School of Education receives $1 million Gates grant

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Pitt and civic network Remake Learning a $1 million grant for the Shifting Power initiative, a project to transform how research and development is conducted in education, according to a Monday press release.

The initiative will provide a space for black and Latinx educators and learning scientists to work together and re-examine best practices in education, explicitly centering on voices that have historically been excluded. It will also form a network in western Pennsylvania of 20 people from school districts, higher education institutions, museums, education technology companies and education research organizations.

The initiative is intended to become a national model for implementation, according to the release.

Remake Learning is a network of different organizations and people from across southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia who advocate for equitable learning practices, such as uplifting and supporting students of color. Established in 2007 as a working group, and later formed the Remake Learning Council in 2014. It’s comprised of elected officials, school district administrators and education professionals.

Allyce Pinchback-Johnson, Remake Learning’s group lead for the initiative, said the initiative will work to refocus the attention of education research and development on educators who work with students everyday.

“By centering the voices of educators of color within the Remake Learning network and pairing them with local learning scientists, this project aims to upend this traditional power structure inherent in R&D processes,” Pinchback-Johnson said in the release.

Valerie Kinloch, the Renée and Richard Goldman Dean of the Pitt School of Education and cochair of the Remake Learning Council, said the initiative is an important project to “center and uplift the voices, identities, power and brilliance” of black and Latinx educators.

“Our network will ensure that they play a leading role in the educational innovations that improve the spaces where our young people learn,” Kinloch, coprincipal investigator on the grant, said in the release. “We are proud to partner with Remake Learning and the Gates Foundation on this ambitious endeavor, which supports our School’s mission to ignite learning and to strive for well-being for all.”