No, I’m not going to recommend an Internet travel agency or list possible islands in the Caribbean that you may want to visit. I do my best to stay on task and help you have the best possible grant program that you can have. So, I’ll leave the travel tips to someone else.
The last few weeks of school are always tough. Unless you happen to be one of the few full-time grant writers in schools around the country, writing grants is probably pretty low on your agenda right now. If you are going to get anything accomplished to help you get grants in the near future, I would definitely put my time and energy into making sure you get good, honest assessments of your current programs as I suggested in my last blog post. The information you get from those assessments is absolutely vital to the grants you will write in the summer and the fall.
Once you get those assessments completed, scored, and have a copy of all the reports, it’s time to sit down with colleagues and pinpoint the weakest academic areas in your district, campus, or classroom. Don’t look at your results with preconceived notions. Just read the data and be sure you have everything disaggregated by class, by gender, by socio-economic status, by teacher, by subject, etc. In other words, you need that data sliced and diced fifty different ways, broken down to such an extent that you can pinpoint your problem areas easily and quickly.
Who knows what the data will tell you? They may tell you that only 10% of your 5th graders who were absent 15 days or more passed your state reading test. They may tell you that one particular style of teaching math was 35% more effective in reaching low socio-economic students than another style. The data may show you that longer periods of students reading independently in appropriate level books had a more positive effect than using a thousand worksheets each year. They may also tell you that you need to order a lot more library books.
Again, don’t be prejudiced going in. Let the data lead you to logical conclusions. It is very helpful if you can look at the results of your assessments in small groups. It is also helpful to assess the data before you go into summer vacation if at all possible. That gives you time to agree on your problem areas and to do some of your grant writing during the summer break.
It’s okay to look at the data in the first part of the summer if you can get everyone back together, but if you wait until the fall, everyone is going to be extremely busy at the first of the new semester. Chances are you won’t write grants in time to get grant money during the fall semester, and that means the grant money can’t be used to help your students until the spring.
That timeline is simply not acceptable. Review your data in May or June. List your problems in order of priority. Assign someone to collect all the available information needed to complete a grant proposal and apply for at least some of the grants you need during the summer.
Chances are you won’t do that unless you finish your assessments, get them scored and disaggregated, and determine the major problems you have. You might even have time using a good grant database to find the grantors you need before school is out.
No, I won’t help you find the ideal spot for a summer vacation, but I will try to help you get ready to be a successful summer grant writer. It won’t take up much of your vacation if you lay the proper groundwork now.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Check It Out: New Grant Opportunity!
Grant Name: Sol
Hirsch Education Fund Grants
Funded by: National
Weather Association
Description: Sol
Hirsch Education Fund Grants are awarded annually to teachers/educators of
grades K-12 to help improve the education of their students, school and/or
community in the science of meteorology.
Program Areas: Science/Environmental
Recipients: Public
School, Private School, Other
Proposal Deadline: 6/1/2012
Average Amountf: $750.00
Availability: All
States
Check It Out: New Grant Opportunity!
Grant Name: Humana
Foundation Grants
Website: http://www.humanafoundation.org
Funded by: The
Humana Foundation, Inc
Description: Education
support with no geographical limitations. Program provides financial assistance
to the children of employees of Humana Inc., who plan to pursue a college
degree. The foundation also supports the arts and library sciences. No support
for political, non-school, or religious organizations. No grants for start up
needs.
Program Areas: Arts,
Early Childhood, Family Services, General Education, Health/PE, Library
Recipients: Public
School, Private School, Higher Education
Proposal Deadline: 6/15/2012
Average Amount: $5,000.00
- $75,000.00
Contact Person: Barbara
Wright
Telephone: 502-580-3613
Website: http://www.humanafoundation.org
Availability: All
States
Friday, April 13, 2012
Are You Assessing or Obsessing?
