Donations improve how kids learn amid ongoing COVID concerns

When COVID-19 forced Claire Mansur to teach her fourth-grade reading students online instead of in the classroom, she thought about giving up as a teacher.

Students at Gladstone Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri, which serves a large population of immigrants and refugees, weren’t logging on to her virtual lessons. They lacked the proper technology, their life at home was too chaotic amid the pandemic’s early months, or they just weren’t interested. Mansur felt disconnected from the children who did show up, unsure of whether they were retaining anything she was teaching them.

Then she got help adapting to online teaching from Instruction Partners, an education consulting nonprofit that is one of many organizations benefiting from a surge in foundation funds. Contributions to the nonprofit, including foundation grants, nearly doubled to $5.4 million in 2020 over the previous year.

Grantmakers are increasing spending on education, hoping to turn the pandemic into an opportunity to fine tune the use of educational technology, develop better lesson plans, and build connections with families and after-school programs that could help reduce students’ mental-health challenges due to COVID. They want to help school districts change the way people like Mansur teach, while reducing learning gaps. The support could help reduce teacher burnout and get students on solid footing at grade level without resorting to remedial instruction.

Underlying the soaring sums going into education grant making: Federal education statistics show that those hurt the most already have been students of color, those with disabilities, and those whose native language isn’t English.

Among the foundations making big boosts in spending are the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies,...