New report from Bellwether today – and it’s exactly the kind of first over the barbed wire type of project we like to do. It’s the U.S Innovation Index prototype. As the accompanying report discusses innovation matters to progress but to foster innovation it’s important to measure and analyze various conditions associated with it. The index – a work in progress – is an effort to do that.
You can learn more about it, the cities it looks at (Indy, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Kansas City) and the project via this link. We’re hoping to expand it to many more cities going forward.
As a non-profit we pursue our own grant funded work as well as projects we take on. So some other recent work you may have missed:
This summer we published, with support from the Robertson Foundation, The Learning Landscape. It’s a great resource that takes an objective look at the state of play in the sector. Reasonable people can disagree about a variety of education questions but it’s important that those disagreements proceed from a common fact base grounded in evidence. This is an effort to foster and support that.
We also published, earlier this month, 16 for 2016: Education Ideas For The Next President. The Broad Foundation supported this project. This volume contains a variety of federal policy ideas for schools that are left, right, and center and aimed at a variety of issues. The volume features some wonks and experts you probably know of but also Chef Tom Colicchio, Olympic Gold Medalist Steve Mesler, farming leader Lindsey Lusher, and other innovators whose work impacts the education sector. The volume showcases Bellwether’s non-ideological approach to our work and also the creative thinkers inside and around our organization.