I know that I talk a lot about
assessments when this is actually a blog about grants. However, if you really understand grants and
the grant application process, you know that good, comprehensive assessment is
a vital part of any grant program.
Every program and every class is
your school should have a thorough assessment done before the end of the school
year. You may assess progress in any
given program using a nationally-normed test, a state test, a campus, or
teacher-made test, or a combination of these.
It doesn’t really matter what the process is. The bottom line, as far as grants go, is that
you have to know where your students started the year and how much progress
they’ve made during the course of the year. You can only do that by properly assessing each of your programs.
When you get the results from your
assessments, you should be able to quickly spot the problem areas in your
school. When you know those problems and
exactly how large they are, you can then begin to develop plans to eliminate or
remediate those problems. But, here’s the rub.
Even if you identify your problems, are you going to have the funds in
your budget to do the things you need to do to solve all of your problems? If you don’t, then you’re going to need to
apply for grant money.
When you start completing grant
applications, your assessments come into play again. On your application, you can show the grantor
how you determined that you had a problem and just how severe yours problem are. You then explain exactly what you need to do to
alleviate the problem and how their grant money will be used to make the needed
changes and improvements. If you don’t
have good, solid data from your assessment instrument, you end up talking in
generalities while your competitors will be using specifics.
Most grantors also require you to
include your assessment process in your grant proposal. They want to know where your students started,
how much growth you got using their grant funds, and the instrument you used to
determine this growth.
This whole funding, assessment, and
growth process is probably the closest a school will come to mirroring other
types of businesses. Using the proper
assessment tools, you can determine exactly how much money you spent to obtain
the months or years of growth you gained. Good programs make a profit (high growth on the part of students). Poor programs have a loss (little or no
progress for the money spent).
The reason I am mentioning
assessments again now is that as we close in on the end of the current school
year. Each of your programs should be
assessed properly. You should determine
exactly how much growth each student demonstrates. From these assessments you will get much
needed statistical information that you can use in a grant application, and you
will have a benchmark of exactly where students are at this point in the school
year.
Your assessments should be given toward
the end of the school year to allow as much growth to be demonstrated as
possible. It should not be so close to
the end of the year, however, that students cannot concentrate or do their best
on the assessment instrument.
Assessments are a vital part of any
grant program. Make sure that every
program in your school receives a proper assessment before you leave for the
summer.
Check It Out: New Grant Opportunity!
Grant Name: Kinder Morgan Foundation Education Grants
Funded by: Kinder Morgan
Foundation
Description: Grants
are primarily directed to educational programs for youth in grades K-12.
Funding is provided to local, state, provincial and regional educational
institutions, libraries and programs that provide ongoing support, such as
Junior Achievement. The foundation also supports youth programs provided by
local arts organizations, symphony orchestras, museums and others. Initial
approach is to contact the foundation for application form, which is required.
Program Areas: Arts,
Community Involvement/Volunteerism, General Education, Library, Math, Reading,
Science/Environmental, Social Studies
Recipients: Public
School, Private School, Other
Proposal Deadline: 5/10/2012
Average Amount: $3,500.00
- $5,000.00
Contact Person: Maureen
Bulkley, Community Relations Coordinator
Telephone: 303-763-3471
Availability: All
States
Check It Out: New Grant Opportunity!
Grant Name: ING
Run for Something Better School Grant
Funded by: ING Run for
Something Better and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education
(NASPE)
Description: ING
Run For Something Better, in partnership with NASPE, has developed a
school-based running program. Each year, the ING Run For Something Better
National School Awards program provides a minimum of 50 grants (of up to $2,500
each) to schools that wish to establish a school-based running program or
expand an existing one. Through activity plans created by NASPE, the awards
program offers children a healthy start to life and fosters their desire to
exercise before obesity begins.
Program Areas: Health/PE
Recipients: Public
School, Private School
Proposal
Deadline: 5/15/2012, applications available on line
Average Amount: $2,500.00
Availability: All
States
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