Education

We focus on the high school years.

While becoming college and career ready is a journey that begins well before high school, the high school years are high stakes years for young people. Right now, too many New England students leave high school early—or graduate unprepared for what’s next. They often struggle as adults to participate fully in their communities. We support a wide range of public schools across New England that are working hard to change that dynamic. Most are traditional district schools and school systems, though we support other types of public schools, such as charter, pilot, and innovation schools as well.

We catalyze new models through support for teams of educators to create a new vision for high school, plan for change, and implement new school designs.

We invest in educators so that our region has the teachers and school leaders it needs to bring these new models to life for students and families.

We build public will by deepening knowledge of what high school is and could be and partnering with local champions of bold new visions for high-quality schools in their communities.

Across our program, we engage with partners in a variety of ways, supporting pilots, scaling success, and investing in research and evaluation. We work with individual public high schools, systems of schools at the network, district and state level, school support organizations, advocacy groups, and others. We find new partners through open requests for proposals, ongoing outreach by our team, and an open inquiry process.

Grants awarded by the Barr Foundation originate in different ways. The majority are initiated by our staff or through a request for proposals (RFP) process.

We welcome inquiries from those who feel their work may align with Barr’s Education strategies and who wish to introduce themselves to us. The best approach is to email education@barrfoundation.org with a brief description (300-400 words) of your organization, the funding opportunity you would like us to consider, and the strategy(ies) with which it aligns. Given the high volume of inquiries we receive, it may take a few weeks to hear back from our Education team.

Read more about our grantmaking process