Impact Moment: Verizon Foundation Builds Grantee Capacity and Data Collection through a Coordinating Partner
By Cori Cunningham, Program Director, The Conference Board
Verizon Foundation has built a successful partnership with the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) to help with the development and execution of its teacher training program, the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools (VILS). Through VILS, Verizon partners with schools to provide comprehensive, ongoing teacher training on effectively integrating mobile technology into classroom instruction to increase student interest and performance in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.
The Foundation works with ISTE to provide the professional development training and mentorship to educators and a dedicated technology coach at each school. In addition to assisting with program content, ISTE serves as a coordinating partner for measuring impact and works closely with Verizon’s grantee partner schools—not all of which have the capacity to engage in impact assessments on their own.
ISTE helps grantees establish their baseline data and provides input on projected outputs and outcomes, as required by the grant application process. ISTE then manages the data collection for near-, mid-, and long-term program results, using a multi-method evaluation, including standardized test scores, student surveys of STEM engagement, multiple teacher surveys, as well as classroom observations and interviews. ISTE also collects control data from similar non-VILS schools to be used as a point of comparison.
The ISTE VILS evaluation indicates that teacher training to integrate mobile technology in the classroom may have a positive impact on students’ standardized test scores. In addition, the VILS program reported gains in teacher and student proficiency with mobile devices and student interest and engagement in STEM subjects. Verizon Foundation aspires to have a metrics-driven program that is successfully tracking against its desired results, and it has found ISTE to be an invaluable partner in advancing the VILS program in an efficient manner. Verizon Foundation has also found that having ISTE compile, analyze, and validate the program data has lent credibility to its reporting; this is another positive benefit it sees in engaging with third parties.
About The Conference Board’s Impact Measurement Portfolio
This case study is taken from Measuring the Impact of Corporate Social Investments, the report of a 14-company research working group that examined challenges related to impact measurement. It is one of a range of publications on the topic that The Conference Board has published in the past 12 months. The other publications, including Framing Social Impact Measurement, are available here.
About the author:
Cori Cunningham
Program Director
The Conference Board
Cori Cunningham is the founder of C. Cunningham Advising and an accomplished consultant and solutions-oriented leader with more than a decade of experience advising corporations and social sector organizations on strategies designed to drive positive change. She specializes in uniting teams and stakeholders around common missions, and is a highly skilled strategic planner, analyst and facilitator. Cori works with clients to align community engagement strategies with business goals in the corporate sector, and create thorough and thoughtful plans for identifying and securing corporate relationships in the social sector.
