We are deeply concerned about learning loss caused by school closures, especially for students in early elementary school years. Remote learning simply has not worked for many poor families. Even under normal circumstances, during an average year, students from underserved communities in grades K-3 lose three months of reading knowledge during the summer. We know that COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem. In response, Heckscher provided new emergency funding for summer literacy programs via Practice Makes Perfect, Springboard Collaborative, and Read Alliance, three nonprofits that successfully provide literacy remediation and enrichment to thousands of underserved students. 

We also supported specific public schools in East Harlem and Queens: our East Harlem Pride funding focused on high school students who have struggled in remote learning by providing both summer and fall intensive support programs for credit recovery and Regents prep boot-camps to ensure that students meet graduation requirements. With our support, seven middle schools in Queens, led by George Ryan Middle School, also created a summer remediation and enrichment program focused on ELA and mathematics for students at highest risk of COVID-19 learning loss.

We recognized that teachers and educators needed to learn basic emergency remote teaching skills for engaging students using Zoom and other platforms. We identified and funded a series of workshops created by Doug Lemov and his team at “Teach Like a Champion” which we offered to grantees. The workshops, “Techniques and Principles for Remote Instruction, 101,” were immediately oversubscribed, demonstrating strong demand. Participants studied video examples of online instruction from schools across the U.S. and participated in active discussions. Topics included synergies between synchronous, asynchronous, and semi-synchronous modes of instruction; tools to check for understanding in an online setting; building productive procedures and routines online; and establishing stronger connections with students in both synchronous and asynchronous settings. These initial workshops sold out so quickly that additional sessions were offered as well as a second set of workshops, “Engaging and Interactive Online Lessons, 201,” which dug deeper into the logistics of online instruction. We also supported the Relay Graduate School of Education in a partnership with Teach for America to help its teachers and alums to master on line teaching techniques.

In 2020 we made our final grants to The Student Emergency Fund (SEF) program at SUNY, a highly successful program which we designed in 2017 and has shown extraordinary results in student retention and graduation from college.  Prior to our initiation of the program there had been little reliable data on the impact of such programs.  Our program collected quarterly reports from the campuses to track progress of implementation and impact on student success, in addition to the data on application, awards and persistence which were compiled and analyzed by Scholarship America.  The SEF program at SUNY is one of our most successful catalytic grant opportunities which included collaboration with another funder, the Gerstner Family Foundation (GFF), and impact well beyond the dollars involved.  As part of this program we developed a strategy aiming to “embolden” SUNY to supplement our funding with public dollars; in 2020, we were successful in attaining that goal. In response to a coordinated COVID-19 system-wide fundraising campaign, SUNY Impact Foundation raised funds that have enabled them to provide one-to-one matching dollars to support the growth of SEF across the university system, nearly doubling SEF’s reach from 6 campuses to 11 campuses.  We will continue to collect quarterly reports from the campuses to track progress of implementation and impact on student success, in addition to the data on application, awards and persistence.