In Case You Missed It - NMSI on Think It Up
Elliot Mayen |
September 18, 2015
Last Friday night, four major TV networks aired a star-studded telecast to launch Think It Up — a new education initiative spearheaded by the Entertainment Industry Foundation designed to inspire a new energy throughout American culture about education and the power of learning.
The broadcast shined a spotlight on several schools and educational programs that are having a positive impact in today’s classrooms, including NMSI’s partnership with IDEA Public Schools through our College Readiness Program. IDEA San Benito, featured in one of five videos that peppered the telecast, is one of six IDEA campuses that launched the College Readiness Program in 2014 — with exceptional results.
The average one-year increase in AP qualifying scores in math, science and English in the United States is 6.6 percent. The average score improvement for NMSI partner schools — more than 700 high school nationwide have implemented the program — is more than 10 times that at 68 percent. IDEA’s San Benito campus experienced a 186 percent increase.
“The work being done in partnership with [our] College Readiness program exemplifies the type of learning that we want to encourage all over the country,” said NMSI CEO Matthew Randazzo in a related editorial.
The multi-year Think It Up initiative is now inviting public school students in grades 7-12 to work with their teachers to develop projects meant to apply what they are learning to real-world problems. The projects will be funded by the teacher crowd-funding platform DonorsChoose.org by supporters that include ExxonMobil, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Staples. More than 125 projects have already been submitted, ranging from creating school gardens to study environmental science, to using robots to learn programming.
NMSI is proud of its many partner schools throughout the country, and we can't wait to see what they have in store for the Think It Up initiative. Visit the Think It Up project page to explore the various school projects and see how you can make a difference.