The Venture Fund At Work.
The Venture Fund has already helped bring four exceptional organizations to work in Indianapolis: Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, College Summit and Diploma Plus. Efforts are currently underway to bring other highly successful organizations to the city.
In 2007, The Mind Trust successfully recruited to Indianapolis Teach For America, a national corps of top college graduates who commit two years to teach in under-resourced public schools and become lifelong leaders in the pursuit of educational equity.
The Venture Fund’s first success was to invest in The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to support its efforts to recruit highly talented people to teach in Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), Mayor-sponsored charter schools, and other area school districts.
College Summit trains teachers, counselors, and student leaders to dramatically increase college enrollment rates of low-income students. For instance, nearly 80% of students who participate in College Summit’s summer workshop enroll in college, compared to the national average of 46% among low-income students.
The Mind Trust helped launch five Diploma Plus schools in Indianapolis in Fall 2008. Diploma Plus is a Gates Foundation funded school model that features a competency based curriculum where students, regardless of their previous credit accumulation, progress through school by demonstrating their mastery of state standards rather than earning credits based on traditional semester-long classes.