InsideSchools.org is a comprehensive source of information on New York City schools visited by over 140,000 students, parents, educators, and members of the public each month. Its user-friendly website offers detailed profiles of New York’s 1,700 schools, including in-class videos, student achievement statistics, and insights gained from on-site visits. News and advice columns also cover everything from entrance tests to new administrative appointments. To ensure access by diverse demographic groups, the entire site can be immediately translated into 50 different languages. The Sloan Foundation has supported InsideSchools since its inception in 2002.Funds from this grant support efforts by InsideSchools to expand its offerings by providing information about the different pedagogical and curricular offerings at each school, such as Everyday Math, TERC, Saxon, Singapore, or Montessori. In a separate effort to improve data quality, InsideSchools will also begin consulting with a statistician to help separate school effects from small sample biases or other confounding variables.

This grant provides two years of support for a new awards program by the Council for Economic Education (CEE) that honors exceptional, innovative K-12 teaching of economics and finance in the New York Metropolitan Area. These “Economic Educator of the Year Awards” will be awarded by a distinguished independent committee to three K-12 teachers based on evidence of their creativity, general effectiveness, and success at motivating underserved students.Winners will be honored at the CEE annual dinner, where a video will also be shown that highlights their achievements and showcases their teaching methods. Each winner receives a $5,000 prize and their schools will receive $2,500 to strengthen its economic education offerings.

Funds from this grant support efforts by a team led by Stephen Flynn, Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University to hold a series of four workshops to help guide the rapid and sustained recovery of the metro New York City region in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  The four workshops will bring together emergency managers, urban planners, and academic experts from coastal cities and the New York region to facilitate the exchange of findings and recommendations on how best to incorporate resilience into the current regional restoration efforts and future planning.  The first three workshops will focus on three sectors where Sandy caused considerable disruption in the metro New York area—transportation, energy, and health services.  Each workshop will aim to identify recommendations for what should be in place to mitigate future risk, what can be done to speed up recovery of these sectors, and to identify crosscutting issues amongst them.  The fourth workshop will take place at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and will involve representatives from the insurance, reinsurance, and banking industries.  The goal of this workshop will be to identify meaningful incentives that can be devised for advancing measures that can bolster resilience.  In addition to the workshops, Flynn and his team will engage in a number of outreach activities to publicize their findings, including the publication of several reports, meetings with relevant stakeholders, and a series of high profile op-eds and media appearances.

According to the Computing Research Association, the percentage of women earning degrees in computer science peaked in 1984 at just over 37 percent, and has recently fallen to less than 12 percent. The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU wants to show what can be done about it. Courant has specifically designed a new program for this purpose called the G-STEM (Girl's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Summer Camp. Targeting high-aptitude girls in New York City area high schools, it features intensive classes, practical internships, one-on-one adult mentoring, positive peer support, and lots of follow-up activities. The goal is to strengthen the perseverance of young women interested in STEM careers as they transition from high school to college. Funds from this grant provide support for the G-STEM program for three years.