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Vision
All New England’s Learners Prepared for Success – Educationally,
Economically and as Engaged Citizens
Mission
To stimulate transformative change of public education systems
across New England by growing a greater variety of higher quality
educational opportunities that enable all learners – especially and
essentially underserved learners – to obtain the skills, knowledge
and supports necessary to become civically engaged, economically
self-sufficient life-long learners.
History
The Nellie Mae Education Foundation
is New England’s largest public charity dedicated solely
to preparing all the region’s learners for success.
The Foundation and its precursors have been strategically investing
in the future of New England since 1990. In that year, the Nellie
Mae Corporation, a nonprofit education-financing company, created
the Fund for Education, pioneering philanthropy within the student
loan industry. Over the next eight years, the Fund for Education
provided $5 million in grants and support to advance more than 300
education programs throughout the region. In 1998, the Nellie Mae
Foundation was formed. The following year’s purchase of Nellie Mae
Corporation by Sallie Mae (SLM Holding Corporation) created the
endowment for what is currently the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
Now unaffiliated with the Corporation, the Foundation is currently a
leader in advancing the implementation of student-centered learning
models and build public support for education reform in communities
throughout New England.
From 2000 until 2007, the Foundation invested in efforts to improve
adult literacy, provide college preparation, and reduce the
achievement gap. In 2008, the Foundation realigned its strategic
funding priorities. While continuing to provide grants and technical
assistance for strategies that support underserved learners, it did
so with an additional focus on building knowledge about how to
dramatically improve outcomes. The change in strategic direction led
to a re-examining of long-held assumptions about the way students
are educated--what they are taught, when, where, how, and by whom.
Based on new research on adolescent development and cognitive
science, as well as knowledge obtained from the Foundation’s
investments in the region, our strategic focus has now shifted to
where we believe we can best prepare New England for the challenges
it will face in the future: promoting student-centered learning at
the middle and high school levels across the region.
As of March 2010, the Foundation’s work focuses primarily on the
promotion and implementation of developmentally appropriate,
rigorous, year-round, student-centered approaches to learning at the
middle and high school levels.
For additional information about our emerging work – including
details about initiative areas and grant availability – read more
About the Foundation , including more about
Our Organizational
Strategy and Initiatives , and our
Grant Guidelines.
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