Foundation allocated extraordinary resources and effort toward our goal of enhancing student achievement in local public schools. 

		In partnership with the New Haven Board of Education and Yale University, The Community Foundation created New Haven Promise (NHP) as one part of New Haven’s nationally-recognized School Change initiative. NHP promotes college education as a community aspiration and provides qualifying high school graduates with college scholarships. NHP is run by The Community Foundation, and our commitment to pay administrative costs has leveraged unprecedented financial commitments from Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, among others.
		Working with leading local private-sector institutions, The Community Foundation supported the New Teacher Project to assess the policies of the New Haven Public School system related to the recruitment, training, evaluation, promotion and compensation of teachers.
		Philanthropists are collaborating with The Community Foundation to make investments in education and training. Carlton Highsmith is leading the Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology (CONNCAT), modeled after the MacArthur genius winner Bill Strickland’s successful Manchester Bidwell Center in Pittsburgh. CONNCAT will train unemployed and under-employed adults in medical coding and phlebotomy and develop youth programs in the digital arts.
		Dr. Eugene Pergament, Hillhouse High School and Yale alumnus, gave $100,000 to The Community Foundation in 2010 for college scholarships for Hillhouse graduates, and pledged to do the same for the next nine years.
		Community Foundation President Will Ginsberg served as a member of the Connecticut Commission on Educational Achievement, initiated by former Governor Jodi M. Rell in 2010 to provide recommendations on how Connecticut can close the nation’s widest achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers. Late in the year, the Commission released a comprehensive report addressing the issue. Acting as fiduciary for the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, The Community Foundation is working to implement the Commission’s recommendations. Donors have contributed nearly $300,000 to these efforts.
		Among the $350,000 granted for education and student achievement in the 2010 competitive new grants process, nearly $100,000 was awarded to Achievement First, Higher Heights and the Gesell Institute of Human Development. Funding for the Gesell Institute supported its LEAD Conference and the formation of the Gesell Think Tank Policy Work Group. Focusing on education reform, the Work Group emphasizes the importance of early child development to long-term school success.